The study by Australia's largest debt collection agency, Prushka, revealed families were struggling to pay for everyday expenses and falling deeper into the red.

Despite low unemployment levels and record low interest rates, many families were unable to pay their bills ranging from everything to electricity, medical bills or even the chemist.

Bathurst Salvation Army store manager Stephen Barrott said he wasn't at all surprised by the findings, saying most households didn't have a lot of fat in their budgets.

"People are living week to week and even then they don't have enough to pay the bills," he said.

"At the moment it is very hard for a lot of families, they just can't make ends meet."

Mr Barrott said the charity had been inundated with requests for help.

"We've had a lot of requests for food. Once people pay the bills there is nothing left, people just can't keep up with it," he said.

Mr Barrott said tough times were affecting everyone.

"It's not only people who are unemployed, we have families with one or two income earners asking for help - either food, clothes or blankets."

He said the elderly, young and single parent families were also at risk of falling through the cracks.

"On Saturday I had a single mum come in with for kids asking for help," he said.

"The kids had no shoes on, so we got them some shoes."

"It's very distressing, but we do what we can."

Lifeline Central West offers a face-to-face financial counselling service which can help families or individuals going through financial stress.

CEO Alex Ferguson said about 600 people a year used the service, which ran in addition to Lifeline's telephone counselling service.

He said the financial counselling service was free and could help people sort out their financial issues before they snowballed.

"As a community we need to be able to help people sort out issues before the problems start to get on top of them," Mr Ferguson said.

Anyone wanting to utilise the Lifeline financial counselling service can do so by calling 1300 798 258.