Hi Joanne
Glad to hear you've got things sorted. I had a similar experience myself too. I'd designed the whole website, registered the domain, setup hosting and was just about to launch, sent the final invoice and my client told me their other business had gone bust and they won't be able to pay for 3 months.
Stupidly, I only took a very small deposit for quite a large site and I am very worried about leaving it this long. As you mentioned, we need to pay rent/mortgages etc... so it can be very worrying when things like this happen.
I'm now thinking of increasing the amount I ask for a deposit but I'm reluctant to do this as I've had no problems for the last 4 years. Fingers crossed it will get sorted!
