Walking away from homeownership and surrendering your house to the bank to avoid foreclosure is a heart-wrenching decision because there is no telling whether the financial stability you once enjoyed in your house will ever return. If at all possible, the best long-term solution is to buy time with your mortgage lender, hold onto your…

You have gotten as far in your plans to file for bankruptcy as reading the bankruptcy FAQ page of the website of your county’s court system; therefore, you know that, at least in theory, no one is too rich or too poor to file for bankruptcy. Of course, you are probably reading this website on the…

Before your financial situation got as bad as it is, you used to read long-form articles on news websites about the horrible abuses that consumers suffer at the hands of debt collectors, whether those debt collectors represent credit card companies or healthcare providers that provided services with the full knowledge that the patient could never…

One of the more tone-deaf pieces of advice people can give you when you are trying to get out of debt is that you should take up a hobby that does not cost money, such as reading. Canceling your Netflix subscription and spending your last hour before sleep reading books you borrowed from the public library…

You do not have much money to spend, or else you would not have decided to file for bankruptcy protection. In fact, you might even be waiting until your tax refund arrives in the spring before you can afford to file. Hiring a bankruptcy lawyer sounds like a luxury. The thought might have even crossed your mind…

The reason that bankruptcy protection exists is to stop you from losing all your property when you apply for debt relief. Bankruptcy protection is what happens when you file a case in bankruptcy court; the court discharges your eligible debts in exchange for you paying a settlement amount, which is what happens in a Chapter…

Filing for bankruptcy protection is an option for everyone, at least in theory. You might not consider it a viable option for you, though, at least not now. The federal Bankruptcy Code sets minimum intervals between bankruptcy filings, so maybe it is not legally possible for you to file this year because you are still making payments…

It may not always be true that with age comes wisdom, but older people tend to spend money more thoughtfully than their younger selves did. If you splurged on a pair of shoes or a steak dinner just because it caught your eye, you probably did this when you were younger than 30. The so-called…

Wage garnishment is the worst-case scenario, at least in California. The Constitution and its amendments outlaw debtors’ prisons; the worst creditors can do is ask the courts to divert your earned income to them. This dystopian process is known as wage garnishment or wage attachment. The bad news is that even when wage attachment seems inevitable, you must…

In the old days, financial stress during the holidays was a rite of passage. You knew you were an adult when, instead of being excited about the Christmas cookies in the kitchen and the presents under the tree, you worried about the cost of plane tickets and learned to bake your own cookies from scratch to…