Urban areas in California are among the most expensive places to live in the United States, but California also has a stronger social safety net than almost any other state. People in other states probably have it worse, but the government programs designed to protect Californians from financial catastrophe don’t feel like much relief. For one thing,…

Personal injury lawyers often tell injured clients that the “skate at your own risk” signs at skating rinks and “swim at your own risk” signs at swimming pools are wishful thinking; even though the sign is present, you can still file a premises liability lawsuit if you get injured in a preventable accident at a…

Filing for bankruptcy protection is for everyone, at least in theory. Everyone, regardless of age or income level, has the right to file for bankruptcy protection and discharge their eligible debts. Whether everyone should be is another matter. A bankruptcy filing is a negative mark on your credit score, so even if it grants you major relief…

You have heard all the conventional advice about improving your credit score. Take out a loan and repay it in installments. Pay your credit card balance down to zero every month. Of course, the way to do those things is to increase your earnings and decrease your expenses.  As it stands, you already spend every waking moment working,…

Welcome back to bankruptcy court. It has been a while. Then again, it has not been that long. Filing for bankruptcy protection can give you a much-needed reset and enable you to put the past behind you. For some people, that past is so painful that they spend the rest of their lives making every effort to…

The basic purpose of bankruptcy laws is to protect people from the horrible consequences of being unable to repay debts, consequences so horrible that they should not happen in a modern country with a functioning court system. In the old days, when people could not repay their debts, they went to debtors’ prisons or signed an…

Mortgage payments are expensive, which is why the process of qualifying for a mortgage loan is so expensive. With current interest rates as high as they are and with home prices so expensive, the only people who can afford to get a mortgage loan are the ones who are wealthy enough to place a large down…

You know you are rich if you have time to go to the gym or watch Netflix.  About 10 years ago, a guy wrote a blog post about how he lost a lot of weight by walking on the treadmill at the gym every day while watching movies on Netflix on his iPad, but these…

Living with a disability means managing all kinds of hassles and uncertainties. If you are having a good day or a good week, you try to be as productive as you can because you never know when your symptoms will get bad again, but at the same time, you do not want to push yourself so…

As the spring weather starts to feel like summer, you often see advertisements encouraging people to spend their tax refunds on new furniture, a vacation, or a down payment on a new car to add to the trade-in value of their old car. Your frenemies on social media, or the lifestyle influencers whose content you hate-watch,…