They say that nothing is certain in life except death and taxes. In today’s financial climate, it would be reasonable to add consumer debt to the financial obligations that are as inescapable as death. A relentless optimist, a veritable Pangloss who looks for a silver lining in everything, would say that, at least, the two…

Personal finance experts sometimes talk about good debts and bad debts, depending on how much each debt puts you in a position for future financial well-being. In this context, medical debts are among the worst debts you can owe. No one plans to suffer an illness or injury, so you cannot build them into your…

Just as you are never too rich or poor to file for bankruptcy, you are never too young or old. The stereotype that a lot of people hold is that people who file for bankruptcy are men in their 30s or 40s who, after a recent divorce, got stuck with a disproportionate share of the…

Social media was supposed to be fun, but it turned very dark very quickly. People have been sending online messages to ruin each other’s days since the days of AIM and Friendster. If that scene in The Social Network has verisimilitude, idle smack talk was Facebook’s original purpose. (Most viewers were less surprised by the mean-spirited origins…

Operating a small business is not easy. When you hear people tell their business success stories, a part of the story usually goes, “After X years, our business became profitable.” This means that, for the first few years that the company was conducting business, it was operating at a loss. If the idea of paying…

If you start plugging numbers into bankruptcy protection calculators online, you might end up with an overly optimistic view of how a bankruptcy filing will affect your finances. You might think, “Really? I can get rid of $100,000 of debt for $800 and keep my house and car? Sign me up now!” Of course, you…

Filing for bankruptcy does not mean that you will never be able to access credit again. It also does not mean that, after discharging your old credit card debts in bankruptcy court, you can immediately open up a new account with the same credit limit and start making purchases like you used to do in…

If you follow the procedures correctly and answer all of the court’s questions truthfully, your chances of discharging your eligible debts in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing are high. Depending on your overall financial situation, it might even be able to discharge your eligible debts without liquidating any of your assets. Filing for Chapter 7…

Plenty of celebrities have spoken in interviews about the moment in which they first realized that they were wealthy, but Pete Townshend of the band The Who had an inkling that the world operates differently for wealthy people when he was still a struggling student. It was 1966, and Townshend had recently met Kit Lambert,…

Being in debt fills your mind with worries, but the consequences of falling behind on your death are more like death by a thousand cuts than a single, dramatic catastrophe. Disasters like getting evicted from your apartment or losing your house or car because you defaulted on the mortgage or auto loan take months before…