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When you are living in challenging circumstances, every small victory counts. The fact that most people who buy lottery tickets have less employment income than they need to make ends meet surprises no one who has ever lived paycheck to paycheck. Winning a free lottery ticket is worth the price of the original ticket, if…

In the corners of the Internet dedicated to the debt-free lifestyle, people will tell you that you should never borrow money under any circumstances. People who manage to do this are relying in part on good luck. Who can own a house without taking out a mortgage loan?  Only people who inherited houses from relatives…

Reading the news can fill you with dread, and most Internet content is designed to play on your insecurities, even if they are of a personal nature, but you can also count on the Internet to find evidence that there are other people out there who are even more hopeless than you are. According to…

It is infuriating when old people give you outdated financial advice that makes it sound like your financial problems are all your fault. They tell you that you are wasting money by paying rent instead of a mortgage, but they do not have a plan for how you can qualify for a mortgage and get…

If you have accessed the Internet at any time in the past decade, you have probably found content about how people your age do not understand the financial struggles that young people are facing, and that you and your peers are unfairly blaming the young generation for their dismal financial situation. Now think about the…

Psychologists have long referred to people’s response to a fear-inducing stimulus as “fight or flight.” When the frightening stimulus is a notice of mortgage foreclosure, flight seems like the less futile response. If your choices are to abandon your home or dig in your heels and wait until the lender spends a tiny fraction of its immense…

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…