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When you are watching every penny, you sit at home and make financial calculations in your mind while other people are out engaging in leisure pursuits, or so the influencers on YouTube would have you believe, then you try to spend your free time on income-generating activities, or at least on doing things that do…

If you are bummed out about the fact that everyone in California has been in a foul mood for as long as you can remember, count your blessings. Try driving a few states east to Utah or Texas, where the older generations have managed to impress upon their daughters, even in these turbulent times, that…

In a perfect world, no one would need to use credit cards, but a perfect world is so far away that you have already maxed out one credit card with grocery purchases and other expenses that no one would consider luxuries, and now you are running up the balance on at least one other card.…

How bad your finances are is, at least partially, a matter of perspective. Sure, you don’t have any money left at the end of the month to put into savings. If you are so optimistic that you transfer a percentage of your paycheck into savings every payday, then you end up transferring it back into…

After introductory quotes from texts in Latin, Classical Greek, and Italian, T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland” begins, “April is the cruellest month.” It is true that April is not especially cuddly, but all of the months are cruel these days. It is as if the financial death toll of the Christmas holidays never ends. Chances…

California has long been known for its glitz. It is the home of the stars; the weather is incredible, along with the palm trees, the beaches, etc. It is also a destination for the wealthy to have second homes. In fact, a significant number of current and former professional athletes call California home. A recent…

Speak to any money manager, stockbroker, or similar professional, and they will stress the need to diversify your portfolio. The logic is simple: Do not put all your proverbial eggs into one basket. Many people, including those with significant wealth, invested heavily in “surefire” investments only to suffer serious losses when the investment did not…

The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, sparked and continues to spark debate. Its controversial passing and subsequent legal action triggered conversations between scholars and laymen alike. One fact about Obamacare is that it tracks a downward push of bankruptcy filings. The question becomes whether Obamacare is causal with respect to the slide in…

Social research seems to point to a trend wherein people are reticent to file for bankruptcy or utilize social welfare programs. At the same time, with the emergence of the importance of maintaining a good credit score, this trend continues. The trend over the last several years has been moving away from social welfare programs…

The Toys R Us bankruptcy, along with the bankruptcy of its sister store Babies R Us and parallel bankruptcy proceeding in Canada for its Canadian subsidiary, shocked the market. Not so much because a store with a strong brick and mortar presence filed for bankruptcy, but because its sheer sales numbers were not enough to…

Stereotypical California story: 70-year-old man divorces his fifth wife. He lives in Beverly Hills and works as a top executive at a large entertainment company and has done so for a number of years. He is very active but recently cut back on his working hours so he can spend time enjoying life. He is…

Discharge Injunction Violation Perhaps you are a consumer who is facing mountains of debt. The debt load does not allow you to rest. You cannot eat, sleep, or perform normally routine activities because you are overwhelmed by debt. Some days you prefer to just stay in your bed because of the debt. You borrowed money…

Government statistics demonstrate that bankruptcy filings fell by 0.7% last year, marking the smallest 12-month decline since 2010. Based strictly on these numbers, bankruptcy filings are up. During the recession and its immediate aftermath, bankruptcy filings soared. As the economy moved in a different direction and things improved, bankruptcy filings saw a steady decline. 2017…

Prisoner’s dilemma is a subset of game theory wherein the police arrest two men and accuse those men of being involved in the same crime. The police separate the men and place them in different prison cells so that each defendant does not know what the other defendant is telling the police. The men, now…

In 1996, Oakland native and rap superstar M.C. Hammer, whose real name is Stanley Kirk Burrel, filed for bankruptcy. His bankruptcy petition claimed that he had assets of approximately $1 million and liabilities of at least $10 million. He owed over a million dollars to Winterland Records and had liabilities to two different Bay-area lawyers.…