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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…

One of the reasons for passing the Affordable Care Act of 2010 was to reduce health care costs and make insurance more affordable for everyone. To some extent, the ACA has been a success. Health insurance is more accessible now than at any time it has ever been in the past. Millions of people now…

With the economy still struggling, many people are now finding themselves deeply in debt as they get older and inch closer to retirement. Many older people are often concerned about how filing for bankruptcy later in life could affect them. While filing for bankruptcy at an older age may affect your ability to borrow money…

One reason that many people are hesitant to consider bankruptcy, and particularly Chapter 7 bankruptcy, is that they fear it will mean losing all of their assets. While Chapter 7 bankruptcy does involve submitting all of your assets, including vehicles, to a bankruptcy trustee so that he or she can determine what assets should be…

It’s well-known that federal student loans are very difficult, if not almost impossible to discharge in either Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy. There is another type of education loan that is lesser known to most people that is often thought of as nondischargable in bankruptcy, but a recent decision from New York indicates this…

April 15 is almost here, which means the annual deadline is looming to file income taxes. It’s a time that many Californians dread with good reason, but as many debtors have found, bankruptcy isn’t all bad for income taxes. If tax debt meets certain requirements, such as being more than three years old, they can…

There are a variety of reasons that debtors choose Chapter 13 bankruptcy over Chapter 7. Some have debts that can only be discharged in Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Others prefer Chapter 13 because it allows them retain more of their assets while going through the bankruptcy process. Some debtors would like to file for Chapter 7…

Bankruptcy can be a liberating process. There’s a great sense of relief that comes over many debtors when they realize they’ll no longer be drowning in hundreds of dollars in payments each month or hounded by creditors, in constant fear of collection lawsuits or repossession. But along with that relief can also come feelings of…

When you file for Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy, a trustee will be appointed to your case. The trustee is typically a local attorney experienced in bankruptcy law. The function of the trustee is to represent the estate that is created when you file for bankruptcy. The trustee is not meant to be your…

While Chapter 7 bankruptcy allows for many debts to be discharged soon after the initial filing, Chapter 13 bankruptcy requires debtors to submit a repayment plan that will allow them to make monthly payments on their debts for either three or five years before receiving a discharge. However, in some cases a bankruptcy judge will…

You’ve probably heard that it is impossible to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy. That’s not exactly true, but it is very difficult to convince a court to let you off the hook for your student loans in either Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy. But with more than $1 trillion in outstanding student loan…