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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…

When people meet with debt relief lawyers to discuss bankruptcy filings and other possible solutions to their debt problems, most of them tell a similar story of a debt problem that started gradually. Yes, there are people whose finances tanked suddenly after a personal disaster such as an injury or a divorce, but an even…

Economists seem to inhabit a world that bears little resemblance to the one where we toil incessantly in pursuit of our bread and butter. Our ordeal is just points on a graph to them, and from their bird’s eye view, it looks like the economy is doing great.  Economists rejoice that the unemployment rate is…

You have gotten as far in your plans to file for bankruptcy as reading the bankruptcy FAQ page of the website of your county’s court system; therefore, you know that, at least in theory, no one is too rich or too poor to file for bankruptcy. Of course, you are probably reading this website on the…

Before your financial situation got as bad as it is, you used to read long-form articles on news websites about the horrible abuses that consumers suffer at the hands of debt collectors, whether those debt collectors represent credit card companies or healthcare providers that provided services with the full knowledge that the patient could never…

One of the more tone-deaf pieces of advice people can give you when you are trying to get out of debt is that you should take up a hobby that does not cost money, such as reading. Canceling your Netflix subscription and spending your last hour before sleep reading books you borrowed from the public library…

You do not have much money to spend, or else you would not have decided to file for bankruptcy protection. In fact, you might even be waiting until your tax refund arrives in the spring before you can afford to file. Hiring a bankruptcy lawyer sounds like a luxury. The thought might have even crossed your mind…

The reason that bankruptcy protection exists is to stop you from losing all your property when you apply for debt relief. Bankruptcy protection is what happens when you file a case in bankruptcy court; the court discharges your eligible debts in exchange for you paying a settlement amount, which is what happens in a Chapter…

Filing for bankruptcy protection is an option for everyone, at least in theory. You might not consider it a viable option for you, though, at least not now. The federal Bankruptcy Code sets minimum intervals between bankruptcy filings, so maybe it is not legally possible for you to file this year because you are still making payments…

It may not always be true that with age comes wisdom, but older people tend to spend money more thoughtfully than their younger selves did. If you splurged on a pair of shoes or a steak dinner just because it caught your eye, you probably did this when you were younger than 30. The so-called…

Wage garnishment is the worst-case scenario, at least in California. The Constitution and its amendments outlaw debtors’ prisons; the worst creditors can do is ask the courts to divert your earned income to them. This dystopian process is known as wage garnishment or wage attachment. The bad news is that even when wage attachment seems inevitable, you must…

In the old days, financial stress during the holidays was a rite of passage. You knew you were an adult when, instead of being excited about the Christmas cookies in the kitchen and the presents under the tree, you worried about the cost of plane tickets and learned to bake your own cookies from scratch to…

If you are feeling stuck financially, your feelings are completely understandable. Even if you work full-time, your income is barely enough to cover groceries, utilities, and rent.  It is easy to feel like the people who own their own houses, and therefore build equity with every mortgage payment, have it made while you are just treading…