Blogs

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…

The law recognizes several situations in which a person has control of the assets that belong to a person or legal entity but does not personally own those assets. For example, the personal representative of a deceased person’s estate must authorize or initiate all transactions by the estate, but the estate, not the personal representative, owns…

All this aspirational claptrap about how much money you need to be middle class is downright depressing when, with every passing pay period, you fall farther and farther behind on your debts. Even if you discharge your debts in bankruptcy, you will probably never be middle class, but gratitude doesn’t cost a penny, so take comfort…

Broken promises are a theme that runs through the lives of many borrowers of federal student loan borrowers. Their college advisers told them that it would only take eight semesters to graduate, so that, between federal grants and part-time employment, they would only need to borrow a small amount, which they would be able to repay…

The best thing about filing for bankruptcy protection is that it discharges your eligible debts, but the worst thing about it is that you have to start rebuilding your creditworthiness from zero. Secured credit cards are a good place to start, but they have such low credit limits that, if you are living paycheck to…

Young people are understandably in a panic about the economy. No matter how hard they work, they cannot afford anything. A good month is when you can keep up with payments on your buy now pay later (BNPL) installments on last month’s groceries. Your friends would let you stay with them, but your friends’ landlord is strict about…

When you were younger and less wise, you started a business, but within five years, it went the way of most new businesses. Creditors came after you, but you could not keep up with the payments after your business venture folded, and you eventually filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. That was more than eight years ago, and…

You work all the time, but you are still in debt. Economists use the term “the working poor,” but you would never use that term to describe yourself. It sounds like something that supervillains say when peering down from their penthouse retreats at the working poor, trying to tilt their magnifying glasses at just the right…

Unless you are extraordinarily wealthy or extraordinarily disciplined about screen time, you probably keep track of every penny you earn and every penny you spend, but you have probably long since lost count of how much time you spend on the Internet. Your phone might send you an alert on Sunday mornings telling you your average amount of screen time for…

Much like homeownership, a comfortable retirement is looking more and more like an outdated aspect of the American Dream. Most people leave the workforce and start drawing Social Security, not because they have enough money saved to pay their expenses until their 100th birthday, but because they are no longer healthy enough to work, and many of them…

Qualifying for a home mortgage has never been easy; if you want to buy a house, you either need generational wealth or an extraordinary stroke of luck. Today, a disproportionate share of homebuyers have their parents contribute to the down payment, or else the mortgage loan principal would be so big that lenders would refuse to issue the loan.…