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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…

What is so great about low-interest loans, anyway? You still have to repay them, and the longer the repayment term, the more interest you pay over time. Isn’t a low-interest loan just another debt? Debt consolidation loans and other types of personal loans with low interest rates seem more appealing once you find out more…

Most people choose to finance the purchase of a car not because they want to impress people with a flashy ride they cannot afford but rather as a practical financial decision. With the amount of money that is sitting in your bank account, the most you can afford to pay full price for a car…

It seems like everyone makes resolutions to improve their finances in the New Year, but it makes a lot more sense to get a head start. You can reduce holiday stress if you adopt the attitude that being disciplined about your finances is an ongoing process and not a cold turkey diet that begins X…

When people talk about education as an investment, they mean that students devote their time and money to pursuing university degrees so that, when they graduate, they will be qualified for well-paying jobs. Statistics consistently show that people with university degrees earn more in the course of a lifetime than those without university degrees. Once…

One of the goals of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is to tell corporations to pick on someone their own size. Too often, abusive debt collection and lending practices result in individuals paying a substantial portion of their income to debt repayment. Once you factor in sky-high interest rates and miscellaneous fees, people often…

Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Brings Relief Employed People Everyone has the right to file for bankruptcy protection if they cannot afford to pay their debts, but not everyone will get a substantial amount of debt relief out of it, and not everyone is eligible to file under every section of the bankruptcy code. Chapter 13 bankruptcy…

The best New Year’s resolutions do not start on New Year’s Eve when you are finally honest with yourself about what went wrong during the old year, and they definitely do not start when you roll out of bed in the early afternoon on January 1 and start scrolling through headlines about New Year’s resolutions…

They say that nothing is certain in life except death and taxes. In today’s financial climate, it would be reasonable to add consumer debt to the financial obligations that are as inescapable as death. A relentless optimist, a veritable Pangloss who looks for a silver lining in everything, would say that, at least, the two…

Personal finance experts sometimes talk about good debts and bad debts, depending on how much each debt puts you in a position for future financial well-being. In this context, medical debts are among the worst debts you can owe. No one plans to suffer an illness or injury, so you cannot build them into your…

Just as you are never too rich or poor to file for bankruptcy, you are never too young or old. The stereotype that a lot of people hold is that people who file for bankruptcy are men in their 30s or 40s who, after a recent divorce, got stuck with a disproportionate share of the…