Here are seven easy steps to pay off high interest rate credit cards.  In fact these tips show you how to eliminate high interest accounts entirely and how to perform simple regular maintenance adjustments to keep your credit accounts within reasonable limits.
1.  Fingerprint your credit cards.  On a simple word document or piece of paper [...]

So what happens to your security clearance if you file for bankruptcy protection?  Is it revoked? Will you be terminated from your job?  Will you be demoted?  Does your salary decrease?
While there are bankruptcy code provisions that regulate the public and private sector over discriminations in employment when one files for bankruptcy protection, most employers [...]

Can Bankruptcy keep you from getting student loans?
No.  That’s the simple answer.  If the loan is either funded or guaranteed by the government, you can’t be denied your right to get such a loan simply because you filed for, or were a debtor in a bankruptcy.
In most cases, getting loans immediately after filing for bankruptcy [...]

I’ve been posting about bankruptcy questions asked most frequently by my clients, and I’ve dealt with questions about the pre-bankruptcy process, procedural issues, and Chapter 13 issues.  But almost all my clients want to know about life after bankruptcy.  Once again, I cannot over-emphasize the importance of consulting your own bankruptcy lawyer because circumstances can [...]

More and more often these days, we are hearing about “Strategic Foreclosure Defaults” in the housing market.  Such defaults occur typically when a borrower with perfect credit and ability to afford the mortgage, makes the intentional financial decision to let a home foreclose back to the lender.
Such defaults are generally triggered by massive amounts of [...]

Why is it so hard living on a budget?  I believe it has something to do with the many unscheduled expenses of life. Do we carefully categorize every dollar spent?   Probably not.  As a result, we underestimate how expensive life really is.
Yesterday, I joined my wife for a quick trip to the local supermarket. We [...]

More student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy than ever before and the definition of student loan has been expanded to include private loans and expenses that are not “loans” in the traditional sense of the word loan.
The changes came after Congress passed the s0-called bankruptcy reform act in 2005 known as the Bankruptcy Abuse [...]

Do you think you could owe twice as much as you thought on your car loan? It could be true, if your car loan is owed to a credit union, you owe a large credit card balance to the credit union, and if the dreaded “cross collateral clause” is lurking in the fine print of the car [...]

Your car is worth a whole lot less than you owe on it, and you’re in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Is there a way to lower your loan balance?
In a Chapter 13, you may be able to do a cramdown, where you reduce the loan balance to the car’s value, but you can’t in a [...]

My friend Jay Fleischman is on point that our clients filing bankruptcy are stressed.  Let me posit that the cause of the stress is not “filing bankruptcy” but 1) the situation that lead to the decision to file;  2) fear of the unknown, fueled by bad information and unsupported assumptions about the process; and 3) [...]