Recent Blog Posts
Will Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Make Your Financial Situation Better or Worse?
The federal Bankruptcy Code includes many different categories for bankruptcy filings, but most individuals who file for bankruptcy protection use chapter 7 or chapter 13. Which category should you choose? The Google snippet answer is that, if you have a steady income and own assets beyond the bare necessities, you should file for chapter… Read More »
How to Improve Your Credit Score When You Are Broke
Google is not known for its emotional intelligence. If you ask Google how to improve your credit score, it will tell you to open one credit card account and take out one non-revolving personal loan and never to use more than 30 percent of the available credit on your credit card. Of course, Google… Read More »
Are Any Budgeting Methods Even Feasible?
When people who make a living giving personal finance advice tell you that you should budget, it feels the same as when physicians in private practice tell you that you should diet. You work 80 hours per week, and another 10 commuting, and you could spend the other 38 on meal prep and traveling… Read More »
Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure
Foreclosure, where the bank that issued your home mortgage petitions the court to declare it the legal owner of your house, which you have pledged as collateral on your mortgage loan, is a costly and agonizing process. Almost any other resolution to a situation where a homeowner has fallen behind on mortgage payments is… Read More »
Can the “Girl Math” Social Media Trend Help Your Finances?
Whoever first decided to use the term “girl math” to refer to purchases that do not have an immediate effect on your bank account balance had a keen sense of clickbait. It inspired the clicks of men who blame their current and former wives for wrecking their finances, as well as women whose minds… Read More »
Is Reverse Budgeting Only for Rich People?
It must be nice to be rich. You get free checking accounts and low interest loans. If you manage to get in over your head with debt despite earning a high income and borrowing money at low interest rates, you can file for chapter 13 bankruptcy, where you do not place any of your… Read More »
The Ugly Truth About Filing for Bankruptcy Before Age 30
By now you have heard all the gloom and doom about how the current generation of young adults have had debt hanging over their heads since the minute they entered the workforce, if not earlier, and it will continue to follow them around for the rest of their lives, even if they live to… Read More »
Would Cash Assistance for Housing Make Life Simpler?
When you are struggling to pay your bills, you wish for a windfall, but when you wish for a windfall, it only brings more stress. The stories of people who won the lottery and quickly ended up in worse shape, financially and otherwise, than they were before they bought the fateful scratch off ticket… Read More »
Tell the CFPB What You Think About Earned Wage Access
Earned wage access apps have been around for a long time, under a variety of names. Minus the app part, they predate the invention of the smartphone. The concept of earned wage access is that employers tally up how much money an employee has earned at the end of each workday and keep a… Read More »
Don’t Count on an Inheritance to Get You Out of Debt
Yes, your financial situation is better than some people’s. You own a house, and you have never missed a mortgage payment. You have a job, and your employer withholds taxes and pays the after-tax amount into your bank account through direct deposit; you rarely get an unpleasant surprise on payday, and at tax time,… Read More »