Recent Blog Posts
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 »
Unpleasant Truths About Bankruptcy and Taxes
When you decide to file for bankruptcy, you can feel the emotional burden being lifted off of you even before the court discharges a penny of debt and even before you are sure of where you can get the money to pay for the bankruptcy filing. Bankruptcy will not solve all of your financial… Read More »
What Can Underconsumption Tell You About Your Financial Problems?
Online content, from gloom and doom news stories to aspirational videos by influencers, has a way of amplifying our negative emotions. Everywhere you click, someone is trying to make you feel like everyone else has more money than you do, that your financial problems are your own fault, and that everyone is judging you… Read More »
Can ABLE Accounts Bring You Financial Relief?
Managing your finances in today’s economy is a challenge, even if you are healthy and steadily employed. You never know when the next price increase or natural disaster is going to throw off the delicate balance that enables you to live from paycheck to paycheck, with a few cents left in your bank account… Read More »
Are Subscriptions the New Junk Fees?
One of the fundamental rules of business is that companies charge customers as much money as they can get away with charging them. The difference between the amount of money needed to cover the cost of a product or to provide a service and the amount you pay is the company’s profit, so businesses… Read More »
Is Your Family Responsible for Your Debts After You Die?
On personal finance podcasts and advice columns, you often hear from people, middle aged and older, who decide to ask for advice when they realize that their debt is more than they can reasonably expect to pay off in a lifetime. Some of these consumers took out student loans in their 50s, either to… Read More »