What a great exercise it would be, to find out what exactly turned out to be useful from each class, and in which cases those troublemakers were right. In other words, what have I actually used to get ahead in life and which class did it come from? However, that exploration will be left for another time. There is one subject which would obviously be useful for anyone in any career or vocation, one that should be taught in every school, but for some reason never is. The subject is Financial Literacy, something we could all put to excellent use.

Financial Literacy as a subject in school would be a course examining the impact of certain decisions on your finances, encompassing major and minor decisions. Basically, the goal would be to arm students with enough knowledge of the financial world that they wouldn’t go out and make the foolish mistakes that drive so many people to financial ruin every year. The curriculum would go in the following direction.

Week 1. Avoiding scams. The teacher would deliver a tutorial on avoiding scams that prey on the young and naive.

Week 2. How to determine if you can take on a loan. Most young people have no conception of what it means to pay back a debt. The second phase of class would lay out the problems of taking on debt and when it should be done. Personal and business loans would be discussed, along with examining credit card statements and taking on mortgages. The positive aspects (tax-wise) will also be covered.

Week 3. Asset evaluation. Students will have a chance to evaluate assets. What is an appreciating asset? How is that different from a depreciating one? Earning assets will be covered along with consumables. Defining one’s net worth is a series of decisions and students will see which choices will give them hope for the future.

Week 4. Investment strategies. Any investment you take has a number of consequences and risk potential. Students will be given the tools necessary to tell what a risky investment look like. Also, when the signs point to a winning gamble, they should be ready to pull the trigger. Although it takes a good amount of courage and a little recklessness, great investments can turn a life around.

Week 5. Should you leverage your investments. This lesson would run through the advantages and risks associated with leveraging investment portfolios. Tax would have to be covered to some extent in this lesson also as there are some definite tax advantages when borrowing to invest.

Final phase. At the end of the course, the student would try and make it all come together. There would be a layout of common mistakes and how to avoid making them. The ways to use the law in your favor and how to protect yourself would be covered. Finally, there would be suggestions on how to work with whatever types of finances you have to create the maximum amount of wealth.

Damian Papworth acknowledges that you do not need mutual fund investments. Having learned some easy investment strategies, you are capable of being your own investment manager.

“Mom, can’t you play Monopoly with us for an hour?” This was the children’s daily pleading. Jackie knew her son and daughter, nine and ten years old, couldn’t begin to understand what their mother’s dislike of the game was all about so she just kept handing them excuses like having to get the laundry done and so on. In fact, she was trying to shield them from what lay behind her violent distaste of that age old board game.

Watching her two elementary school aged children flip over a property title card and mortgage themselves to the hilt in order to stay in the game was more than Jackie could bear to be around. She was terrified her golden haired children would grow up to deal with crippling debt, an overload of which she and her husband, Jim, were straining under. Their recently launched retail business was not paying the bills while requiring one hundred percent of each partner’s time. The slippery slope of putting the kids’ school shoes and grocery purchases on plastic began, always with the thought that next month things would start improving.

By the time the business was finally shuttered and the husband and wife team had returned to the employment pool, their debt accumulation promised to keep them always at an impasse, always struggling to make minimum payments. “My biggest fear was having to tell the kids that we were going to lose our home”, Jackie confesses.

Then what seemed like the worst possible scenario turned just a little bit darker. Jim slipped and fell while at his night job and landed in the hospital for several days with a head injury. A couple of weeks later the uninsured medical bills started pouring in. Jackie shakes her head while saying “Like a morality play, our lives are the ones people point to and say to their children, “Beware.”

Jackie and Jim are not dumb people. Jackie with a business degree and Jim with his family history filled with self-employment, they both knew they were taking risks when starting their own business. They were brimming with energy and great ideas, a little low on capital but high on entrepreneurial spirit. They were convinced that combining these strengths with lots of hard work would bear fruit. They did what every whole-hearted entrepreneur does: They went for broke into a world where they could not possibly control all the circumstances. All the while the word “bankruptcy” remained so vile, neither of them ever breathed it.

Slowly the cracks revealed themselves and Jackie recognized that both she and Jim were slipping into depression and dysfunction that would soon not permit them to properly look after their two most precious assets, their two young children. “You are willing to do things for your children that you never before thought possible,” Jackie explains. After weeks of internal wrangling, she went online and found a well recommended bankruptcy attorney.

Prepared with a scrupulously detailed financial statement, Jackie went into her first meeting with the attorney. What she was unprepared for was the torrent of emotion that came tumbling out when she relayed her saga to him. The numbness of past months were transformed in those few minutes. “I stupidly apologized to him (the attorney) over and over again for our situation, as though I believed it was a deliberate act of folly on our part – like we should have seen it coming down the pike. Then I apologized for dumping on him like he was my therapist or something.” As for therapy, the attorney did hand her a tissue box before saying, “There is light at the end of the tunnel.”

After reviewing all of their options, the different forms of credit negotiating and types of bankruptcy filing, Jackie and Jim were directed by their attorney to file for Chapter 7 as the best solution for their situation. Jim, not the kind of man who finds it easy to talk about the subject, will tell you this is the hardest thing he has every had to do so far in life. “Your self image is severely dented in this process. But when you measure that against no longer being able to function as a provider for your family or as a parent to your children, the choice becomes clear.” It is in cases like this, where a family is enabled to survive, that the original intent of bankruptcy law is put into practice.

Able to get a little sleep now that some of the mental adjustments have been made, Jackie will tell you that the bankruptcy process has not been completely painless. “Yes, there is hurt there. But it was the experience leading up to the filing, not the filing itself that was the nightmare.” She is grateful that their attorney made it possible for them to keep their modest little house for the children’s sake. She also knows that there is a lot of hard work and careful living ahead of them but that is nothing to fear. “Socrates said ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’,” Jackie tells me. “Looking back on experiences both good and bad are all part of examining and choosing well for a healthy future.

It is absolutely essential that, before you start bankruptcy proceedings, you think long and hard about what choice to make. You need to weigh the pros and cons of any decision. Most people who decide to file for bankruptcy do so because they need a clean start to their financial lives. The debts that they have incurred have become so overwhelming that they cause serious emotional stress. When debts just keep on growing and you cannot seem to find a way out, it may be hard to know what to do about it.

Buy Yourself Some Time

In case your debts mount to such a degree that paying them off becomes impossible, you will have no choice but to be thinking about filing for bankruptcy, and even though you will still have to pay up what you owe, your chances will increase of becoming debt free by filing for bankruptcy.

If you do decide that filing for bankruptcy is the right choice for you, you will be happy to know that this decision will prevent your creditors from bothering you with demands for money. Some of these creditors will actually offer to allow you to pay them less or at least present a payment plan that works better for you.

Though these are the pros of filing for bankruptcy, there is a negative side to it as well and what was once easy when it came to filing for bankruptcy, has now become much more complicated because now your entire life history is scrutinized under a microscope and it can be quite unnerving as well because of the level of intrusion into your personal life that is caused whenever you are filing for bankruptcy.

If you have to take out a loan to pay off debts that have forced you to file for bankruptcy, they will tend to come with very high interest rates. These rates will only be higher and worse for you if your credit history reveals an inability to make timely loan payments.

Going through the process of filing for bankruptcy also tends to mean hiring a bankruptcy lawyer to assist you. That is another additional cost that you would not have to deal with if you were not filing.

It also means that prior to deciding on filing for bankruptcy, you need to think twice about the different problems that you are going to face, since some of these problems may come back to haunt you in the years to come, especially if you are not in a position to pay off your debts.

Often quite extensive, filing for bankruptcy is very rarely any sort of easy process. In fact, many people handling foreclosure proceedings run into some serious problems when they begin working on their claim. Even though it is true that a person who chooses to file for bankruptcy will be able to receive some legal protection, that does not mean that it is any less important to learn as much as is possible regarding the in depth process of filing for bankruptcy.

Remember that bankruptcy should only be turned to as an absolute last option. This is because bankruptcy will affect your credit in a seriously bad way for up to ten years.

Different Types of Bankruptcy

Having decided that you are indeed going to file bankruptcy, you next need to consider two important types of bankruptcy that will prove useful to you in your endeavors and which will also come in handy for you regarding how to file bankruptcy.

Most individuals who claim bankruptcy choose to do so under chapter 7 bankruptcy. Some people who would like to file under chapter 7 are not able to due to BAPCPA. This forces some people to file under chapter 13 bankruptcy whether they like it or not.

It is also important to do thorough investigation on the various aspects of bankruptcy if you are seriously contemplating filing. Even though it might not be the most appealing choice, hiring a legal professional to assist you in the bankruptcy process may help you handle things in the best possible way. You should also investigate which lawyer or law firm you want to work with before making a choice.

Once you have a lawyer or attorney in mind, you will next realize that in order to properly go about learning how to file bankruptcy, you should consult with your lawyer about your case and find out the best chapter under which to file bankruptcy. And, you should learn about what it is going to cost you to file bankruptcy and fees for different chapters will vary and so too will attorneys fees for which you should consider paying a flat fee rather than paying the lawyer according to the amount of debt you owe.

Once you have spoken with your lawyer, make sure that all of your creditors understand that you have hired legal counsel and that their calls and questions should be directed to your attorney. This will prevent any creditors from getting in touch with you regarding debt after you file for bankruptcy.

A Debt Consolidation Loan is taken out from a consolidation company that will cover all your existing debts. It works in a similar way to a mortgage, in that the individual applying must satisfy whoever is giving the money that they can repay it and that they can guarantee this with assets.

There are certainly pros and cons to doing this type of thing. This article will set each of these out, so anyone considering it can make an informed decision.

Firstly the advantages are:

1. You stop paying multiple different creditors and just have one, with one monthly payment, reducing effort and stress.

Secondly, the interest rates that were previously being paid are reduced, sometimes significantly.

Thirdly, you will be able to cut down the monthly installment size that you currently pay.

Fourth is the advantage of a tax interval. It’s like a mortgage and so it’s tax deductible. You cannot get the same privileges with credit card debt.

Now the reasons why you would not want to choose this path:

Firstly, we shall being with the biggest sticking point in my eyes and that is the subject of providing an asset as collateral. Basically, this means that you are liable for whatever asset becomes the collateral, meaning that if you can’t pay for whatever reason you stand to lose it. Also, most people who need a consolidation loan in the first place simply don’t have sufficient levels of assets.

Secondly,you must take into account the fee you pay to a consolidation company for their services, which are not insignificant. It basically results in a higher level of debt being taken on.

3. These types of scheme take a significant amount of time to pay off, just like a mortgage would. That means you effectively stay in debt for a long time. Financially and psychologically this can be tough.

There are two different bankruptcy procedures for individuals. These proceedings are known as Chapter 7 and Chapter 13. While you may be familiar with the term Chapter 11 from the news, that chapter applies to business owners only.

Prior to October of 2005, going through a personal bankruptcy was a fairly simple and painless process. It did ruin your credit but it also allowed for a more liberal discharging of debt. In 2005, the law changed and is designed to provide an incentive to people to file under Chapter 13 rather than Chapter 7. For people with a steady income, Chapter 13 allows them to keep some property like a house or a car that they would otherwise lose in a Chapter 7 filing. Chapter 13 is a court approved “pay back” plan that can run for as long as five years.

Chapter 7 is sometimes refered to as a straight bankruptcy. Basically Chapter 7 requires the liquidation of all but a few work related assets like a vehicle used in work or tools etc. All other property will be sold or given to debtors as payment. The chapter also places a limitation on the amount you can earn during this process. The intent of the law is to insure the debtor does not profit by not paying his debts.

There is another significant difference between Chapter 7 and 13. With Chapter 7, a person must wait eight years before they are able to file it again. Chapter 13 has only a two year waiting period before a person can refile.

While there are some similarities in the types of debt that can be discharged through either Chapter 7 or 13, there will be some differences as well depending on the state where you file. Most unsecred debt, garnishments, foreclosure notices and collection calls can be discharged through bankruptcy. However, child support, alimony, fines, certain taxes and student loans cannot.

Unlike the liquidation proceedings in a Chapter 7, Chapter 13 is designed to allow the debtor to pay off all the debt over a period of time. However, the court must be satisfied with the pay back plan otherwise it can order that other property such as boats, cars etc be sold to insure that the debts are fully paid. Arriving at a reasonable pay back plan is essential if the debtor wishes to keep his property.

Bankruptcy is no longer the slam dunk procedure that it was. The new law now requires that persons wanting to file either Chapter 7 or 13 attend an approved credit counseling course sometime within the six months before filing. This is another effort to solve the credit crisis without further clogging up the courts with another bankruptcy. In addition, there is now a “means test” for persons wanting to go the liquidation route. If the court believes that you make too much income to just walk away from the debt via liquidation, they will only allow you to file Chapter 13 which is the pay back plan.

There are other strategies to settle your debt without going through bankruptcy. It all depends on your personal situation and what best makes sense for you and your family. Any decision to file for bankruptcy should not be made without consulting a qualified bankruptcy attorney.

In Chapter 7 bankruptcy rules, the court gives orders to sell the debtor’s taxable personal finance assets to payoff the debt. In short, filing Chapter 7 petition means losing the property.

Whenever someone files for Bankruptcy, he or she is subjected to a Means Test to determine whether the filer can indeed qualify under Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy rules. Here, we examine points that are specific to the Chapter 7 means test.

In terms of the Courts, the Chapter 7 Means Tests encompasses calculating the following:

1.Your average income over the past six months. 2.Whether your average personal is above or below the median income of the State. For example, if the State’s median income is $25,000, and yours is lower, you qualify for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. If your income is higher, than additional calculations need to be made.

In the event that your average personal income exceeds the State’s Median income, the Chapter 7 Means Test evolves to include the following processes:

1. The second step calculates some more figures. It first subtracts some allowable expenses from the debtor’s actual personal income to find the “Disposable Income.” This disposable income is multiplied by 60 to make up the personal finance for the next 5 years of repayment period. 2. If the 5 year’s income exceeds $10,000 or more from the median, then chapter 13 is applied. But, if the debtor’s 5 year income exceeds the median and the monthly income is less than the monthly state median, then the last part of the mean test is executed.

On top of all this, your disposable income figure should be no more than 25% of your total unsecured debt level. In the event that it is more, you will not qualify under the Chapter 7 Means Test and may have to seek protection under Chapter 13.

You can complete these calculations yourself before sitting down with a bankruptcy trustee or professional, who is compensated on your choosing to file for Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy. However, if your own calculations come close to the State’s median, you should definitely seek professional assistance as they will need to complete these calculations anyway.

Of course, Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy should only be a last resort given the short- and long-term damage it causes to your credit score, finances, and emotional state. If you have the ability to repay your debt on a fixed schedule, you should explore such options before resorting to bankruptcy.

For the people that have declared bankruptcy, you should already be aware that doing this is the worst thing that can happen to your personal credit report. Most creditors would consider it to be a “deal-breaker” if you apply for a new credit card.

Chapter 13 and Chapter 7 are the two common types filed bankruptcies. A Chapter 13 bankruptcy can stay seen on a person’s credit for a total of 10 years but can be taken off after 7. However, Chapter 7 is displayed for a total of 10 years after the date you file it.

Either way, bankruptcies stay on your record for at long time. If you want to improve your chances of getting credit in the future, you should consider trying to do some bankruptcy repair.

It doesn’t matter if everything else on your report is perfect, as long as it’s showing that you’ve filed for bankruptcy that flaw is going to stick out like a sore thumb and you’re going to have problems trying to get any sort of credit. If you have any hopes of restoring your credit to what it once was, you’re going to have to find out everything you can about bankruptcy repair.

You can consider consulting different services that specialize in bankruptcy repair. You can often find a lawyer who will represent you through any proceedings or hearings.

Even though it is a challenge to completely rid your credit score of any bankruptcy information but there are companies who can help. The majority of the time, information like this can be cleaned off of your record and can be explained.

You can find legal firms that specialize in bankruptcy repair and other credit repair agencies advertised online and they are also listed in the yellow pages. They will be happy to talk with you by phone and many of the first appointments will be free.

People are in debt. Living in this world with bad credit can be difficult. It’s hard to repair your credit and it makes life difficult to have bad credit when you are making those large purchases.

Credit repair can be done, but not overnight. You must be patient and keep your spending in check. There are a few things that you can do to repair your damaged credit but you must be patient as you follow these steps.

Budgeting your income is the first step for healthy credit. You need to figure out your spending habits. When you review them, you will see what extra income is going to waste. Suggestible items to cut back are cigarettes, coffees, and fast food. In order to get your credit back in good standing, some sacrifice should be made.

Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union are the three credit reporting agencies that report to FICO. FICO is who keeps your credit score and reports it to the banks. You should get a credit report from all three agencies. Your bank will give you a free report every year if you ask for one; otherwise you can find an online solution.

Contacting the creditors is the next step. You need to speak to them to offer a payment plan. They will be willing to work with you because they want the money owed to them. If you offer to pay off the full balance and settle right then and there, usually they will give you a discount and ask you only pay the principal. Any agreements should be mailed to you in writing.

It’s time to cut the cord, er cards. It may feel painful at first, but it soon will be liberating. When you get rid of your credit cards, be sure to pay off and close the accounts. Credit history is important for your FICO score. It’s a good idea to keep two or three lines of credit opened up so you can keep your established credit history.

On time payments is the key here. You must be sure that you honor your promise to pays and your payment plans. If you are going to be late or have trouble, you need to call them up and let them know. Do everything you can do avoid bankrupts. You can choose to do a loan consolidation, you might need a co-signer.