Best lesson I ever learned was from someone who told me this:
Everybody who has ever gone bankrupt was approved by the bank.
It hit home for me how clear it is that I have to be my own financial trustee...that I have to say "no" sometimes...It's a good thing.
Anyway congrats on getting a fresh start, StS.
Good words to live by no doubt.
Sometimes that isn't enough. Illness, injury, other forms of liable accident, loss of job, or large reduction in pay can turn a pleasantly running afternoon to way past the darkness of midnight in just a heartbeat.
The comfort zone of any savings disappears quickly but the debt doesn't no matter how well planned out. Many think they are better off then they really are once crisis hits, things go quickly.
Way ones estate erode away in less than a year from the years of hard work it took to get there.
It is no accident when the Bush administration rewrote bankruptcy law it benefited the banks, and no changes for business however the consumer was targeted.
Medical is a huge reason for bankruptcy however there are hundreds of others that are just as justifiable.
One day you are fine and healthy at 33 the next day a pain in your lower back so you put a heat pad on it thinking its a pulled muscle. A month later that pain in the back turns out to be cancer and your home, job, standard of living are all gone but not the debt nor the fact that you will live some more years and as work goes bye-bye so does your health insurance through work but COBRA will cover you if you can pay the full premium in addition to regular monthly obligations and medical cost not covered by your plan.
You find that a great many big mouthed people, web :Rambos" have plenty nasty comments to say about those filing for bankruptcy and what losers the people are who do it. Claiming that the loser was their to rip off the system buying big screen plasma TV's and taking club med trips and was financially irresponsible. Of course some of that is true but its in the minority. There is abuse in all systems to protect everyone. What many fail to realize is that the those same systems that they moan about "entitlements" to the poor or busted are also there for them as well.
Humbling time calls on many and no one ever expects it
Then one day they step off a curb and break their back. They are forever to be in a wheel chair and that $58,000 yr job they boasted about thinking they were in the league of Donald Trump is all gone, yet the nurse must come in daily to change the diapers they will wear for the rest of their live and the power bill is still $250 a month.
Of course its different for the former big mouth then. Setting aside the permanent injury/illness though I do sort of get a wicked grin that "Oh how the mighty have fallen" and now taste the venom from others of what you have spewed forth on them.
I've read about it but I don't get it. Someone explain please.