Why does tax season put me in mind of September Song ? Oh, the days dwindle down, to a precious few…. A precious few days to make your contribution to tax advantaged retirement accounts. Or, do you tap your foot to a different song: Do You Believe in Magic? Do you expect that finances in your old […]
Earmark Tax Payments To Get Proper Credit
Get proper credit for tax payment by earmarking. That way, you can tell the IRS how to apply any payment you make voluntarily. Earmarking your check requires them to skip their rules and apply the payment to the tax you direct. Bravo for a small measure of taxpayer control. The term “earmarking” traces to the […]
Can you file bankruptcy tomorrow?
Most people clearly have little sense of how long it takes to file bankruptcy. Proof is what happened Monday: there’s an email the morning’s inbox from a client whom I first met weeks ago. He tells me they want to file before Wednesday’s mediation in state court! I have no creditor information, representation agreement, money, […]
California’s Good Deed: Passing Real Property At Death
The horror stories about do-it-yourself estate planning are both plentiful and tragic. Between the fear of probate and the fear of legal fees, inventive people invent inexpensive strategies for passing property to the next generation. Adding someone to the deed is the most common one I see. It works like this: in order to see […]
The Kind of Person Who Files Bankruptcy
You’d think the person who files bankruptcy is some alien fraudster, to listen to my clients. This is last place I ever expected to be, says the client sitting in my bankruptcy office. I hear that probably twice a week. Or, the client assures me: I’m not the kind of person who doesn’t pay their […]
Who Profits When Money Trouble Is Shameful?
Talking about our financial troubles is taboo in this society. In fact, we are more willing to talk about our sex lives than our money troubles. We lionize those who make a fortune. Everyone expects to live the middle class life. It becomes easy to think that something is wrong with you if you aren’t […]
What If You Ignore That Lawsuit Against You
How do you ignore a lawsuit and expect a good outcome? Yet twice in the past few months, individuals have come to me with judgments already entered against them. That’s not noteworthy; after all, I’m a bankruptcy lawyer. We deal with unpaid judgments. But both of these men explained the situation this way: the claims […]
Everyone gets $1M + bankruptcy exemption
Bankruptcy exemptions vary from state to state, but everyone gets an exemption of ~$1.75 M for money in an IRA. It’s part of the Bankruptcy Code (section 522(n)) that applies to all filers, wherever they live. The exemption covers both classic, before-tax IRA’s and Roth IRA’s that are funded with after-tax dollars. Roll-overs into an […]
What The Fool Got Wrong About Filing Bankruptcy
The famous poem begins, “how do I love thee? let me count the ways”. But what if it’s not love that we are counting, but loathing? Let me count the ways I loathe the Motley Fool’s article asking should I file bankruptcy? The Fool’s underlying assumption is that people in debt flock to bankruptcy as […]
The Tortoise Is The Mascot Of Retirement Savings
Every campaign needs a logo. Make the logo of your retirement planning a turtle, rampant. Rampant, you say? Turtle? In the Middle Ages, knights put their ID’s on their shields in elaborate heraldry that told bystanders who he was, what his birth order was, and which side of the blanket he was born on. Heraldry featured animals, […]
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