Stand by: I’m going to say something nice about BAPCPA, the bankruptcy “reform” law of 2005. The debtor education requirement that is a condition of getting a discharge is a good idea. Just this week, two clients have reported that they learned useful stuff from the required program.
Filing bankruptcy is a teachable moment for many: they are trying to figure out what happened to them and how not to go through this again. There is an openness to ideas and skills that may not have existed before.
The prebankruptcy “credit counseling”, the twin of the financial management class, is uniformly held to be worthless. (Are you reassured that my keyboard hasn’t been hijacked by my evil twin?) No one is deterred from filing as a result; for nearly everyone who readies themselves to file, there is no non bankruptcy alternative.
April is Financial Literacy Month. You don’t have to be bankrupt to add to your bag of money skills.
