• Home
  • Bankruptcy in Brief
  • ABC’s of Bankruptcy
  • Considering Bankruptcy
  • True Stories
  • Chapter 13
  • Blog
  • About Us

Northern California Bankruptcy Lawyer

On The Bankruptcy Soapbox

The Soap Box
  • How bankruptcy works
  • Mortgage Matters
  • Consumer Rights
  • Newsworthy
  • You & Your Lawyer
  • Small Business
  • Family Law

3 Things That Prevent You From Getting Out Of Debt

By Cathy Moran

emoticons-150528_1280_opt

It’s not a bad economy, poor budgeting skills, or credit card interest that keep you from getting out of debt.

It’s emotions, not reasons, keep people from filing bankruptcy and starting fresh.

Even if Reason says that you’ll never pay your debts off in the usual way.

Reason also says that paying old debt steals from essential current and future needs.

But emotions stand between you and a rational decision that repayment isn’t possible and that bankruptcy is the solution.

It’s not as sexy as the seven deadly sins, but the Emotions Trio keep my clients mired in debt long after logic says “start over”.

Meet Fear, Stubbornness, and Pride.   They stand between you and freedom from old debt.

Fear

Fear of the unknown probably kept our primitive ancestors alive.  If you didn’t understand it, it made sense to fear it.

In the age of the internet when nothing remains unknown, it’s ironic that fear continues to keep people from filing bankruptcy.

  • People fear life in a consumer society without credit.
  • They fear being branded as a failure.
  • They fear the judgment of others about how they got in this mess.

Some of this fear is rooted in bad information that circulates;.  Some of that bad information is deliberately planted by those who profit as long as you avoid the bankruptcy remedy.

Good bankruptcy information found at Bankruptcy in Brief.

I’m with Franklin Roosevelt: all we have to fear is fear itself.

Stubbornness

It’s hard to knock stubbornness.   After all, stubbornness, the drive to finish what you started, is often a virtue.

But stubbornness regardless of the facts is not admirable.

I’m talking about the attitude that says “these are my debts, and by d***n, I’ll get them paid”.

Honorable, but not rational.

See how long it takes to pay off a modest credit card balance by paying the monthly minimum.

Life is about choices, and the choice to keep chipping away at a Mt.Rushmore of debt usually  means that some other, real and important, need goes unmet. The greatest of these neglected choices, in my world, is retirement savings.

Staying in debt means living with stress, or dying of stress.

Pride

I’m not the kind of person that files bankruptcy, I often hear.

Well, what kind of person is it that files bankruptcy?

It’s

  • people who’ve gotten sick, even with health insurance;
  • people who’ve divorced;
  • people who’ve lost jobs; and
  • people who got suckered into believing that the marvels of a consumer society were available to everyone.

Pride won’t put food on the table in your old age.  It won’t pay for your prescriptions or your kids’ college.

Bankruptcy is not a moral failing; it’s a legal solution to an economic problem.

Look around at the celebrities and the iconic corporations who have all filed for bankruptcy relief.  Do we think that they are lesser people for starting over? Not usually.

Walt Disney, one of our  more famous bankruptcy debtors, is an American hero.

Perhaps the saddest things I see as a bankruptcy lawyer are people who struggled far too long with intractable debt, making more bad choices before getting out from under.

It doesn’t have to be so.

More

Debt makes you stupid

Interviewing a bankruptcy lawyer

Is it better to just make minimum payments

More from the Soapbox

  • Free Bankruptcy Advice:  5 Reasons Why I’m Not FreeFree Bankruptcy Advice: 5 Reasons Why I’m Not Free
  • How To Pick A Bankruptcy LawyerHow To Pick A Bankruptcy Lawyer
  • Three Barriers To Getting Out Of DebtThree Barriers To Getting Out Of Debt
  • Disarm The Debt Collector: Understanding The Weapons of CollectionDisarm The Debt Collector: Understanding The Weapons of Collection
  • Can You Be Arrested For Not Paying Your Debts?Can You Be Arrested For Not Paying Your Debts?

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: 2016

About Cathy Moran

I'm a veteran bankruptcy lawyer and consumer advocate in California's Silicon Valley. I write, teach, and speak in the hopes of expanding understanding of how bankruptcy can make life better in a family's future.

Coronavirus & Your Finances

About The Soapbox

You've arrived at the Bankruptcy Soapbox, a resource of bankruptcy information and consumer law.

Soapbox is a companion site to Bankruptcy in Brief, where I try to be largely explanatory and even handed (Note I said "try").

Here, I allow myself to tell stories and express strong opinions on how I think law should work for the consumer and small businesses when it comes to debt.

Moran Law Group
Bankruptcy specialists for individuals and small businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area

How Bankruptcy Works

High Income Earners Pass Bankruptcy’s Means Test

ALERT:   Being above the median income on the means test is not an automatic bar to filing bankruptcy I'm so used to railing against deliberate campaigns of misinformation about bankruptcy that I forget that there's a lot of innocent ignorance out there. Start with "qualifying" for bankruptcy. A very … Read more

More Posts from this Category

643 Bair Island Road
Suite 403
Redwood City, CA 94063
Phone: (650) 694-4700

Categories

All content copyright © Moran Law Group. All rights reserved.