Bankruptcy Tips and Overspending During The Holidays

Don’t fall victim to Bankruptcy! Follow these Bankruptcy Tips for prevention, filing, and negotiating and beware overspending over the holiday season!

Today Your Legal Corner will discuss bankruptcy tips to minimize “Overspending… While Getting Ready For The Holidays.”

When it comes to overspending this holiday season…try… to resist, resist, and resist! According to Bankrate.com, 1.7 million citizens filed for bankruptcy in the year 2013 and many more will file in 2014/2015. Why file for bankruptcy? The purpose of a bankruptcy proceeding is to obtain relief from extensive debt.

Bankruptcy is a legal remedy designed to help when financial burdens have become too great. Yet, it should only be used as a last resort because Bankruptcy will affect your credit rating, is time consuming and involves legal expense. Consider the following bankruptcy tips before becoming a statistic.

Bankruptcy Tips – Filing

To address your financial burdens, first examine how it happened. Overspending is only one way to become overburdened by debt. Other ways include divorce, job loss and unexpected events such as a death in the family, catastrophic weather or illness. In fact, medical debt as opposed to overspending is the number one cause for bankruptcy as reported by the Kaiser Foundation. Still, regardless of the reason, meet with an attorney to discuss the possibility of bankruptcy alternatives such as prevention, negotiation and debt counseling before filing.

Bankruptcy Tips – Prevention

Sometimes the answers to blatant money problems are right under our nose. For example, begin with stopping and lowering spending. During this holiday shopping season, try your best to minimize expensive gifts and purchases. Instead, consider giving the gift of time by babysitting, or making homemade gifts like cookies, meals and ornaments. When you do choose to purchase gifts, compare prices online to ensure the best price and create a holiday shopping list ahead of time.

Still, if you find that you are especially tempted to purchase that pricey gift, sleep on it. Then, the next day, if you still feel the same way, go ahead and purchase the item.

Bankruptcy Tips – Negotiation

Before filing for bankruptcy, one can also try to negotiate directly with creditors. Contact each creditor and state you need to lower your payments and interest rates. Many creditors would prefer to receive a lesser payment as opposed to a minimal or non- payment, which is what happens in a bankruptcy proceeding.

Bankruptcy Tips – Counseling

Additionally, debt-counseling agencies are available to assist and negotiate on behalf of those who would rather not approach creditors directly themselves. These agencies will contact all your creditors and subsequently come up with a debt repayment plan. However, the road to debt repayment is not an easy one. Money experts will agree that as long as it took for someone to accumulate the debt, is usually the amount of time it will take for that person to get out of the debt.

When selecting a debt counseling service, select a non-profit debt- counseling agency over a private one. Private agencies will often charge a higher fee whereas a non-profit agency will usually charge a lower one.

For information on non-profit credit centers see GreenPaths.org or call 1-800-547-5005. Further, contact a bankruptcy attorney to discuss all appropriate legal actions. Remember, the road to debt recovery is not an easy one, so during this holiday season…try…to resist, resist, and resist!

Till next week, God bless, keep smiling and remember who’s in Your Legal Corner. Next week, YLC will discuss “Best ways to Handle The Foreclosure Process.”

Victoria M. Dalton is an Attorney Of Counsel with the dedicated Law Offices of Hoffman DiMuzio. Call 856-845-8243 or fill out a brief contact form online. Remember to like us now on FACEBOOK for more YLC articles or further information.

Your Legal Corner was created to provide educational articles about the law and is not legal advice! Consult with a Hoffman DiMuzio attorney to address all your legal needs.