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“I just went to a seminar advertised to the general public, and the speakers seemed really smart, and they said if I filed a personal Chapter 11, I could force the secured creditors to negotiate with me! Let’s file today!”

Well. Uh.

No.

I periodically talk to really smart people who have a new religion; the belief in an all-powerful, all-benevolent personal Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, which will permit an individual to manifest an all-powerful ability to force both secured creditors and unsecured creditors to negotiate!

Well, I have an actual religion. Read more…

Folks walk into talk to me, and often, they know just enough about bankruptcy law to be dangerous (kinda like me in my first year of practice, you know)?

There are a lot of bankruptcy alternatives that sound wonderful, and there’s a lot of obsolete bankruptcy information floating around in the form of out-of-date books, and out of date analysis on the Internet.

There’s even perfectly accurate information that doesn’t mean what you think it means, because you haven’t watched the entire slow-motion train wreck play itself out multiple times; that’s been my privilege. Read more…

Recently I’ve seen several smart clients who had suddenly awakened and smelled the coffee.

They had figured out, independently of anybody else, that if they kept making payments on their credit cards the way they had been, they could never retire.

Never.

Period.

So, taking a hint from their analysis, I’ve talked about the issues, which are pretty simple: if you want to see how much money you’re going to need to save to retire, go to an online retirement calculator.

And then find a debt repayment calculator and figure out how long, at your present rate of payments, it’ll take you to pay off the bundle of credit card debt you have currently.

Get the picture?

It’s an ugly picture, right?

So some smart people are coming to see me so they will, in ten or twenty years, have a chance to retire. Read more…

I have a new blog, and I’m building it for a simple reason; I’d rather you did not have to file a business bankruptcy or personal bankruptcy of any sort.

You heard me right; I don’t want you to have to file a bankruptcy.

Now, in many cases, you’re already halfway down the ski slope and gaining speed each second, so it’s too late to prevent a filing of some sort or another for some entity or person or another.

I hate those personal guarantees, don’t you?

But I decided that since I’d worked hard to figure out how to develop an online presence for My Favorite Price, I’d pass along what I learned. Read more…

This is just a recap of a post on my Just for Lawyers blog, but it has this relevance to my small business owner clients: the general population apparently understands that small business owners and people who start their own businesses are the most important spark-plug (remember those?) in our economy.

And my guess is that the general population understands that, because when a small business opens, it gives people jobs. And when a small business in Arizona has to close its doors and file bankruptcy, jobs are lost. As they have been in Arizona and all across the United States in the last couple of years. Read more…

Over the life of the mortgage loan, of course.

A traditional 30-year mortgage of $200,000.00 and an interest rate of 4.75%, the principal and interest payment would be $1043.00 per month and you would end up paying $175,600.00 in interest over the life of the loan.

Contrast that with a 20-year mortgage, with a 4.5% interest rate (you can typically get a lower interest rate with a shorter term) the monthly principal and interest payment would be $1265.00 and you would end up paying $103,670.00 in interest over the life of the loan.

Saving you about $71,930.00 in interest. Not bad.

Read more…

Very, very soon, bankruptcy will be a sort of popcorn practice area of law.

That is, a potential bankruptcy debtor under either Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 or Chapter 11 will pop some popcorn, get some soda, and then watch ten hours of educational videos about bankruptcy law in her home state, and learn how it all works, and better understand his personal consumer bankruptcy options and bankruptcy and non-bankruptcy alternatives.

And that will be magnificent!

I am always delighted when clients visit with me for the first time and know the answers to the questions I ask in my homework, which are primarily simple questions about the values of assets and the amounts of debt and income, and have read enough of the most asked questions I have in my homework so that we can move forward.

Because then the initial client discussions are much more useful to the potential client. Read more…