I had to file for bankruptcy and like most people when right out of high school I had no conception of financial responsibility, so eventually I fall into the category of people that had to file for chapter 7 bankruptcies. How I got to that point was caused by multitude of events and I will explain in detail how I got there and show you what not to do to end up where I am and finally I will show you how to file bankruptcy if you are at that point already.
During my teenage years I had many passions and one of them happened to be music, I enjoyed listening to quality music produced by space age stereo systems. What I came to found out was that the space age systems don’t come cheap. Right at about age of 18 I got my first credit card with $1500 limit that was co-signed by my father, so like most financial uneducated person I thought credit was as good as cash. (I never thought about the fact that I had to pay it back) I was so happy the day I got my credit card, because now it’s spending time! The mistake begins. The very next day I went out to my favorite electronic stores to browse for my dream stereo system, before you know it I had boxes of equipment stacked up in my car. Money was not an issue, after all I only had to make minimum payment each month.
Before I know it, I started getting more and more credit card offers in the mail and I signed up with just about every card there was under the sun. No w I am rich I thought to myself, I am now totally armored and ready for any financial crisis that could come.
Shortly after, I got accepted to
Later on during my academic career I found myself deeper and deeper into a financial black hole. What I have been doing is I charge everything on credit for what student loan didn’t cover. Before I can blink I found myself in $20k credit debt, but that didn’t wasn’t really alarming to me since I knew I was going to graduate from college and get a great job that pays $100k a year. NO problem!
By the time I graduated college I was $40k in credit debt not counting my student loan. My monthly minimum payment was around $700 and I was working with USDA for about $7.60 an hour. SO I thought duhhhh again…How do I file bankruptcy I thought to myself seriously at this point. How can I pay off $40k of credit card debt and a student loan that’s yet to come making $7.60 an hour. REALITY HITS.
I thought about joining Tom Vu’s multilevel marketing scheme but I couldn’t even afford his program of making me rich. I was utterly devastated! Destroyed! De-moralized! This calls for some seriously reevaluation of my life. Filing bankruptcy seems to be the right thing to do. I started looking into phone books to find attorney that does this sort of thing and I came to one that seem legit. I called up this attorney’s office and scheduled an appointment. During my initial consultation I found out the cost was going to be about $700 and I need to disclose everything I owned but I get to keep about $3000 value on my car so another words if the car is worth $5000 then I would still have to make payment on the difference which was $2000. I also found out filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy is different than chapter 7, in chapter 11 you still have to pay back slowly but chapter 7 is total discharge with the exception of my student loan.
So eventually I paid the $700 and got the process going and the attorney told me it was going to take a few months before I get a court notice to meet with the interviewers? So clock went tick tock tick tock and now it was time to meet with bankruptcy interviewers and what made matter worse was when I park in downtown to meet with interviews I got me a parking ticket for parking on the wrong side, it was $45 bucks! These people are blood suckers! I am broke and I still have to pay for parking, man!
The time came to meet with interviews and all you do is confirm the information that was told to them already and that was it. So now I only owe student loan and have a sort of new start. I wish there’s a way to get my student loan discharged. I hope someone out there has a guide to help me do just that, because hope this article about how to file for bankruptcy will help someone else.
I would almost say that our system was setup to make us fail that is why you see so many people filing for chapter 7, they don’t really want to teach you about financial literacy when you are in school. Only thing that school teaches you is to go to college and how to rack up your debts so you can get student loan that you can’t pay back and add more credit card debt that you can’t pay back and eventually you will be searching for how to file for bankruptcy on the internet.
Best of the luck to you all, whether if you are filing for chapter 7, chapter 11 or whatever I wish you all luck! Just don’t do what I did and don’t go to FSU because I ended up dumb like this.
