All-Indiana and Indianapolis Bankruptcy Lawyer
Finding a bankruptcy attorney can create a powerful change in life. To keep that powerful change a part of your life, however, you will need a financial education. Filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy can be one of the most cost effective and powerful ways of getting out of debt, restoring your credit, and stopping aggressive collection. But, to stay out of debt, you need to have financial education and a plan. As an Indianapolis bankruptcy office that also offers financial education, we want our clients to become financial experts after they get out of debt. Here’s a few tips on how to become a financial “expert” after bankruptcy.
The biggest hindrance to becoming a financial expert is to hold on to what you believe about finances. If you “forget” everything you know about finances, you will be forced to relearn everything straight from the beginning. You do not want to hold on to the financial failures of the past. Make a commitment to do NOTHING with your finances until you have relearned everything you know straight from the beginning. Most importantly, however, forget everything you have learned from your family, friends, and past life and start over, straight from the start. Hit the library and the internet and just keep going.
Mortgages, auto loans, credit cards – everybody is doing it. You need to do the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing. With everything, you need to seek the absolute least expensive option for achieving your goals. From my position, I have heard the same thing many times: “It’s impossible to find a home for less than . . $800, $1000, $1200, $1600 per month.” Or I have heard, “It would be impossible for me to have a paid-in-full car or house.” You can insert any figure or phrase you want, it’s always the same word that they use: “It’s impossible” . . . or is it?
Maybe your goal should be to have somebody pay you $400 per month to live somewhere. Maybe your goal should be to get a very dependable car for $200, $400, $600? Something is only impossible when you put that label on it. It becomes impossible simply because you have completely excluded it from any future thought or consideration. You need to learn how to do the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing when it comes to finances. Do not be so self-conscious or limited to feel that you must do exactly what everyone else is doing with their finances. Do not try to show off or keep up with “the Jones’s.” Suburbia can be deadly to your financial statement.
I have always asked the same question: why would someone work tirelessly for an entire life for 40-50 hours per week but never spend 1 hour per week (or year) on learning how to maximize their benefit from that money? I have seen countless times people making over $100,000 per year that need to file bankruptcy every 8-10 years. Another person making the same $100,000 per year may have $600,000 or more in assets. Why? It’s very simple: some people have an adamant desire to never learn about finances and NEVER change their ways. These people work harder, have harder lives, and have nothing to show for all their labor.
These dear, beloved people that do not have anything to show for their labors usually share one thing in common: they spend no time on learning how to use their money. They spend nearly zero time on learning how to use their money, but they work tirelessly on earning more and more to pay the bills. Many times emotional attachments to home, automobiles, and other “stuff” clouds their judgment: they simply cannot change.
In place of being stuck in such a predicament, think about the opposite strategy. What if you spent 1 hour learning about money for every 10 hours working? In this strategy, you would also still need part two: following whatever you learned no matter how different or undesirable it may seem. If you truly applied this simple strategy, you would go from financial woes to financial success in a very short period of time.
Bankruptcy can be a very powerful tool for getting a fresh start in life. But this fresh start only goes so far. If you become a financial expert after bankruptcy, you will be a true success and have a true fresh start that will be rewarding for the rest of your life.
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