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Chapter 7 bankruptcy is legal protection from your creditors.  It’s for individual consumers and is also known as “liquidation”, because the debtor has to sell assets to pay off debts.  The assets not exempt from bankruptcy are luxury items, household items, real estate, cars and boats. The debts not discharged are child-support and alimony back payments, criminal fees, federal taxes, government student loans, and mortgage liens.  Any loans that have a cosigner may be liable for the debt.

Qualification for Chapter 7 is based on ie, which must be less than your state’s median ie.  It is calculated by a “means test” using ie and expenses and is fairlyplicated.  Usually a person selects chapter 7, because they don’t have any assets to lose or has little property except the basics such as furniture and clothing. They have very lit

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Tags: Bankruptcy

Personal debt and bankruptcies often just affect one family. Business bankruptcies can affect anywhere from a handful to thousands of workers. But can you imagine how many millions of people will be impacted if the federal government defaults on its loans and maxes out its figurative credit cards?

The United States government just hit its debt ceiling this Monday, May 16. This means we have hit the limit for how much we are legally allowed to borrow, even from within government branches. For now, the government is using accounting gimmickry to stay at the ceiling without going over it, but Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says those tricks will only work until August.

The debt ceiling is a concept that doesn’t exist in other countries, which imply how much they’ll borrow by passing a budget that estimates how much they’ll receive in taxes and how much they’ll spend.

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Tags: Debt, Debt Ceiling

Our sensitive financial information is transferred on a daily basis. Whether it’s making a purchase online or checking our bank account, it’s no wonder that thousands fall victim to financial scams each year.

Millions of dollars are lost annually by unsuspecting consumers who don’t manage to catch the signs of a financial predator looking to take whatever they’ve got. Whether you use personal checks or secured credit cards, you need to be aware of financial threats so you can stay vigilant.

Here are five common scams with tips on how to protect yourself.

419 Fraud refers to bogus spam e-mails originating from Nigeria that promise mass amounts of wealth if you help someone with an advance payment. The e-m

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Tags: Financial Scams, Scams

A cartoon from “The New Yorker” caught my eye back in 2000, when I was fairly new to writing and editing personal finance stories.

In the cartoon, dad’s sitting on the couch with his son, as mom stands in the background, fear in her eyes. A computer is in the other room. “It’s very important that you try very, very hard,” dad says to his son, “to remember where you electronically transferred Mommy and Daddy’s assets.”

Eleven years of electronic progress later, many of us are carrying around smartphones and tablet devices. With them come new and even easier ways for our children to drain our bank accounts — accidentally, through games aimed at an audience that lacks a firm grasp on the difference between real and imaginary money.

My colleague Matt Schulz got a lesson recently how a 4-year-old’s little fingers can poke a big hole in your savings.

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Tags: New, New Player

Here at Creditnet, we try to guide consumers through the wild world of credit cards.  But this doesn’t mean we’re oblivious to the joy of having a stack of cold hard cash in your wallet.

That said, not all stacks of cash are created equal.  No, we’re not talking about exchange rates or any of that boring finance stuff.  We’re talking about all the wacky currencies that exist across the globe.

From beautiful to bizarre, the currencies of the world are as diverse as the cultures which produce them.  Take a look at the best of the best:

The Hong Kong 10 dollar bill looks like the inside of a kaleidoscope. It is said to be horse themed, but apart from a tiny fragmented silhouette of a horse, there are very few tangible depictions on the note. It may seem

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Tags: World