If you’re eyeball deep in debt, feeling overwhelmed, and not sure how to pick up and move forward, I’ve been there.

If, no matter what you do, you can’t seem to make ends meet without borrowing money, I’ve been there too.

To be honest with you, I took the easy way out of my debt – I declared bankruptcy. One day I sat down, looked over my debt, and realized that it would take me far longer to pay me debts back than it would to recover from a bankruptcy. I felt hopeless, depressed, out of control and felt like I had no other options at all. It turns out that wasn’t true – I did have other options; I just didn’t know it at the time.

What I quickly found out though, was that even though my bankruptcy eliminated my debt, it didn’t really help me manage my money.

After the bankruptcy, I still had all of the same financial problems that I had prior to the bankruptcy.

Even after the bankruptcy:

• I still didn’t make enough money to live on without borrowing money.
• I still had no idea how to create and make use of a budget.
• I had absolutely no idea when my bills were due, and no more than a general idea of how much they usually cost.
• It felt like my entire life was in complete chaos, and I had no control over anything.

So, you see, the bankruptcy did eliminate my debt, but it didn’t fix the root of the problem – I still wasn’t managing my money!

That was almost three years ago, and I’ve learned a lot since then. Finances don’t have to be something that you are afraid of, or that you run from. In fact, they should never be.

In retrospect, bankruptcy was the best thing for my family. It gave us a fresh start, a chance to learn what we needed to learn without all the added stress of all the medical debt and collection company harassment. It was truly a new beginning for me, and I have used that opportunity to change what I needed to change, and to learn some new lessons about money.

The articles below are all articles that I wish I had seen prior to my bankruptcy – core financial lessons that could have saved me a lot of grief if I’d had access to them.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by your finances, please, check them out. See if there might be something useful there for you – something that gives you a bit of a push in the right direction.

Who knows? You may find something that can give you your own new opportunity to change, grow, and finally gain control over the chaos that happens when you feel like you have nowhere to go but up…

In the beginning:

With the new year in full swing now, I have to wonder how many New Year’s resolutions have already been flushed away – particularly when they involve getting control of our finances.

The articles below all take a look at the most essential places to start once you decide to finally control your finances.

• Guide to Setting Goals (and my own New Year’s Resolution) @ Clever Dude
• How to Care {Not Worry} About Your Finances @ Prime Time Money
• How to Start and Manage a Debt Snowball @ Finance for a Freelance Life
• How to Make Money and Save Money as well as How to Get Mortgage Relief @ Free Money Finance

Be Careful With Frugality:

The most obvious thing to do when you have financial problems is to cut back on your spending! However, it has been my experience that having too much of a frugal mindset can actually go a long way towards keeping you in the poorhouse.

The articles below discuss creating a balance between frugality and necessary expense.

• Homemade Laundry Detergent Not For Us @ Frugal Dad
• Double coupons may not save you money @ The Smart Spending Blog.

Also, as an important note: If you have accounts that are already in collections, be sure to read: Old Debts Come Calling @ Credit Shout. The article explains the debt collection procedure, and highlights your rights in the situation.

Many thanks go out to the authors of the carnivals below. All of them included our posts this week, and many of them did a really impressive job with the carnivals themselves. Thank you!

• Money Hacks Carnival: Welcome to 2009 @ The Writer’s Coin
• Festival of Frugality @ The Dough Roller
• The Carnival of Consumer Credit @ Arrive Financial
• Carnival of Money Stories Edition #92 @ Gather Little By Little
• Carnival of Personal Finance: Fairy Tale Edition @ Clever Dude

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 10th, 2009 at 23:07 and is filed under Bankruptcy FAQ, Debt Reduction FAQ. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.