The Leading Causes of Bankruptcy

The most important thing you can do to avoid bankruptcy is understand why a million people a year end up filing bankruptcy. 4 out of the top five reasons starts with medical expenses. This is followed by:

• Job loss
• Divorce
• Unexpected disaster

In some ways, all four items can be categorized as unexpected disaster. If we expanded the list just a bit more, it would include failure to have a proper financial plan. By now, the unexpected is so common, we ought to be expecting it. When the vicissitudes of life catch us completely off guard, bankruptcy is often the result.

This is why a proper emergency fund is so important for any personal financial plan.

Learn to Properly Use Credit

I separated poor or excessive use of credit from the rest as it is the only one of the top five that is self-inflicted. By now, it should be clear that using credit appropriately is important for a successful financial life.

Many people advise those struggling with debt to cut up the credit cards. Other financial advisors say just the opposite. Store credit cards such as those from Walmart can actually prove beneficial in the right hands. Today we have many personal financial tools at our disposal, if we use them wisely they can be very helpful, if you use them foolishly we will pay.

Live Below Your Means
One of the biggest mistakes people make is to live up to their means. They commit to all kinds of services they can afford at the time. But because Job instability is such a real and present reality, the loss of even a little bit of income suddenly leaves us living above our means. We need to adjust our lifestyle expectations to something lower than what we think we can afford.

Even applying this advice to the best of your ability, you still might have to file for bankruptcy. It is important to know that bankruptcy is not the end of the line. There are those who can help you recover. Bankruptcy is not a punishment, but a solution. It is the ultimate second chance. 

If you fall into bankruptcy the important thing is to change your habits and practices to take advantage of your second financial chance.

For job growth, 33,000 — not 150,000 — is the new normal

The amount of time I spend focusing on economic data is fairly limited (compared to people doing so for a living or as a large part of their job). I stick with general rules of thumb that I can tweak a bit to let me keep up with economic conditions without a huge amount of time devoted to such efforts.

Due to my temperament; to my belief that markets often overreact in the short term; and partially to my less detailed understanding of economic data (that professionals focused on it all day) leads me to get less excited about individual data points. This is helpful for my overall investing performance, I believe.

Occasionally changing conditions require changing those rules of thumb. The 150,000 figure is one I have used for a long time; though I also adjust that for major medium term influences (such as the great recession dumped so many people out of jobs that I bumped up my “we need to add” monthly job figure to 175,000 to 200,000 to bring those people on board.

My 175,000 to 200,000 included a slight adjustment down from the 150,000 that I had made. In addition to using simple ideas like 150,000 monthly job baseline I incorporate the idea of not overreacting to variation in short term data as well as tweaking those numbers for medium term economic conditions (things like recovering from the great recession – though that is about the largest “tweaking” factor that I remember).

This article made me realize how much I should adjust my expectations for a neutral job growth reading in the USA going forward. I also gather data and opinions as I think about making major adjustments to my thinking. I’ll adjust from what I had been using of a base of 125,000 plus 50,000+ for great recession recovery to 75,000 + 50,000 for great recession recovery now (and adjust more later if other sources indicate it makes sense). The great recession recovery factor will likely go down to 25,000 for me by the end of this year.

Related: There is No Such Thing as “True Unemployment Rate” – Long Term View of Manufacturing Employment in the USA (2012) – USA Individual Earnings Levels for 2011: Top 1% $343,000, 5% $154,000, 10% $112,000, 25% $66,000 – GDP Growth Per Capita for Selected Countries from 1970 to 2010 (Korea, China, Singapore, Indonesia, Brazil