"Bankruptcy: A New Lease On Life"

Life After Bankruptcy Stories

My parents filed for bankruptcy 11 years ago, when I was about 10 years old.




Granted, at the time I didn’t know what was going on. I remember that we used to see a lawyer--our parents didn’t hide from us what type of lawyer he was. Actually, they did their best to try to explain what was happening the best way that they could to their two young children. My brother was even younger at about 7 years old. I only remember that not long after that, we lost our big, beautiful home.

We ended up moving to a mobile home, and we struggled financially for the first few years of being there. What used to seem to come easy--food, luxuries, and even utilities like electricity--were hard to manage.

However, during that time, and even to this date, we learned so many lessons and we grew together as a family. We learned to appreciate the things that we could do that didn’t require money at all.

My parents would give us things to do over the weekend like going to the public library or going to the park instead of going to the movie theater. Today, we take that and use it even if we do have a little more to spend now then we did back then. We manage our finances carefully, and we distinguish between luxuries and necessities.

Filing bankruptcy is not anything anyone wants to have to do, but once you are through it, it's like having a second chance with your finances. It opens your eyes to what happened and to fix the problem. It teaches you to stay within your budget at all times!

My parents completely gave up on credit cards after filing bankruptcy, and to this day, they only spend what they have. Look at it as a valuable lesson--and to look at what you’ve been doing with your money.

If you access the situation clearly, you’ll come out of bankruptcy with sort of a new lease on life.

Contributed by Missa