my monthly health care premium goes up 60% January first after ACA implementation

[BKLawyer]

128. Managing Money

It's hard to generalize about my clients, because many do have their own issues.

Many ... temporary or permanent job loss. The temporary job loss often leads to overuse of credit cards to keep afloat. Then, that can cause problems when (and if) they do get back to work.

Many ... drop in income (lost overtime, reduced hours).

Some ... clear mismanagement or overextending on credit cards (most people are actually better than you think in this regard). Its more likely that the credit cards got away from them when they had to use them in an emergency.

Some ... strategic ... they've overpaid on their house and need to get out from underneath it. They could keep their homes if they *really* wanted to. But its just doesn't make good economic sense for them.

Some ... the financial ruin of divorce.

Some ... hit retirement, and couldn't adjust to the income drop.

Rising ... student loan issues.

Seems that very little are actually medical bankruptcies. I have had some who were done in by medical bills - but not near as much as one might think. Kind of surprising actually. At least not so many medical bankruptcies in my area, and I'm in the Detroit metro area with many clients from Detroit.

Also, like I said, not so much mismanagement of money as one might think. More sudden job loss and the problems that stem from that. People are very embarrassed to file for bankruptcy and they DO NOT like it. They'll blow through their 401k (which they could protect entirely) before they'll file ... I've had people blow through 150k of 401k retirement just to save their house. If there's one aspect of this where there is mismanagement ... its the stubborn refusal to walk into my office at the first sign of trouble so that I can protect their assets.