Reboot Your Life

Published on: April 18, 2019

Help a Greyhound Out!

Calling all dog lovers! Since greyhound racing will cease to exist in the next two years, all the greyhounds will need to be re-homed. Our friend Hope just adopted this lovable greyhound named Harper and she is so sweet and loving! Contrary to popular belief, they don’t need to be run around – she’s basically a big lazy cat with lots of elbows. It’s also really neat to have both an adult dog (already potty trained and calm), who views the world through the eyes of a puppy as many things are brand new to her!

Published on: March 22, 2019

Reboot Your Life: Use Debt Sparingly

By Christie D. Arkovich, P.A.

Debt is to be used sparingly. It allows you to make purchases which you cannot afford. In other words, debt allows people to live beyond their means or to spend more than they earn. While this may appear to be a good thing when an emergency arises, there are serious side effects. These side effects include 1) paying more for an item than what it’s worth in the form of interest; 2) possible inability to pay off the debt; 3) added pressure and stress which can lead to medical and relationship problems; and 4) being a “slave” to your debt.

While some debt will always be necessary such as a home loan, usually a car loan, and a reasonable amount of student loans, it’s important to only take on a modest amount of debt and have a plan for repayment. Just because a lender wants to loan you money is not a good reason to take it. Many college students took out excess student loans to pay for all kinds of stuff. Unnecessary stuff. With private loans in excess of 10% interest, that $5 latte easily turns into a $10 latte after a few years!

One client this week advised that she had incurred over 200k for a two year AA degree over a long period of time. She’s had a difficult life, and had to retake many courses and change degrees/schools etc. That’s perhaps one of the worst places to find yourself. She cannot afford to return to school, and has almost no education to show for that debt.

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Published on: January 3, 2019

Hope Everyone has Recharged and Regrouped After the Holidays!

By Christie D. Arkovich, P.A.

Most of us still use the New Year as an opportunity to review the past year and set goals for the New Year. My own practice has grown tremendously from this goal setting. We target the best strategies to grow our practice and help our clients to get back on track financially.

As most of you know, we practice bankruptcy and foreclosure defense as we have for many years, but since student loan debt has become such a crisis, much of our work is focused on eliminating that debt. We have developed different strategies both inside and outside of bankruptcy to reduce student loan debt.

A new tool we are adding this year involves the misreporting of student loan debt on credit reports. Put quite simply, the student loan servicers often can’t get it right. They send bills with different amounts owed, transfer the debt so often that it appears duplicate times on a credit report, inaccurately reports payments etc. We intend to hold them accountable. Stay tuned as we hope to blog about this regularly to help our readers recognize when their credit reports may be in error and costing them real money – by denied credit or increased cost of credit, insurance etc.

Published on: August 20, 2018

How To Conquer Debt

By Christie D. Arkovich, P.A.

Credit card debt is on the rise – not surprisingly considering that incomes have remained stagnant while daily expenses have increased over the past few years. With inflation on the rise, consumers need to be vigilant about creeping emotional expenses that make a mess of a well planned budget.

The Dollar Stretcher.com pointed out recently that emotions can make someone poor – i.e. spending money when unnecessary. They offer some really good advice:

Put good financial behaviors on “auto pilot”. I’ve always been a fan of this. Saving $50 a week can amount to a million dollars by retirement age alone.

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Published on: October 31, 2017

Our Blog is Top Rated by Feedspot for Bankruptcy Blogs in the Nation!

By Christie D. Arkovich, P.A.

One of the best ways of getting information out to the general public has been our blog. It helps to get the word out on what consumers should be doing to help their financial future. Topics have been on things that our law firm has helped clients in the past such as bankruptcy, foreclosure defense, student loan debt relief, creditor harassment, home loan modifications, short sales, garnishment, credit card defense, you name it. Going forward we plan to focus a little more on getting on your feet after a financial crisis in our efforts to help you Reboot Your Life.

We ranked 12th in the nation for top bankruptcy blogs. Feedspot culls from thousands of top Bankruptcy blogs using their index using search and social metrics. The blogs are ranked based upon Google reputation and search ranking, influence on social media sites, and qualify and consistency of posts.

If our blog has helped you, please consider liking and following our firm facebook page and sharing our posts. We particularly want to get the word out to student loan sufferers that there are ways to reduce student loan debt that their servicers aren’t telling them about. Most of those student loan solutions do not involve bankruptcy either.

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