Facing Bankruptcy? Here Are 4 Things You Have to Know

You may know a few, basic facts about bankruptcy, but there are numerous myths that everyone tends to believe. Know about the rules and risks of filing for Chapter 7 or 13 bankruptcy along with the exceptions. 

Here are four of the most important facts to know.

Your Credit Is Safe

A bankruptcy remains on your credit report for 10 years and then can be discharged. After this period ends, you have the ability to obtain a new loan, home, car, or other large investment. 

This means that lenders are willing to work with you again. With some patience and proper planning, you can obtain new credit sooner than you think.

You Don't Have to Give Up Everything

Filing for bankruptcy does not mean having to give up your money or assets. You still keep hold of your property, vehicles, and personal belongings. 

If you file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, keep all of your possessions and claim exemptions that you need for your daily essentials. The reality is that many people's belongings are old or damaged and have little to no value. 

Creditors are not likely to go after your old possessions; however, they may still go after your vehicles and other expensive valuables.

Some Debts Are Not Forgiven

Filing for Chapter 7 or 13 bankruptcy relieves some but not all debts. The debts that you cannot have discharged must be paid for yourself, such as taxes, child support, and student loans. 

These rules are set in place to force people to take greater responsibility for their actions. On the other hand, you can discharge credit card bills, medical bills, and personal loans. Contact a bankruptcy lawyer to learn more about the debts and discharges in your state.

Bankruptcy Is Not a Bad Idea

When people think of bankruptcy, they tend to only think of the negative consequences that come later. For many individuals and business owners, filing for bankruptcy is one of the best financial decisions they'll ever make. 

It helps them to start over financially and reduce their monthly repayments. This option is not recommended for every debtor, so it's important to review your decision with a bankruptcy attorney.

Every year, debtors file for bankruptcy to relieve their debts without knowing what they're getting into. Some people don't file at all, worried that their credit and reputation will be ruined forever. 

Some borrowers think that the process is easy and all of their debts will be forgiven. It's important to separate fact from fiction as you consider the debt relief option of bankruptcy.

How to Keep All Your Long-Term Investments Protected

When investing your hard-earned money, you likely have yourself a pat on the back for doing something responsible. After all, people have long screamed from the rooftops that it’s better to invest your money than to spend it all on frivolous purchases. 

Unfortunately, this responsible decision can start to look like a major mistake if you end up losing money instead of making more. Certain investment strategies are inherently risky, making serious losses a real possibility. 

In order to avoid such a devastating outcome, you should consider taking steps to make your investments safer. Here are four moves to consider.

Pursue Diversification

The market is an unpredictable environment, and you never know which stream or river will be the next to become poisoned. That’s why it makes sense to make a wide variety of investments so you’re never too dependent on the health of anyone quadrant of the ecosystem. 

You should never invest all your savings in just a handful of stocks. Instead, consider spreading your money around into various sectors and industries.

Invest in Non-Correlating Assets

Certain changes in conditions will affect large blocks of companies in similar ways. A change in regulations, for example, could hurt tech companies while giving traditional news publishers a boost. 

You should study these types of market forces and invest in companies who stand to have opposite reactions to major changes. That way, you’ll never see your entire portfolio wiped out by a single development.

Buy Bonds Rather Than Stocks

While stocks are among the most lucrative investments, they’re also among the riskiest. The market usually trends upward, but it’s volatile and subject to collapse. 

Bonds are much safer investments because they’re guaranteed by the government. You won’t earn too much in interest, but your money will be better protected if you move it from stocks to bonds.

Hire Experts to Rework Your Investment Portfolio

While you can learn a lot about investments by doing your own research online, you’ll never have the full understanding that true experts enjoy. 

To really protect your investments, you should consider hiring professionals who specialize in asset management. They’ll know exactly where to put your money to keep it safe.

You want your investments to increase your wealth, not wipe it out entirely. That’s why you need to go the extra mile to keep your investments safe. All the measures above should help keep you on secure financial footing.

Loans and Lending: How to Get Financing for Your New Home

As the housing market gets tighter, traditional lenders may not have enough flexibility to offer you the money you need in the timeframe you need. Thankfully, there are many private borrowers and FHA alternatives that you can use to fund your house.

New or Existing?

Are you building new or buying an existing home? If you’re buying an existing home that needs some work, you may be able to get short-term lending for the initial purchase, make the repairs to bring the house up to what you need, and then qualify for a traditional mortgage. 

It’s important to be aware that the terms on short term lending can be a bit more expensive than a traditional mortgage. However, you can get the money much more quickly and those dollars will be easier to get approved than a traditional mortgage.

Get Pre-Approved

If you’re working with a realtor, get your documentation together so you can get preapproved for a mortgage with a mortgage broker and have a working idea of the dollars you can qualify for. 

Most of these pre-approvals are what is known as a “soft pull” or a loan approval that doesn’t impact your credit. While talking to the mortgage broker, be prepared to ask about first-time buyer options or down payment loans. There are programs available in some regions that allow you to

• Borrow enough to meet the down payment requirement
• Make payments for a set period of time, both the down payment loan and the mortgage
• Get the remainder of the down payment loan forgiven

Functionally, the down payment loan becomes a grant once you’ve been in the house for a particular number of months or years.

Credit Rating

For those that are planning to build, be very careful with your spending and payment habits once you’re preapproved. You want your credit rating to be as high as it was at the time of preapproval, and higher is even better. 

If you’re building, you may need to re-qualify for the loan in the event of construction delays.

It’s been a very uncertain couple of years and the housing market is very tight. If you find a neighborhood and a home that suits you well, you may have to make a couple of different applications to get fully funded for your region. Keep going so you have dollars in place when you’re ready to shop.

Common Causes of Motorcycle Accidents

Motorcycle accidents are quite common on the roads today. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), over 4985 riders were killed on the road in 2018. Though driving a motorcycle can be fun, it can also be dangerous, and it is important to take enough precautions when riding one. 

Knowing the causes of motorcycle accidents will help you stay alert on the road and also know how best to avoid such accidents.

Here is a list of some of the common causes of motorcycle accidents on the roads today.

Speeding

This is one of the leading causes of accidents. Many motorcycles are fast, and the rider can easily speed if not careful. However, speeding affects your ability to see or react to other drivers' mistakes in time to help avoid a collision. 

Therefore, speeding can result in a head-on collision or other types of accidents. And the higher the speed, the more significant the impact of the crash and the more severe the effects.

Unsafe Lane Changes

There are rules on how to change lanes while riding your bike safely. Unsafe lane changes can risk collision with other road users. A driver needs to check the blind spots and practice safe driving.

Lane Splitting

In most states, it is illegal to drive between two lanes. While this can help you avoid traffic jams, it puts the driver very close to cars, and should there be any sudden movement from the vehicles, the rider will not have enough time to react and an accident will ensue.




Lane splitting is risky because the rider is in close proximity with the cars, and the reduced amount of space makes it very hard to maneuver. Vehicles also do not anticipate that motorcyclists will try to pass them in traffic and not pay attention.

Left Hand Turns

This accident can be fatal because of the impact. Left-hand-turn car accidents occur when a car fails to indicate when making a left-hand turn or when the motorcyclist attempts to overtake a vehicle that is waiting to make a left-hand turn from behind.

Left-hand turn accidents also occur when the rider is going straight through an intersection or when passing it. Though accidents between cars are more common, motorcycles are more vulnerable because they are smaller in size.

Unsafe Road Conditions

The presence of potholes, debris, crumbling pavements, and lack of the necessary safety signals can increase the chances of a cyclist losing control resulting in an accident.

Distractions and Driving While Intoxicated

Driving while under the influence of alcohol is also a common cause of motorcycle accidents. It can cause head-on collisions, rear endings, or hitting stationary objects and can be fatal.




Riders who cause accidents when intoxicated can face both criminal liability and civil cases.

Sudden Stops and Car Doors

There are accidents that occur when a car driver or passenger opens a door on a motorcycle rider's path. The driver can slam into the door, and this can result in serious injuries. 

Car door accidents are very common when lane splitting. Riders who follow vehicles too closely are at risk of rear-end accidents should the cars come to an abrupt stop.

Hire a Lawyer if You Have Been in a Motorcycle Accident

If you have been injured in a motorcycle accident, you should hire a personal injury lawyer, like those at Albright, Stoddard, Warnick & Albright to help you with your settlement or defense. A lawyer will gather all the evidence necessary to defend you.

How to Start Investing: And What to Invest in

Investing money is a very reliable way to build wealth over a period of time. However, the whole process can seem very daunting if you’re just getting started. 

The good news is that many wealthy investors too started with a level of skepticism, but they somehow got to learn the right steps to take, implemented them, and became successful. Today, you’re going to learn the basic steps you need to take to start investing, and what to invest in, so keep reading!

Determine how much you want to invest

Many investment options today allow people to invest low or high amounts of cash. Therefore, it makes sense to begin by deciding how much you’re willing to invest before choosing your methods. Of course, the amount of money you want to invest should be informed by your investment goal.

If you are looking to secure your retirement, for instance, you should generally aim to invest between 10% and 15% of your yearly income for retirement. Ideally, regardless of your goal, you have to consider your time horizon and the amount of cash you need, and then sort of work backward to break the amount into weekly or monthly investments.

Know your options

The most important part of investing is understanding every instrument available and the level of risk it carries. Some of the most popular investment options you’ll want to consider include the following:

Stocks. These are shares of ownership in a company, and you buy them for a share price. When the company profits, you too profit.

Bonds. These are loans you give to a government entity or a company. Before the organization pays you back, you get interest.

Index funds. These are investment vehicles that track market indexes. You can use them to balance your investment portfolio.

Mutual funds. These are collections of investments that allow you to buy a diverse assortment in a single transaction instead of picking individual bonds and stocks.




As a beginner, you should look to invest in these instruments because they are profitable and generally safe.

Pick a strategy

The next thing you should do is pick an investment strategy based on your saving goals. For instance, if you’re planning on securing your retirement, and your goal is more like two decades away, you can invest most of your money in stocks. If you don’t like the process of picking specific stocks, you can go for mutual funds or index funds.

If your goal is short-term, and you need the cash within a shorter time-frame, such as five years, you can consider Bank certificates of deposit (CDs) and short-term bond funds. 

If you’re more comfortable waiting to see your money and investing long term, then a DST 1031 property investment may be a good idea.

Alternatively, you can skip this step by opening an investment account through a qualified Robo-advisor. They’ll help you build your investment portfolio and look after it.

Understand your risk tolerance

As you may already know, not all investments are successful. Every investment comes with a certain level of risk, although it’s usually correlated with returns. Before you invest, you need to find a balance between maximizing the returns and getting a comfortable risk level.

For instance, if you are willing to lean more towards forfeiting high returns to reduce risk as much as possible, you can go with bonds. 

They are very low risk, and they yield relatively low returns of around 2-3%. On the other hand, you can go with stocks to enjoy the annual returns of about 10% per year, but be ready to incur higher risk.

As you can imagine, there is a huge difference in risk within the broad categories of bonds and stocks. For instance, Treasury bonds are very low-risk investments, and they usually have low-interest rates. 

That means that the reward is low. Conversely, a high-yield bond comes with a higher risk of default. Although it’s important to keep risk at the back of your mind, you shouldn’t get over-concerned about it, according to Forbes.

The best way to approach this is using a Robo-advisor to create an investment plan that suits your financial goals and risk tolerance.

If you’ve just decided to start investing, congratulations! You’ve already completed the first step. What you need to do now is follow the next steps above to get started.

What Are You Doing With Your Money? 4 Ways to Make Your Idle Savings More Useful

It's never a bad idea to have a little bit of extra money in the bank. While having a savings account is always good, you should also remember that the money that you have in savings isn't money that you're putting to work. 

If you are interested in generating real wealth, you'll want to consider one of the following ways to make your idle savings more useful.

Put Money in a Retirement Fund

Perhaps the most common way to make your idle funds a little more active is to start putting money in a retirement fund. Whether you have a 401(k) through your job or you put money into an IRA on your own, this money has the chance to start growing much faster than any savings account's interest rates. 

These accounts are designed to grow slowly but surely and can do a fantastic job of helping to keep your money working.

Invest in Something That Makes Money

If you'd like to be a little more active, you can invest your money in places that can make money you can see now. For many, this means trying to climb the property ladder. Whether you flip houses or you just invest in rental properties, this is a largely passive way to gain income. 

If you'd like to go after something with more hands-on work but potentially greater rewards, you can also think about investing in businesses to make money.

Put Money in the Stock Market

Another good way to make money is to invest in stocks on your own. Whether this means finding a mutual fund you can trust or playing the markets every day, investing in the stock market is usually considered to be one of the most popular ways of making money. 

Though there is definitely risk involved here, you can reduce your risks by doing your research and investing carefully.

Look Into Wealth Management

If you're not sure what to do, consider working with a wealth management firm to help you to grow your wealth. These firms will guide you towards investment opportunities and help you figure out ways to keep more of your money over time. Such a partnership is usually one of the best ways to figure out what to do with significant sums.

Don't let your money languish in a savings account. Instead, try to make sure that you find ways to put your money to work. With the right investments, you can start turning your savings into a new way to make money.