{"id":1,"date":"2021-06-06T21:04:45","date_gmt":"2021-06-06T21:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bankrupt2fi.com\/?p=1"},"modified":"2021-08-19T01:59:06","modified_gmt":"2021-08-19T01:59:06","slug":"hello-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bankrupt2fi.com\/?p=1","title":{"rendered":"Hello, world!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"720\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1280 \/ 720;\" width=\"1280\" controls src=\"https:\/\/bankrupt2fi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/hello_world.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">It happened so quickly. <\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\">The minimum payments kept growing. I&#8217;d pay more than the minimum, but we were charging more than we paid off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I thought I could handle it. I&#8217;ll just pay this one for now. I can pay the minimum on this one. I&#8217;ll pay them double next time.  Wait! I can transfer my balance to this one!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At some point, my wages were garnished. A significant chunk of my paycheck was taken for the next 2 years. I don&#8217;t even remember when I started missing our mortgage payments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We finally ended up declaring bankruptcy. It was the first solution that we pursued when we received the foreclosure notice. I still don&#8217;t know if it was the best way forward, but we knew we needed to solve this problem as quietly as we could. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chapter 13 Life<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Five years of making payments, living paycheck to paycheck, and hiding our bankruptcy have taken a toll. The stress and shame of carrying this burden have not been easy. Without the love and support of my wife, I don&#8217;t know how I could have managed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite the challenges, bankruptcy still wasn&#8217;t enough to wake me from proper financial management. It was only this year that I have put in the effort to get our money situation in order. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The torch is lit<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>It was a tip from my dad to call this insurance guy. &#8220;Give him a call. He can save you a bunch on your car insurance.&#8221; It started me down the path of looking at all my spending and seeing where I could save a few bucks so I wouldn&#8217;t keep over drafting my account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I started tracking my expenses, building a budget, and looking for ways to reduce my bills. I started reading a few books, which eventually led me to the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>FIRE is all about aggressive savings in order to retire early. In our case FIRE is about catching up on our savings so that I&#8217;ll actually be able to retire, and maybe before I&#8217;m 70. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Bankrupt2FI is born<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I created this blog to take you on our journey to financial independence while dealing with the unique repercussions of bankruptcy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hope to share the roller-coaster of feelings throughout the process while helping to defeat the stigma around financial problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hope to share the tips and tricks of FIRE that I&#8217;m learning and help make talking about money less taboo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, I hope that our story can help someone avoid bankruptcy, make it through quicker, or just relate to our experience and not feel so alone when faced with debt and bankruptcy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It happened so quickly. The minimum payments kept growing. I&#8217;d pay more than the minimum, but we were charging more than we paid off. I thought I could handle it. I&#8217;ll just pay this one for now. I can pay the minimum on this one. I&#8217;ll pay them double next time. Wait! I can transfer&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/bankrupt2fi.com\/?p=1\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Hello, world!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[5,4,6],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about","category-blog","tag-bankruptcy","tag-fire","tag-introduction","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bankrupt2fi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bankrupt2fi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bankrupt2fi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bankrupt2fi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bankrupt2fi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bankrupt2fi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51,"href":"https:\/\/bankrupt2fi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/51"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bankrupt2fi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bankrupt2fi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bankrupt2fi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}