Bankruptcies decreased by 8 percent in fiscal 2011, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute.  In the first 9 months of this year, 1.47 million consumers and businesses filed for bankruptcy in the U.S.

Bankruptcies filed by businesses decreased by 18 percent from 2010.  These include Chapter 7, 11, 12, and 13 filings.

Consumer bankruptcies dropped by 11 percent.  1.06 million bankruptcies were filed by individuals from January through September of this year.

Researchers determined that the state with the highest per capita bankruptcy rate was Nevada.  Approximately 9.7 out of every 1,000 Nevada residents has filed for bankruptcy in fiscal 2011.

The ABI used data from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts in their analysis.

You must enroll in school at least half time by your school’s standards to obtain federal student loans. Each college and university is able to determine its own standard of full-time enrollment. Typically for a semester-based academic year, full time is at least 12 credit hours and half time or part time is at least six credit hours. This is the standard the U.S. Department of Education uses to determine a student’s enrollment status.

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List of Countries with different tariff rates.

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EBay is an online auction website where people and businesses buy and sell goods. You probably already know that. What you may not know is how EBay can help you during your bankruptcy.

First, EBay can help you adequately value your household property. The bankruptcy laws require that the debtor account for all personal property and make a good faith effort to accurately provide a fair market value. EBay can help you determine a fair market value for a unique item. In the bankruptcy world, a fair market value means liquidation value, or the price you may receive at an auction. Whatever you own, no matter how unique, you can probably find someone selling it through an auction on EBay.

Second, after determining a value for your property, you need to discuss how state and federal exemption laws can protect your property during bankruptcy. Most debtors do not have difficulty retaining all of their personal property during bankruptcy.

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The process of setting investing goals is a good method of organizing and directing your investments. Investing for a secure retirement will entail long term investing, paying attention to the price to earnings ratio as well as stock price in value stock investing. Investing shorter term to help buy a home may mean a more leveraged approach using options trading, investing in the futures markets, and learning about technical analysis tools such as Candlestick chart analysis. Diversifying a stock portfolio will reduce investment risk and allow an investor to pursue short, medium, and long term investing goals.

Goals for investing will be how much money you will need and when. Buying a car or making enough for a down payment on a house may be a short term, one to three year, goal. Making enough money in the stock market, commodities trading, or the futures markets to send you children to college could take anywhere from three years to fifteen. Full article…

The practice of a Chapter 7 bankruptcy Trustee seizing and selling real estate after it is surrendered in bankruptcy and then sold at foreclosure sheriff’s sale is a phenomenon may be primarily local to the Detroit, Michigan bankruptcy courts. However, it has become more and more common for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy Trustee, in this area, after a case has been discharged, to re-sell real estate that has been surrendered in the bankruptcy in order to gain proceeds from the sale that may be distributed to a bankruptcy debtor’s creditors—and, of course, net a percentage “fee” for the Trustee.

How is this possible?

Typically, when a home is surrendered in bankruptcy (returned to the bank and allowed to proceed into foreclosure with no chance of collectibility or tax liability for the debt afterward), it is being surrendered because there is no “equity” in the property. That is, when the home’s potential sale value is compared to the mortgage debt attached to it, there is no positive balance. In such a situat

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Retirement is a point of stage where the concerned person stops working from his usual routine and gets rest. It may be due to the age problems or inability to work due to physical unfit conditions. Many people take voluntary retirements also, retirement is a thing which depends upon lot of factors such as wealth, health, family situations and the decision comes by discussion with others too. So however, you are willing or not retirement is always on the cards. To make sure that retirement is a good thing and to enjoy the most out of it take the help of Roth IRA which is an individual retirement plan. To get the right information about this investment plan please do visit the site roth-ira.org. Full article…