Time to shuffle through the 'ol iTunes and dig up 'ol U2's New Year's Day. Oh, heads around the world are achin' today. But it's a grand old tradition since the inception of the Julian calendar: a time for revelry, debauchery (and historians say, rape and persecution, too, because in ancient, authoritarian society, they figured letting the masses let loose precluded uprisal).

Back to life, back to reality. Enough is enough isn't it? Are you going to keep slogging through with that heavy monkey-- nay: ape of debt on your back. Just get rid of that gorilla already, all right?

I confess, the community of debtors' attorneys is a surprisingly gracious one. There's a lot of helpful exchange of information and we do it because consolidated experience serves the public good. I owe some of the following perspective to a fellow practitioner:

Sometimes, debtors vacillate: should I declare bankruptcy? The thing is... filing a voluntary petition to the bankruptcy court (that's what the "declaration" actually refers to) is a formality. Filing the petition does not make you bankrupt. You were already bankrupt. When you have more debts than assets, when you can't ever repay the debt, when your resources are spent simply maintaining credit balances that don't go down... well, then you're bankrupt. The question is whether you're going to do something about.

Big corporations are routinely bailed out to resolve their financial woes. And the executives who brought them down collect fat bonuses to boot. Bankruptcy is a lesser but more deserving resolution. It's an acknowledgment that you can't go on as is. Given you can only do a chapter 7 bankruptcy once every 8 years, it's designed to be a one-time second chance. We can't turn back time, but we're entitled to start over and be forgiven this once. Refusing bankruptcy might be a rejection of a sound financial choice that best serves you and your family.

Bono says in that song, nothing changes...

But something can change.