I’ve successfully been able to avoid the multi year stigma of having been bankrupt.  It wasn’t easy:  I had to call in favors from friends who owed me money, use my entire tax return; I even negotiated with my creditors and talked to a consumer credit counseling company to get my finances under control.  It’s a good thing that I got it all together too, because the threat of having to file for bankruptcy looming over my head really had me worried.  Bankruptcy can seriously affect your future in a lot of ways:  it can hurt you when looking for jobs, when you’re trying to get an apartment, a car or a mortgage.  I’m not necessarily actively looking for any of those things right at the moment, but who knows what I’ll be doing in a few years - if I hadn’t figured out this financial problem now than I could have been having some serious money problems affecting me for the rest of my life.  Eventually I’ll want to get married and start a family, which will require me to have a more stable and fulfilling career, filing for bankruptcy could have made all of that a whole lot more difficult.  At least I was able to learn my lesson and fix the problem before it got too bad.