Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Filing For Bankruptcy

No, not me. The only debt I have right now is my oppressive student loans (~$88k) which can't be BK'd away. *Bleh*

My sister and I hired an attorney to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy on behalf of my parents. Since my parents have absolutely no assets to speak of, the bankruptcy filing is relatively straightforward and simple. I could've done the work since I'm admitted to practice in federal court, but quite frankly, I'm pissed with my parents for being so careless and apathetic about their finances. (In April, they had $60k in credit card debt and had no clue about it!) My sister made valiant efforts to get my parents (or at least my mother) to sit down to discuss a budget, but they couldn't care less. After four months, my sister managed to get my parents' debt down to $55k! But it's only a matter of time before my father will pass away, leaving a crushing debt that is unaffordable under my mother's Social Security survivor's benefits alone. C'est la vie - - my parents will pay a flat fee of $1,895 + $300 filing fee to bankrupt away their debts. I'm not going to pay this cost for them.

Of course, my sister and I will be doing all of the leg-work of compiling information about my parents' debt, their income, their cost-of-living, etc. And the next struggle will be to get my mother to actually undergo credit counseling. (My dad will likely be exempt due to his dementia.) Since my mother never bothered to learn English, I will probably have to attend with her and translate. Joy.


I'm sorry to be complaining here. But I just can't forgive or fathom my parents' attitude that their financial mess is their daughters' responsibility to clean up.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

I Had A Job Interview Yesterday

I made a commitment to my big sis that I will look for a job in Phoenix to help her care for our parents. So yesterday I had a job interview with a prospective employer. The interview went relatively well. But... I may not probably won't get the job especially since I learned that my new boss will be my old boss from 10 years ago with whom I previously did not get along.

I was asked how I got along with my former boss. I danced around the issue and said, "He ran a tight ship and I struggled a bit since I was transitioning from an attorney job to a corporate one. It wasn't all smooth sailing but we're both professionals." But... my former boss may bad mouth me and I may be kiboshed. *Shrug*

Anyhow, before my job interview, I came across an article that said good looking people do better at interviews. Which made me wonder: Do I have an advantage?

Beauty is part subjective and part objective. I've heard that if your face matches the Fibonacci Golden Ratio, you're deemed objectively "beautiful." (Although some scientists have refuted this theory.)

Out of morbid curiosity, I used the formula from this page. I heard that Angelina Jolie has the perfect ratio, so I used the picture below and plugged in her numbers.





And whaddaya know? Based upon my imperfect measurement technique, Angelina still came out with 1.54 out of 1.61 (i.e., a 95.14% Golden Ratio match).

I plugged in my numbers and I got.... 1.389. Very average. Ha ha. I guess I didn't have that great of an advantage based upon my looks. *snicker*

Anyhow, masochistic people can get their own number using my spreadsheet.