I think it's safe to say most people would prefer never to have to see a bankruptcy attorney or judge.
However, there is a group of bankruptcy professionals that you should rejoice in having your high school and college students see if they have the chance. They are volunteers for a relatively new outreach program called CARE (Credit Abuse Resistance Education). CARE was founded two years ago by John C. Ninfo II, chief judge of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of New York.
Ninfo's idea is to send bankruptcy professionals -- judges, attorneys and trustees (the folks who handle the administration of bankruptcy cases) -- into high schools and colleges all over the country to share their personal experiences in dealing with people who have filed for bankruptcy protection.
What a brilliant idea.
Who better to counsel young people about the perils of overspending than the professionals who have to deal with the aftermath? Ninfo has a front-row seat to the devastation that credit card debt can wreak on families.
"I sat day after day in my courtroom and watched people come in with one, two and three times their annual income in credit card debt," the judge said in an interview. "We in the bankruptcy community are in the trenches and can tell [these students] firsthand about the reality of it all."
And the reality is that an unbelievable number of young people are finding themselves in deep debt before they hit their mid-thirties.
One research group calls them "Generation Broke."
America's population of young adults are slipping into a downward debt spiral, according to Demos, a nonpartisan, nonprofit New York-based research organization.
Demos recently released a report called "Generation Broke: The Growth of Debt Among Young Americans." Here's what the organization found among young adults age 25 to 34 after analyzing the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances and dozens of other sources:
