Know your own numbers: the facts to have straight before a consultation

List one: debts, by kind

Pull your three free credit reports (annualcreditreport.com, the official site) and add anything that doesn’t report — medical bills, payday loans, money owed to people. For each: who, roughly how much, and the kind, because kind is destiny in bankruptcy: cards/medical/personal loans in one group; taxes with the years noted; student loans; support; anything secured by property; anything already sued on or garnishing, with dates. Precision optional. Completeness not.

List two: income, all of it, six months back

Every source for the household: jobs, gig work, benefits, pension, rent from the basement, the regular help from your sister. Rough monthly figures for the last six months — eligibility math runs on that average, and one-time bumps (a bonus, an insurance payout) are worth flagging because timing around them is a real strategy question.

List three: the house and the cars

For each: what it would sell for (online estimates are fine), what’s owed on it, and the difference — the equity — which is the number the law actually cares about. Note loan ages on vehicles; car loans older than about two and a half years get better treatment in Chapter 13. Check your equity against your state’s line in the fifty-state table.

List four: accounts and cash

Every checking, savings, and app balance (Venmo and friends count), typical balances, and whether any account sits at a bank you also owe money to — that pairing has a specific trap the bank-accounts answer explains. Note retirement accounts separately and then relax about them: they’re the best-protected money you have.

List five: what’s moved in the last year

Payments to family or friends, anything sold, gifted, or retitled, large purchases or cash advances, casino or crypto activity. This list feels accusatory to write; it isn’t. These are simply the questions that will be asked, and the loans-from-family answer explains why disclosure is the entire game.

List six: what’s coming

Tax refund you’re owed or expect. Inheritance that could arrive. Lawsuit or claim you could bring. Raise or job change on the horizon. Timing a case around expected money is legitimate planning — but only for things your lawyer knows about.

What this is, and isn’t

This is organizing, not lawyering: you’re building the factual record every professional needs, not deciding what it means. Resist scoring your own lists (“the house is fine, the taxes are hopeless”) — the number of people wrong in both directions keeps consultation calendars full. Bring the lists; let the analysis be done by someone licensed to be wrong about it on the record.

The bottom line

Six lists, one evening, total cost nothing. It’s the single highest-leverage hour in this entire Library, and it’s entirely yours.