With increasing debt loads hitting today’s senior Florida residents, many older Floridians are turning more and more to bankruptcy court to resolve their financial problems. According to a recent article by Forbes, there are a number of reasons senior Americans are looking to bankruptcy to help them out of fiscal trouble.
Medical expenses are the top cause of Americans filing for personal bankruptcy. Increasingly, older Americans are making up a larger share of those who file for bankruptcy. Given that people aged sixty-five and up are more likely to suffer from medical problems, the threat of debt is an increasing concern. Another issue facing American seniors is overzealous debt collection. The Forbes article describes a report conducted recently by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that discovered consumers over the age of 62 were more likely to complain about debt collection than any other service or product. This is proving to be a source of anxiety for older people, since they feel they can’t make their debt payments.
Additionally, this is a growing problem for older women. Men are typically in charge of their household’s finances. However, if the male spouse dies, the job of handling financial matters, including bankruptcy, falls to the surviving female partner. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently published statistics showing that at the time of birth, an American male can expect to live to slightly over 76 years old on average, while a woman is more likely to live to the average age of 81. This disparity shows that many female seniors can end up dealing with financial issues left over from a spouse’s death and may turn to bankruptcy court to solve them.
In general, the stats from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the average life expectancy for Americans reaches at least 11 years older than the age of 65, which means many Americans will be dealing with financial issues into their retirement years, with an increasing number turning to bankruptcy in times of financial trouble.