If you have had to come to the reality that you have no other recourse but to file for bankruptcy and you understand that this truly has to be used as your last resort to be taken only when you are out of other options for tackling your financial woes then you should make sure you understand the outcomes. Not only is bankruptcy a tiresome procedure with giving the U.S. Government all of your personal information, your property information, all of your asset info, paycheck info, tax info, etc it is also an extremely emotional procedure as well.
Before you actually file do your best to keep searching for solutions other than bankruptcy. Try negotiating with all of your lenders to reduce your payments or your interest on the money that you owe. Get a financial manager and see if they can help you. If you own a home try and refinance it so you can take that money to pay off your debts.
You should only file for bankruptcy if you find yourself unable to pay the minimum on all of your credit cards and you are ending up with larger balances due to the late fees. If you find you can't even make some of the payments at all no matter how you try to budget or if there is threat of foreclosure on your home. Then and only then should you resort to bankruptcy proceedings.
There are serious repercussions when you go this route. Remember that when you do this, this is going to haunt you for up to 10 years on your credit history and secondly it is going to take a long time after it's off of your record to start re-establishing your credit again. More than likely when you do get more credit you are going to have to pay the highest of interest rates for several years before anyone is going to be willing to give you anything else.
You also need to understand that not everything can be discharged and you still may be owing money and have to be paying bills. A couple of examples that are almost impossible to claim would be taxes and student loans.
Once the bankruptcy has been discharged from your credit it's very important that you open up a new checking account or savings account and then make sure that you make deposits in either one of them on a regular basis. This is one good way to show future lenders that you are capable of taking care of money and being responsible. So opening up an account like this is going to be in your favor. It doesn't matter how much you put in the account it's just the fact that you are putting something into on a consistent basis.
If there is any way in which you can get a credit card after the bankruptcy is off of your record, you should try to get one. As much as you probably don't want to get one, in today's society everyone needs to have good credit for one reason or another and the only way this is going to happen is if you start trying to rebuild it as soon as you can.
A good way to show lenders that you are responsible post bankruptcy is when you do get a credit card that you maintain a small balance and then pay the balance off on a monthly basis so that you don't begin to fall back into the same trap that got you into the financial mess to begin with.