<prompt> Human: I am a 23yo male who makes roughly 46,000 a year 31,000 after taxes. I am in Information Technology and am a bit past entry level at this point with no where but up to go, and the sky is the limit. I plan on going up the skill ladder and making 100,000 a year before I am 30.I am filing for bankruptcy. You may ask why since I am so young and possibly couldnt of screwed myself over that bad, especially to the point where I would want to file for something so devastating! To be brief, I have about 10,000 in credit card debt and about 20,000 in car debt between two cars. Now the credit card debt is me being a stupid child with my money, I admit that. New card with 3,000 limit, only for emergencies! Well I decided to buy a bunch of stuff for my gaming PC since it wasnt the latest and greatest. This small purchase of 500 for a new graphics card turned into about a 2,000 purchase of other things to get me where I wanted to be for my PC. This particular card has an interest rate 29.9. The other 7,000 is me trying to credit surf. You know, pay one card with another or move debt around without actually paying it off. Well then I did a balance transfer to get the first card interest rate killed off, and then spent it again effectively raising the amount I owe again. And so the cycle continues. New card for emergencies only, spend to the limit, rinse and repeat. I also keep paying a little bit down and think, Well its already this high, so why not just max it? Ill pay it down and not use it again! Yet I do and Ive learned my lesson now. At least I think I have. Guess well find out _ツ_ The car situation is odd now. I am signed onto my personal car and I am co-signed on another car. Lets deal with the co-signed one first. When I was 19-20yo, I had a friend who was always down on his luck and just never seemed to catch a break. Me being naive and wanting to help him as much as I could, not knowing what I would be doing to my credit score, went to a used car dealer ship with him and let him pick any car he wanted. He chose a 2006 Mercedes. The car was 13,000 and I dont know the interest rate but if I had to guess it was around 8-10. The reason co-signed is in quotes in the first line is because they decided to make me the primary and him the secondary. Semantics. He was paying the car on time for about 4 months, then everything suddenly turned on him. His bosses sucked, he lost his jobs, his wife was trying to divorce him, his step daughters father put her medical bills in his name, and the car started falling apart. This guy is always having problems with other people and nothing is ever his fault. I realized what kind of person he was and cut him out. Its been almost 3 years and the car loan is only down to about 6,000 now. Many late payments and missed payments. Killing my credit and chances at getting a new car later. I cant afford to pay the loan and my bills so Ive just had to deal with it. Ive also asked him multiple times to refinance and get my name off the loan, but he never does and always has an excuse. The second car, well I bought it at 16,500 at 8.5 with 50,000 miles on it with a drive train warranty for 2,000 in February 2014. That warranty saved my ass when the transmission started acting up and they replaced it for free. So I say I paid upfront for a new transmission in that 16,500. Though I wish the transmission was the only problem. It has multiple things wrong with it and many of them are much to expensive for me to pay to fix. The car is now worth roughly 7,000-8,000 and I still owe roughly 13,000-14,000 on it. After two years the car has about 90,000 miles on it and is mostly mechanically safe but not worth a damn. Upside down with costly repairs. No thanks. Now I see why filing for bankruptcy at my age with about 30,000-33,000 of debt seems like a stupid idea. Trust me I know. Heres my logic. I make roughly 2,600 a month. Now I live in a growing state where housing prices are still rising steadily. I currently only pay about 400 a month in a house due to a very unique living situation, but its going away in February. My car the one I am solely responsible for costs about 300 a month for the loan and about 200 for the insurance on it. So every month I am losing 500 a month to drive a car that is breaking down more and more every passing day. All of my debt not including student loans is about 500 a month as well. Student debt is about 300 a month. So with my car, credit cards, and student debt, roughly half my post-tax income is going to debt. Now I have consider housing. Where I am a one bedroom goes for about 1,100month and that would only leave me about 200 a month for food, gas, and other bills. I drive about a 30 mile round trip for work and I can get about 400 miles out of a tank of gas but I have to drive to other places further away for friends and family things. 200 is not enough for all the other bills I have to pay and to survive. Im not very frugal, but I try, albeit not very hard. So I have started the process of filing for bankruptcy. This will effectively give me about 1,000 of my income back. Now I will need a new car and am already saving the amounts I would have to pay to my credit card debt to buy a used car that is any where from 2,000-5,000 in price. I want to own my car and not get screwed again. Something I can maintain for many more years and really drive into the ground. I made the mistake of wanting to flaunt my success by showing off my money with a nice newish car. I have since learned being able to say I have 5,000 or even 10,000 personal goal saved for an emergency is better and more mentally sane than looking good to impress other people. Once the process is complete, I know I will receive offers from credit card companies begging me to sign up and I will refuse to do. I know the rabbit hole and refuse to jump into it again until I know I can control my spending habits.To me this is a very logical choice. I can kill my credit now and rebuild it again since I am so young and not worry too much. This will lower my stress levels and allow me to enjoy life. Im sick of working to pay for things I bought with hours I work in the future. I want financial freedom and this is how I see it. Thank you for reading this far and letting me vent out everything. Writing this out has helped me immensely reaffirm that is the best and logical choice. ---Minor Edit: As I just thought about, some of you may ask me, How did you get the money to file for bankruptcy when you cant even afford to pay your bills? The answer to that is something many of you may not like. I quit a job after a year of being there and they had a 401k plan. I cashed it out and it ended up being about 2,100 when said and done. I didnt have a job lined up or any savings before so I lived off of it and got a new job in two weeks. Used the remainder to file and keep me going until my first check.  <response>: I dont think bankruptcy solves your problem. Not sure Ive read a post like this were such obvious and blatant poor financial moves were made over and over. If you dont get some education on how to manage money AND find a way to control yourself, youll be back in the same position again in 10 years. An assumed 100k salary at that time only balloons the problem. 