Welcome to the Massachusetts Bankruptcy Center. We are a full service Bankruptcy Law Firm.

No Charge for your initial consultation or subsequent consultations.

Most cases are handled on a flat fee basis – No surprises.

Special low income rates, some of our clients qualify for the filing fee waiver which we file for all Debtors who qualify.

Flexible payment plans – we work with all budgets – the client decides what payment plan works for them.

Our attorneys have expertise, our firm goes beyond filing, we utilize every opportunity in Bankruptcy i.e.

Avoid Liens on Property, Redemption, Selling real estate in Bankruptcy.

Massachusetts Bankruptcy Center has locations throughout Massachusetts, our team of attorneys and support staff are here

to help you through this difficult process by explaining to you how bankruptcy works, and what will be required for your

specific case, including advising you how much it will cost you from beginning to end and how long the process will take

to conclude.

Please explore our website for more information, or give us a call for a confidential no-cost consultation.

Attorney Richard S. Ravosa and Town & Country Legal Associates will be happy to take your call.

Foreclosure

Foreclosure is the process where a bank or other lender or creditor can take your home or other real estate away from you because you have fallen behind on making the payments when they became due. This can be a very stressful and difficult time from a financial and emotional perspective, due to the fact that to you, your house is a home, but to a creditor, your house is their investment.

If you are facing foreclosure, or have received demand letters from your bank or their attorneys for past due amounts owed on your mortgage, you should contact us immediately so we may be able to determine what stage of the process you are in and advise you accordingly.

For more details visit us

Operating a VPS provides you the advantages of dedicated hosting without the associated costs! VPS is therefore ideally suited for webmasters and power users who are experienced with dedicated hosting. VPS has a great economic advantage over dedicated servers if you are running a small number of websites and your websites are not resource intensive. If you have any problems with the Operating System in VPS, you simply reload it (or you can even install another copy of the OS, depending the system you are using).

VPS is ideal for websites with high resource needs, limited budgets, and limited internal technology resources. Even if hosting a powerful resource intensive process like E-commerce, VPS helps you build your website up and stay within your budget. VPS is a low cost and lower maintenance approach to getting the functionality of a dedicated server. Through the special software installed on the server, accounts created on VPS are completely isolated from one another.

Virtuozzo

Virtuozzo is one the common operating systems for VPS. Users requiring a VPS in the less than $50 price range typically would utilize Virtuozzo. For those webmasters looking to avoid CPU/RAM quotas with their shared hosting, and who want to run their own servers (for example, need to run cron or require open ports) or need dedicated IP’s, VPS is the ideal solution.

Cpanel

Cpanel is a common control panel for dedicated hosting and VPS. Cpanel is in wide usage because of its flexibility and easy to work with and having a lot of key features; it is one of the top operating systems for VPS as well as dedicated hosting. CPanel is a fully featured control panel. For webmasters transitioning from shared hosting, Cpanel is a way to ease this transition and allows you to begin web hosting without becoming lost in the technological details of Linux. Cpanel is also helpful when adding features such as blogs (e.g. WordPress) and message boards to sites, which can be done using built-in features of Cpanel.

VPS vs. Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is usually not suitable if there is a chance of your application overloading the servers and its resources. Shared hosting only makes sense if you are running a low-end site. Shared hosting providers typically do not let you to install custom features or run cron jobs, whereas you can do that VPS. On both shared and VPS accounts, support is provided for ready-made features. On the other hand, if you have a low end website (low traffic, low resource usage) shared hosting makes sense because these accounts are run on high performance computers, in order to be able to host a large number of websites.

In summary, if you do not have the high end needs of a dedicated server and also you do not want to by fully responsible for a web server, or you have a budget, VPS is an attractive option. When your needs grow, you can always opt for a dedicated server.

As everyone reading should know (just by being here!), web hosts own and operate the servers, or dedicated “communications computers,” that allow users to place websites on the Internet for public and/or private viewing and use. Before choosing a web host, a user must first have a registered domain name and the ability to create the pages that will be uploaded, although some hosts will provide basic tools for this.

A user has three possible options for a web hosting service-virtual private servers, shared servers and dedicated servers-but the purpose of this article is to offer help in selecting among the two most popular kinds, dedicated and shared. These are differentiated by the amount of control a user needs or wants, as well as level of responsibility the user must share in the smooth, consistent and continuous running of the website and the server on which it is located. Shared web hosting

As the name denotes, shared web hosting means a number of small to medium-sized users upload their websites and “serve” them up to the Internet from a single, shared server. This is a popular option for beginners, individuals, small and/or new business, or organizations such as non-profits with limited budgets. All shared web hosting packages offer very little in the way of bandwidth (traffic) and disk space (storage). The shared option is the best choice when the user does not expect much traffic and doesn’t need to store space-hogging media files (audio, video, animations, etc.). With a shared web hosting deal, the maintenance of the server, its organization of files, software installations, security updates and so forth are the responsibility of the host provider.

The host is accountable for keeping the server up and running, and they will use powerful “administration” software to run the entire server, while offering the individual users limited “control panels” for managing their own sites. Most of the shared web servers are running on the Linux Operating System (OS) as it has tremendous flexibility and is an open-source (essentially free) OS. However, other web host providers use the Microsoft Windows platform, and some use both Linux and Windows. Dedicated web hosting

As the name once again suggests, dedicated web hosting means each website is on a single, dedicated server, shared with no other website under any conditions. This is the option to take when a user expects to get a large amount of traffic and/or needs much more bandwidth then available in a shared hosting package. Dedicated servers can handle volume traffic with greater ease, and will be required if you need complex web applications, secure information exchange and highly customized activities at your website.

The dedicated server hosting plans give the user 100% control over their sites and servers, but with that comes 100% of the responsibility to keep the website running smooth and performing consistently. This type of web hosting, therefore, requires the user to have the technical and managerial knowledge to monitor the systems and rectify any problems at once. This type of hosting is best for professionals who need full control, which obviously includes large corporations and organizations as well as most commercial operations.

A recap of comparative strengths:

- Shared servers are servers that are shared with several other businesses or organizations, and you will have only limited control over server operations. You will have full control over your own site’s look and operation, however, but remember that someone else on the server can bring your site down.

- A dedicated server is one that is used only by you, and can’t be interfered with by a third party. If you have the requisite expertise and equipment, it can be maintained and hosted at your own place of business, although it is more frequently done at a hosting company’s location.

- The size of the budget you are working, and the specific details of your business needs and Internet goals, will determine which hosting service you choose.

- A dedicated server belongs to you and no other recipient. You have all control over the “box”, which means you will pay a higher price for a dedicated server. Shared servers can be less costly, by splitting the cost with several other users.

- Dedicated servers are perfect for those businesses that have crucial security concerns about the way they acquire, store and use customer or other confidential information. E-commerce sites are a good example of this. If your business is involved in E-commerce, then a dedicated server is the way to go.

- You might prefer a dedicated server, simply because your business image may be compromised without one. If you happen to find your shared server is hosting an adult website or other unsavory enterprise, such as spammers or hackers, this may end up reflecting on your own business.

- The actions of others on a shared server can bring your site down in many ways, not the least of which is by attracting the attention of authorities that may want to shut down the entire server. Concern for reputation is a definite reason to use a dedicated server vs. a shared one.

Money is a strange thing. People attribute power and ego-building qualities to it, which it doesn’t have. In the end, money is just a tool and a convenience. Instead of dragging a chicken or cow to a store to make a trade for clothes or cars or electronics, we use a legalized form of scrip called money – dollars here in the US. Because we don’t operate on a barter system (actually, bartering is recognized and taxed by the IRS), we need to find ways to acquire money; a job, making and selling items, offering services. In turn we offer the money in order to get items we need or want. If we acquire more money than is necessary for our needs, we can buy more “stuff” or we can build a cushion for ourselves for the times when we don’t have as much money. If we use more money than we get, then we won’t be able to get the things we need for basic living or we may even lose some of the things we already have. This is where a budget can be a very handy tool, one that we should all have in our daily lives.

Welcome to the world of Budgeting, something we should all be doing every day. In general, people tend to dislike and avoid budgets. Budgets feel restrictive and demeaning, reminding us of when we were children and all we heard was no. Budgets can tell us no to financial decisions when we want to say yes. In truth, just like money, a budget is just a tool to help us manage the financial side of our life. It gives us the information necessary to make responsible decisions about our money or finances. It allows us to make our goals both long and short-term that we set up for our life. It helps us to say yes to some courses of action and no to others. It is a tool that compares our income to our expenses over a period of time. Income is all your sources of revenue combined (money you get – a paycheck, investment interest, etc.). Expenses are all your bills or things that you use your money for each month (rent or mortgage, utilities, insurances, groceries, entertainment, etc.).

It’s very easy to start a budget. Take a piece of paper and write a list of everything that is either income or an expense that occurs throughout the year. Put a plus or minus next to each item, plus indicating income, minus is an expense. Some things you are going to list as a general item, groceries, entertainment, etc. You don’t want to list every can of peas or candy bar you buy. Just put smaller purchases or highly repetitive items into a category. Add all this together and you should come out with a result of a plus number or a 0 (zero). If the result is a negative number, you don’t have enough money to pay for everything for the month. Something is not getting paid that month and that can be detrimental to your life, especially if it is a utility bill, car loan, or mortgage.

There are three components to a budget, income, expenses and time. Let’s talk about time first. The typical time span that is used for a budget is the monthly cycle. When you made your initial list, the two sections were income and expenses. The expense section should be a list of all bills that you will pay in a years time. Now we need to re-write our list of income and expenses. We need 4 columns; regular income, other income, monthly expenses and other expenses. Put all your bills in one of the last 2 columns. A bill with a periodicity of monthly or less is put in the Monthly column. A bill with a greater than monthly periodicity is put in the Other Expense column. Because we are using a monthly time span for this budget, we need to adjust any bill that is not monthly to appear monthly. So if the bill is weekly, we multiply by 4. If the bill is greater than monthly, we divide by the number of months, if annual divide by 12, semi-annual by 6, quarterly by 3. Most, if not all, of your general expenses should go in your monthly column.

Next, we’ll talk about expenses. Every thing that you buy or pay for in a months time should go into the monthly column. All your bills, rent or mortgage, cell phone, union or club dues, electricity, etc. should be listed here. If you tithe to a church, or other church expenses, they should be listed here also. Some items, as we said before, are too small or frequent to list and they need to be put into other categories and estimated based on previous receipts. What goes into each category is up to you but, everything you buy must be accounted for in order for the budget to be accurate. So if you buy lunch every day at work that could be listed in the food or grocery category but, if you go out to dinner once or twice a week that should be best listed in the entertainment category. Kid’s lunches would go in groceries but, kid’s clothes and school supplies would go in school expenses, if this occurs on a regular basis. Anything that you spend money on that happens on a periodicity greater than a month, annual, semi-annual, quarterly, needs to be put in the “Other Expenses” column. This would include car, house and life insurance (if not paid monthly), club memberships, and car, house and personal taxes. This category would also include planned vacations, birthday celebrations (presents) and conventions. These are not items we normally list but they will put a drain on our money and can sometimes catch us by surprise. When these two lists are complete, everything we spend money on for the year except emergencies should be listed.

Now, it’s time we look at our income. Income for our purposes is any money you receive from another person, company or group for labor or services rendered. This includes items you sell, if that occurs regularly. Again, we are working on a monthly basis. Any money you receive that is not on a monthly basis needs to be adjusted, weekly multiplied by 4, biweekly by 2. At this point we need to differentiate between regular pay and all other sources of income. For those of us that receive paychecks, the normal paycheck is based on a 40 hour week. Any hours beyond that is considered overtime. Any money that is not guaranteed (who ever said a paycheck is guaranteed) to occur on a weekly, biweekly or monthly basis should not be considered regular income. Overtime no matter how long you have been getting it should NOT be considered as regular pay. The overtime money goes in the other income column. For most people these two columns are very short in contrast to the expenses columns. For some people, those on commission, day laborers, etc., they will have to average this income and use that number for regular income. Any out of the ordinary windfalls need to be put in the other income column.

Once you have put all of your income and expenses for the year into their appropriate lists, add the pluses together and the minuses together. Then subtract the minuses from the pluses and look at your results. If it is a plus number you are doing good, if it is a minus you have some work to do. We’ll talk about what to do with these lists in my next article.

Be well.

I know you’ve heard it time and time again, in order to manage your finances you need a budget. Everybody knows this is true and still not everybody budgets, knows how budget or knows exactly where to start.

First things first, a budget is a tool it can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be but the end result is the same. It takes away the guess work, eliminates the worry and puts you in control of your money.

I’ve seen people shudder and sometimes run for the door at the sound of the word Budget and yet their finances are in a shambles. The amount of effort needed to set up and maintain a budget is minimal which is why it is so surprising to see so many people go to great lengths to avoid doing it. Once put into place, the rewards of being able to predict whether or not you can afford your latest desire (without worrying about it after the purchase) are considerable.

The steps to setting up a basic budget are as follows:

Step 1.

Decide which type of budget fits best with your situation.

” Weekly

” Fortnightly

” Monthly

If you receive most of your income on a monthly basis it may be easier to set up a monthly budget. If you receive other income on a weekly/fortnightly basis, you will have to calculate what it would be on a monthly basis in order for the budget to work correctly.
E.g: Weekly amount x 52 / 12 the result is your monthly income from that source.

Step 2

Calculate your Total income from all sources.

Step 3

List all of your expenses (everything that you spend your money on) and total it.

Step 4

Deduct your Expenses from your income, don’t panic! This isn’t the time to go into shock or to tear up the sheet and go into denial; it is time to take action. Think about it you can now see exactly how you stand financially as scary as it may be, all hope is not lost. You have the opportunity to take charge and gain control of your finances possibly for the first time!!

Step 5

Time to be brutally honest:

How many of the things on your list are an absolute necessity?
How many things can be modified?
You don’t need to cut out everything in one fell swoop, that sort of change would be too drastic although in some situations, it could very well be necessary.

This is where you need to take stock of your spending and evaluate the things on your list. See which items could be modified to some degree. It won’t make a noticeable difference to your lifestyle but it can be surprising how even the slightest change could have quite a dramatic effect on your budget.

After a few (hopefully minor) adjustments, you now have your new Budget sitting in front of you, you have worked hard on it and are absolutely astounded by the results of your efforts, you can see that although at the outset, things were looking pretty grim, you now have a plan in place that is workable and accurate. You can see where you are going and how you are going to get there so what’s next?

Step 6

You MUST adhere to it! Update your budget as you spend your money, no matter how small the amount, include it, EVERYTHING needs to be accounted for.

For more information, useful tips and advice go to: Building a Budget