According to a new study, “the rate of bankruptcy filings among those 65 and older has more than doubled since 1991.”

The study found that “Americans age 55 or older have experienced the largest increase in bankruptcy filings, going from 8.2 percent in 1991 to 22.3 percent in 2007.” Americans 34 or younger experienced the opposite effect. In 1991 they comprised nearly half of all bankrupt debtors, in 2007 they were just over a quarter of all bankrupt debtors.

This research by Elizabeth Warren, a Professor at the Harvard Law School, found that the median age for bankruptcy filers had increased from 36.5 years old in 1991 to 43 years old by 2007.

It is believed that the declining economy and increasing healthcare costs, coupled with the 2005 amendments to the bankruptcy law are the reasons for older Americans being at risk for bankruptcy.

Here is a link to this article:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/06/bankruptcy_seniors.html

Yameena

Back by popular demand, here are some recent statistics on your usage of the blog and the firm's web site. I always like to note that this information is not totally accurate as it will likely contain "visits" from some spam machine in the sky, searching for live e-mail addresses. But, we can certainly glean some broad information about usage of these two sites.

That being said, the blog had its highest usage ever in the month of October! Specifically, there were 12,814 hits for the month; with 2,747 visitors to the blog. Moreover, the majority (by far) of the hits come in the morning hours of 9, 10, and 11.

Likewise, the firm's web site had a busy month, with a record number (but not by much) of visitors, 1,103 in October. California still has the highest number of visitors, but Texas has the most hits, by far. Virginia, Washington and D.C. come in third, fourth and fifith in number of visitors. Following those states are Florida, New Jersey and New York, which are tightly bunched in sixth through ninth place in number of visitors. There were hits from someone (or something!) in every state, but North Dokota comes in last with only 2 visitors each hitting the site once. :( In the most active city list, Beijing, China ranks seventh behind more obvious entrants, like Sunnyvale, Mountain View, San Diego and San Francisco -- all California cities. Of course Dallas and Fort Worth are in the top 10 cities, at 10 and 6 respectively. New York City edges Paris France at 18 and 19. Austin ranked 15 and was beat out by Stockholm in number of visitors (88 for Austin and 107 for Stockholm), but not the number of hits (1,158 for Austin and only 321 for Stockholm). Finally, Ramat Gan, Israel had about the same number of hits and visitors as did Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Please just do not ask me what any of this means, other then I hope real human folks are enjoying the site/blog and not some machine named Hal.

Mike

Briefly, a fresh check of the statistical counters on the blog reveal that April was an all time high for visits, at 1,592 and similarly, the number of hits was also at a high point at 11,139 for the month. These numbers are in line with the increasing trend for the last several months. Welcome all and as always if you have comments (like you want Ray to do more stories on celeb's and bankruptcy) please shoot me an e-mail, Mike

Well, the long awaited statistics for blog usage are here -- and without further ado, here they are:

March was our best month ever for visitors and pages viewed here at www.texaslawyerblog.com [which can also be reached at http://www.texasbankruptcyblog.com just FYI...].

March: 9,393 hits from 1,329 visitors. OK OK that is not different visitors, but it is different visits. March 24 was the busiest day with 1,154 hits, 10 o'clock a.m. is the busiest time of day, with 9, 11, 12, 16 and 19 o'clock coming in for a close second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth place.

The number one string search which led folks to our blog was...."Anna Nicole Smith" -- now what that means I do not know (well, not precisely). But Ray was given quite a hard time about his article on Ms. A. N. Smith which graced our blog on Feb. 28.

As to foreign visitors, Canada ranked first with 74 hits; followed by Germany, Japan, Romania, Netherlands, Seychelles, Brazil, Costa Rica (6 hits each), Australia (at 4 hits) Austria, Norway, Argentina, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Hungary, Mexican, Malaysia, Poland, Sweden, Thailand, and Belgium (with 2-3 hits each). We also note that there seem to be several (OK, 53) hits from employees of the United States Government -- and 19 from the U.S. Military--welcome!

Finally, please feel free to "talk back to us" via the comments link which allows you (even you in the Czech Republic, assuming you are not a giant Spam machine....I have my doubts) to post comments to articles on the blog. I have also received several nice notes and personal comments from folks I greatly respect saying that they appreciate our blog, so thank you to them as well. And yes we will be asking Ray to do several follow up articles on Anna Nicole's bankruptcy case now pending before the US Supreme Court -- he may even have to do some interviews on this one, we'll see.

Mike

Back to the occasional statistical review for the blog:

Last month, we had 851 visits to the blog, with 8,644 hits. Wednesdays are the busiest day for visits, with the other business days of the week being about even with each other and the weekends are, as expected, less than that. Ten and eleven a.m. are the busiest hours of the day for visits. We continue to get good feedback on the blog and we are really enjoying putting it together -- so, tell your friends about it and thank you for your support!

Mike