1 Less Productive Small Business

I started a towing business in 03 while studying for my Associate Degree which I finished in the top 1% of my class. I had almost a decade of Auto Repair & Towing Experience already. I also took a seminar a few years earlier on investing. I'm a number cruncher and not too bad with customers. I escalated sales, debts, expenses, and customer base consistently. By 08 I added a lot of salvage junk hauling work. I built up to 3 trucks all nice and very capable. I marketed on a couple websites, phonebooks, and had a growing customer base of shops and small dealers. By end summer 08 the glbal steel value dropped by 90% and with it 60% of my work. This is a short story of the recession's impact on us. I had children young so child support follows, up til then it was up to date. 9 months later even with added national motor club work it was too little too late. Account seizures and no way to combat it. Trucks all 3 repo'd so now unemployed. I retrained for CDL-A trucking and no job offers as they don;t count the decade plus of towing as truck experience. I had to bow my head and ask for family help to pay an attorney as well as the CS back due or face losing my license. I found this site looking for others like myself in or facing bankruptcy. y input is sometimes you have to as a last survival step. Over my time of self employment I invested 2-300K all lost efforts along with the remaining 100K plus of remaining debt. I think the last vacation I had was in 03? If it wasn;t an investment tool I didn;t need it. The choice of should I or shouldn;t I for me and others is only simple when being threatened with legal force from creditors. At that point there is no shame it's a matter of self defense, the only way to. I do not encourage people to file if they have any means not to but, do not be ashamed if it reaches that point.
  On the positive the end result should be much lower if not eliminated debts. I intend to rebuild but, for now finally found FT work 9 months after training was completed doing what I was already skilled to do. It will give me a low income but, self employed people receive no unemployment, they kind of cease to exist. I save some every week towrd post bankruptcy restart. This is the approach many should be looking forward to maybe even better informed of what not to do. We learn from our mistakes and progress from there. I'm still awaiting discharge but, it should be soon. Then life reboot.