Can Critical Thinking be Applied Consistently?

Consistently applying critical thinking skills in decision processes is challenging for several reasons. Depending on the situation there may be time constraints that prohibit thinking through the decision. There may be moral or ethical factors that weigh on the decision that contradict the results of critical thinking. There may also be instances where the decision seems so obvious at first only to have it come back against you when it is not completely thought through.

All of these factors played a part in my families recent decision to not declare bankruptcy. I lost my job last May and my house has been in foreclosure for the past 9 months. We were given the suggestion many times to look into bankruptcy. We put it off for a while but when there seemed to be no other option we met with an attorney to begin the process. Neither my wife or I were in favor of doing bankruptcy but did not know where else to turn. It came to the point of making the decision to file and we had to decide if we wanted to or not. We had time constraints on our decision because we had to decide whether to do bankruptcy before foreclosure moved forward. We had moral difficulties with bankruptcy because we were not disputing that we owed the money we just needed to be a able to develop a plan to get caught back up. Although the decision seemed obvious to many people around us we just did not feel good about the decision.

We ultimately sat down and weighed the pros and cons of filing now and in the future. With kids just few years from college we have to keep that in mind and how bankruptcy might factor in. We looked at our current financial situation to determine if we could work something out and how. Lastly we had to feel morally like we fulfilled our commitments to our lenders and how bankruptcy would affect that. Although filing seemed like the best and easiest way to get back on track it did not feel or seem to be the right thing to do. We decided to try and work with our individual lenders ourselves and have worked it out to get out of foreclosure without losing our house.