Answer: The first thing you need to do is opt out of your bank’s bounced-check protection program. You may think you need to borrow money this way to make ends meet, but as you’ve discovered, it’s driving you further into the hole.

Next, rethink your participation in the debt management program. It was honorable of you to try to avoid bankruptcy, but it’s pretty clear you can’t afford to continue with this program if doing so leaves you in default on your student loan obligations. Credit card debts can be erased in Bankruptcy Court; student loan debt can almost never be wiped out that way.

If you have federal student loans, you may be able to qualify for the income-based repayment program, which caps your payment at a reasonable amount and erases any remaining balance after 10 years in a public service job (such as teaching in the public school system). Otherwise, the balance is erased after 25 years of payments. If you have private loans, you have far fewer options for repayment, but wiping out the credit card debt would free up more money to pay these loans back. Talk to your lenders to see what options you may have.

Another factor to consider is how much you’re spending on housing. If you own a home, the mortgage and related home-owning costs may simply be too much for you on your current income. Getting rid of the house in a short sale, or even letting it go into foreclosure, may be a far better option than continuing to cling to a home you can’t afford.

Bankruptcy, short sales and foreclosures are all drastic options. But some financial problems are so great that a drastic solution is the only reasonable choice if you ever want to get back on your financial feet.

Answer: Federal law prohibits employers from using a bankruptcy filing as a reason not to hire (or to fire or decline to promote) someone. However, most states allow employers to check credit reports, and employers are allowed to use the negative marks they find there as a reason to not hire someone. Since most people who file for bankruptcy have plenty of late payments and charge-offs leading up to the filing, that gives employers the legal cover they need to refuse to hire someone with a checkered financial past.

Interestingly, there’s no research or other evidence that indicates bad credit leads to problems on the job, such as theft or even poor performance. Yet employers continue to use credit checks to screen out job applicants for a wide variety of jobs.

Only six states — California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Oregon and Washington — restrict employers’ ability to check credit reports, and often there are exceptions for jobs in finance or those that involve access to large amounts of cash.

Unfortunately, that means your daughter’s troubled financial past may continue to haunt her for years to come unless she finds an employer willing to overlook it. Most negative marks stay on credit reports for seven years, while bankruptcies can stay on for up to 10 years.

Answer: It can take five years after a bankruptcy for your FICO credit scores to return to the 680 range, which is about where auto loan interest rates start to get more reasonable. People with FICOs in the 660 to 690 range got interest rates averaging about 7.5%, according to the MyFico.com site, compared with 11% and up for those with lower scores. It can take seven or more years to boost your scores above 720, which is where the truly low rates (4% and below) can be had.

To rehabilitate your scores as quickly as possible, first review your credit reports at http://www.annualcreditreport.com to make sure all the debts that were included in bankruptcy are listed that way. If you have any open credit card accounts, use them lightly but regularly and pay them off in full every month. “Lightly” means using less than 30% of your credit limits. If you don’t have a card, consider applying for a secured card, which gives you a credit limit equal to an amount you deposit with the issuing bank, typically $200 to $1,000. You can find secured card offers at several websites, including LowCards.com, CreditCards.com, CardRatings.com and NerdWallet.com.

After a year or so, consider adding an installment loan such as a personal loan or an auto loan to your credit mix. A credit union may give you a more reasonable rate than a traditional bank. Paying off that loan should help boost your scores.

Don’t close accounts or apply for a bunch of new accounts. Pay all your bills on time and don’t let disputes or medical bills wind up in collections.

There aren’t any quick fixes, so don’t waste your money on credit repair firms or other pitches that promise instant results. What will repair your score is using credit responsibly over time.

Answer: There is. Bankruptcies have to be removed from your credit reports after 10 years.

Individual lenders, though, are allowed to have much longer memories. And some have opted not to forget. If you ever file a bankruptcy that wipes out debt on one of the accounts they issue, they may never again approve you for credit. That’s perfectly legal.

Not all lenders are so unforgiving, of course, and those who don’t know about your bankruptcy likely will be perfectly willing to extend you credit as long as your credit scores are good. But you’re probably wasting your time trying to induce this once-spurned lender to change its mind.

Answer: Bankruptcy could wipe out your credit card debt but probably won’t erase your student loans. Student loan debt usually can’t be discharged in bankruptcy unless you’re totally and permanently disabled. Since you’ve been looking for work, that doesn’t seem to be your situation.

Besides, filing for bankruptcy costs money that you probably don’t have. A Chapter 7 filing can easily cost $1,500.

What you might want to do instead is discuss your situation with a bankruptcy attorney to find out if you might be “judgment proof.” If you are, your creditors can still sue you, but they’ll be unable to collect — at least until your circumstances improve.

Many bankruptcy attorneys offer free or discounted initial sessions. You can get a referral from the National Assn. of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, or find an attorney through its website at http://www.nacba.org.

In the meantime, you can visit DebtCollectionAnswers.com for strategies on how to deal with collection agencies when you can’t pay.

Answer: Eating healthful food, exercising, maintaining an appropriate body weight and investing in preventive healthcare can lower healthcare costs on average. But no individual, no matter how vigilant, is immune from an accident or illness that can result in catastrophic medical bills.

So you’re right that people who voluntarily go without health insurance are deluding themselves. They’re pretending they have the sole power to determine their future health, when that’s clearly not the case.

At 16, my then-stepmother added me as an authorized user on her credit card “for emergencies.” I never used the card without permission, and I learned that credit cards are not free money. When I was in college, she and my father divorced, and we lost touch. I haven’t used that account in more than four years. Last fall I applied for a new credit card to use for business expenses and was rejected. I checked my credit report, and lo and behold, the account I am an authorized user on is now in serious straits.

Apparently after the divorce, my former stepmom had some financial trouble and eventually ran up that card to its limit, then filed for bankruptcy in 2010, leaving a glaring (and, according to the bank, immutable because the account is closed) spot on my credit. I have very little else as credit history, which makes this an even larger problem. My fiance and I are planning on buying a home in the next few years, and we’ll probably have to leave my name off to avoid serious increases in interest or even face being turned down for a mortgage.

In uncertain financial times even for the responsible, parents who add their children to their accounts need to know they are signing up to pass on all of their credit history, good and bad, to their children. Sometimes that’s more of a burden than a blessing.

Answer: Your experience shows the real potential downside for anyone who is added as the authorized user of a credit card. But you shouldn’t accept the bank’s initial response as final.

You can be removed from this account if the bank is willing to do so. Take your case to the bank’s chief executive. You can find his name and the bank’s corporate address on the bank’s website (check its regulatory filings under “investor relations” if the bank doesn’t make the information obvious).

Your experience also shows the importance of checking your credit reports at least once a year, since you could have spotted the problem and asked your former stepmother to remove your name from the card long ago. Also, it’s important to build credit in your own name rather than continue to rely on the record of someone else.

Answer: When a lender charges off a bad debt, the debt itself doesn’t disappear. The lender is simply declaring that it doesn’t think it will be able to collect. The debt can be sold to collection agencies, which can post the collection account on your credit reports.

The charge-off is what typically does the most damage to your credit scores, although the collection accounts increase the toll.

There are limits to how long creditors can pursue you in court over debts. The limits vary according to each state’s statute of limitations. There is also a limit on how long bad debts can show up on your credit reports (typically seven years and 180 days from when the account first went delinquent).

But debts only disappear when you pay them or have them legally erased in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

One of the things you should learn from this experience is not to trust a lender to tell you how much you can afford to borrow. The other is that you should always arrange financing in advance before you venture onto a car dealership lot. If the dealership can beat the deal you get from your bank or credit union, great. Otherwise, you’ve got financing you know you can afford.

Answer: Bankruptcy is frequently mentioned in this column as a possible solution for overwhelming debt. Having a lot of debt isn’t the same as being overwhelmed by it, however. What matters is whether you’re able to make sufficient progress on paying down that debt.

The gentleman in question might discover that getting rid of a too-expensive house frees up money to pay down the family’s debt. Otherwise, it would be smart to talk to both a legitimate credit counselor (the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, at http://www.nfcc.org, has referrals) and an experienced bankruptcy attorney (referrals from the National Assn. of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys are at http://www.nacba.orghttp://www.nacba.org).

Answer: Clearly you can’t afford your life. The fact that you incurred debt to switch to a career field you now hate indicates that you’re prone to making rash decisions. So the most important thing is that you thoroughly research your options before making your next step.

Contact a housing counselor approved by the Housing and Urban Development Department to discuss your loan modification options. You can get referrals from http://www.hud.gov. The modification process is so torturous and complex it can really pay to have an experienced hand guide you, but you shouldn’t pay thousands of dollars to an attorney or other “expert” when you can get low-cost or even free advice from a HUD-approved housing counselor.

If you can’t get a modification and your home costs are eating up more than 30% of your monthly income, seriously consider a short sale so you can move to a more affordable place. Here you will want an attorney’s help, because short-sale negotiations can be tough and the lender can keep you on the hook for the remaining debt if your agreement isn’t worded properly.

You’ll need to have a talk with your children as well. This will be difficult, but if you aren’t saving sufficiently for retirement, you can’t afford to help them with education costs. Your kids can get a college education on their own by working and using federal student loans, but they may need to switch to cheaper schools.

Think long and hard before you borrow any more money, for job training or anything else. A session with a career counselor could help you define other jobs you could get with your existing credentials. If you do need more training, get it the most cost-effective way possible. Nonprofit community colleges offer inexpensive courses at night that would allow you to keep your day job.

Although you don’t think you’ll ever be able to retire, at some point you won’t be able to continue working. Your priority should be to pay off your debt and build up your retirement savings so that you have more to live on than Social Security checks. Everything that doesn’t serve those goals has to be discarded, as difficult and painful as that may be.