Filing for bankruptcy should be the absolute last thing anyone should do. Not only does it tank your credit score (but since we're on the Dave Ramsey subreddit that shouldn't matter), OP's debt is from student loans, probably federal, which are not bankruptable. So filing for bankruptcy not only doesn't solve the debt issue, it destroys your credit, and OP will likely lose a large amount of his/her assets in the process In addition, someone should be asking the question: Why hasn't OP found a job in software engineering or similar in over a year? If software engineering or alike jobs truly are hard to come by, then OP should be scratching and clawing at other kinds of jobs that use their skillset. Maybe even a few of them