A natural disaster won’t have a direct effect on your credit on its own, but it can certainly make it difficult to stay on top of your finances when you’re trying to rebuild your home and possibly even going through sudden unemployment. To make sure your finances aren’t interrupted by this sudden event, check out this financial toolkit for victims of financial disasters and these financial problems that’ll you want to know about so you can avoid. Then read here to learn more about what happens to your credit after a natural disaster and how you can get your financial life back on track.

Student loans are difficult, though not technically impossible, to discharge through bankruptcy. The only way to declare bankruptcy on student loans is to file an adversary proceeding, which would ask the court to see that paying on your student loans would cause you something called “undue hardship.” Undue hardship is determined by factors such as the inability to have a “minimal standard of living” while paying the loans, proof that this situation of undue hardship will endure for a large portion of the repayment period, and an honest effort to have made payments on the loans up until this point. As for your credit report, a bankruptcy of any kind will live on your credit report for several years. A