I am a marketer for more than twenty years and have experience with strategic marketing planning, budget management, and lead generation with a return on investment approach at various companies such as Kardex and Sanyo. I know well how to solve the problem of financial insolvency because bankruptcy is fundamentally a marketing failure of the individual or the business. What I would create would be the one that can fundamentally change the user's perception about their future financial health by creating their future self as the primary, inevitable customer. I would call it the Solvency Forecast Engine application. This application would be designed to defeat the bankruptcy by eliminating the fatal latency between now spending decisions about the future financial pain. It would first start to create a fully realized digital avatar of the user in sixty years in the future, named Future Solvency Mirror. This avatar becomes the only recipient of all notifications regarding current spending. For example, if the user spent an additional $200.00, the notification would pop up out of the avatar saying, "I am Future Hugh Dixon. That $200.00 just cut my available retirement income by 0.35 percent, and that delayed my asset independence by forty-two days. The app makes users take care of their long-term savings as a guaranteed revenue stream, the only way to beat insolvency.
I have worked in bank of America on the credit team in the middle office where I did an analysis on risk and then later had a front office position at JP Morgan. My background in leveraged finance and commercial banking covering manufacturing companies led me to the fact that the single biggest factor in survival is cash flow visibility. If I would create an application to solve bankruptcy it would be focused on real time inventory valuation and supply chain logistics since stagnant physical assets kill businesses faster than bad sales. Most manufacturing companies fail because they do not know how to convert their warehouses into cash during a sudden market change or a disruption anywhere in the world. This tool would use direct feeds from global transport hubs and production lines to provide an accurate 100.00 percent daily liquidation value of each and every item in the building. My time at a high growth startup that went public in 2020 taught me how fast debt can accumulate if you have no real data as to the logistics costs of your strategy. We could prevent liquidations if banks would provide instant credit lines based upon this checked live inventory data and not on old quarterly reports. This system offers a safety safety net for fast growing companies that are often asset rich and cash poor (long shipping times, production cycles etc).
If I were to develop an app, I would create an application called The Creative Vault; this app provides a safe haven from the emotional strain that comes with experiencing a financial crisis. Financial loss is a traumatic experience for the human body and causes the body's cortisol levels to increase by 200% and activates the ancient fear response centers. A persons' brain will no longer know how to plan for the future once they have lost their financial stability and will continue to be stuck in a heightened state of awareness. The Creative Vault allows users to express their heavy feelings through visual projects (with guided visualizations) rather than simply staring at a spreadsheet of all their debts. The Creative Vault will work as a means of using cognitive redirection to break the cycle of constant anxious thoughts of financial stress and the irrational fear responses of the amygdala. As long as the user engages in a structured and tactile activity, their brain will have less processing bandwidth to devote to irrational fear responses of the amygdala. Clinical studies have shown that participants of regular creative expressions reported a 25% improvement in making rational decisions during times of extreme stress. The Creative Vault will allow users to feel a sense of control and agency in their lives again while the outside world seems to be falling apart. By concentrating on the motion of the digital brush or the placement of color, users will be able to reset their nervous system.
I will create a predictive restructuring tool that will be able to directly connect to your payroll & debt accounts to stop financial collapse before it becomes a reality. Most people do not understand that most bankruptcies are caused by a relatively small cash flow gap in 6 to 12 months that has no viable exit strategy. When I worked at Quicken Loans, I learned that homeowners wait until they are 90 days delinquent on their mortgage to seek assistance. The tool would utilize your specific spending patterns to identify when your reserves fall 10% below your baseline and then automatically begin negotiating lower interest rates or payment pauses with your creditors. The software will protect your home equity, as this is typically the largest asset for many families. It will continuously monitor the markets for potential cash-out refinancing opportunities (or other types of subordinated liens) that may allow you to roll all of your high-interest credit card debt into one lower monthly payment. I had a recent customer where a total loss was avoided and they were able to save their credit score after a $12,000.50 injection into their bank account using the equity in their home. Your app would do these calculations nightly so that you never have to appear in court and/or lose your primary residence. Providing people with a real-time view of their recovery path eliminates the paralyzing fear that causes bad financial decision-making during times of crisis. If we give each household access to an early warning system that acts as a digital Chief Financial Officer, I believe we can lower the national bankruptcy rate by at least 25.50%. It is always less expensive to restructure a debt for $500 today rather than losing your entire financial future due to a lack of understanding of when your financial situation is going to become catastrophic.
I would build an app that helps owners turn constraints into action. It would show cash, time, and staffing limits in one place and guide daily choices that protect runway and focus resources on what works. As an entrepreneur, treating limits as opportunities helped me move the business forward, and this tool would bring that discipline to more teams before finances break down.
I run a wedding planning business and there is this fear that it would go south for couples during their engagement period so my idea of a bankruptcy prevention app is all about real-time cost tracking. Managing over 145 different vendors throughout Sydney and Brisbane has taught me that it is usually small hidden costs that cause the most damage to a household budget. The software that I propose would be able to sync directly with bank accounts in order to be able to categorize every single cent spent on event deposits or personal debts and also issue an immediate alert when spending surpasses 35 percent of the monthly income. Most people do not know that they are in trouble until the total is 15000 dollars or higher because they are viewing individual invoices rather than the total. Because I see so many families struggle with the rising costs of catering and floral arrangements, I would build a predictive model that would show the long term impact of every single purchase. This tool would graphically display the difference a simple 2500 dollar credit card swipe today would make in five years if only minimum payments were made. Using this particular data helps users in making decisions according to their future reality and not their current emotions.
If I were able to create an app designed to help solve bankruptcy, I would develop it at the crossroads between automation of debt payment and mindfulness. The app will connect to your bank account to identify when you are carrying high-interest debt, then automatically allocate portions of money as you spend each day, to pay those high-interest debts off first (i.e., principal balance), so that compounding interest is not added. Most people are unable to manage their debt due to the overwhelming size of their total debt burden and cannot therefore mentally choose well. This app uses an algorithm that creates micro-payments to the principal balance of the debt prior to allowing interest to continue to compound, which could potentially save the average user $4250.50 per year in interest payments. Plus, this app includes short, guided breathing exercises that prompt the user to take a pause anytime the user attempts to access a high-interest credit card portal or shopping site. In that pause, the user has the opportunity to determine whether the item being purchased is going to help stabilize their financial situation over the long term.
I've handled over 200 high-asset divorces in the past three decades, and here's what I see constantly: business owners who let their personal debt spiral because they're throwing everything into keeping their company alive during a rough patch. They drain personal savings, max out credit cards for payroll, then file bankruptcy when one more hit comes--often a divorce that forces a business valuation they can't afford. If I could build an app, it would be a "Marital Asset Firewall" that alerts business owners the moment their personal finances cross into dangerous territory relative to their business ownership. I had a client last year who owned a third-generation furniture manufacturing company worth $2M. He personally guaranteed $400K in business loans, then his marriage fell apart. Because North Carolina law gave his wife a marital interest in the business appreciation during the marriage, he faced either buying her out (impossible without liquidity) or selling the company his grandfather built. He filed Chapter 11 to stop the forced sale. The app would track your personal guarantee exposure against liquid assets and send alerts when the ratio hits bankruptcy-risk levels. It would calculate what a divorce would do to your business ownership before you're in crisis mode. I've seen people sign personal guarantees worth 3x their available cash without realizing their spouse has a claim to half the business--that's a bankruptcy waiting to happen. Most business accounting software tracks company health but ignores the personal financial mess that actually triggers bankruptcy. The key feature would be "divorce stress testing" your business structure. Run scenarios: if you split tomorrow, can you buy out your spouse's interest without bankruptcy? I've worked with CPAs who could have prevented bankruptcies if they'd flagged this exposure five years before the divorce filing, when restructuring was still possible.
I've spent 15 years resolving tax controversies, and here's what I've learned: most people who file bankruptcy could have avoided it if they'd known about IRS settlement programs earlier. At our firm, we have a 95% acceptance rate on Offers in Compromise because we know exactly when someone qualifies--but the national average is only 24%, meaning people are submitting offers blindly and making their situation worse. If I could build an app, it would be a "Tax Liability Triage System" that analyzes your IRS transcripts and determines your real settlement options before you make costly mistakes. I've seen clients waste 2-3 years trying DIY settlements that extend the collection statute, when they actually qualified for Currently Not Collectible status that would have let the debt expire naturally. The app would calculate your "reasonable collection potential" using IRS formulas and tell you if you're better off waiting out the 10-year statute or negotiating now. The killer feature would be statute expiration tracking. I've had cases where clients were about to pay $80,000 in back taxes when their debt was 6 months from expiring legally. An automated alert system could save people from paying debts they don't legally owe anymore--something most tax software completely ignores. Entertainment industry clients especially need this because their income fluctuates wildly. They'll owe $200K one year and make $30K the next, but they don't realize hardship status exists until liens are filed. An app that automatically flags when your income drops below collection thresholds could prevent 90% of the levy cases I handle.
I run an independent insurance brokerage in Olympia, and I've watched business owners drain their life savings trying to cover claims that insurance should've handled. If I could build an app to prevent bankruptcy, it would be an "Employee Benefits Cost Calculator" that shows business owners the exact dollar impact of NOT offering basic benefits like workers' comp or health insurance. Here's why: I've seen three small contractors in the past year face six-figure lawsuits after workplace injuries because they thought they were saving money by skipping proper coverage. One plumber paid $180,000 out of pocket for an employee's fall--his entire business savings--when a $3,500 annual workers' comp policy would've covered it. The app would show that math instantly: "Skip this $3,500 policy, risk $180,000+ in personal liability." The second feature would calculate the actual cost of employee turnover versus offering a basic 401(k) match. When we help clients add even a 3% match, their retention jumps dramatically--I've tracked one client who went from losing 4 employees yearly (costing roughly $40,000 in recruiting and training) to losing just one. That's real money saved that prevents the cash flow disasters that lead to bankruptcy. The app would basically translate "optional" benefits into "this is what bankruptcy looks like without them" using real claim data from your specific industry and zip code. Most small business owners I work with think they're being financially smart by going bare-bones, but they're actually one incident away from closing their doors permanently.
I've managed portfolios through multiple market cycles and bankruptcies, and here's what I've seen repeatedly: people don't go bankrupt because they spend recklessly--they go bankrupt because one unexpected event (medical bill, job loss, divorce) hits when they have zero liquidity buffer. They've got all their money locked in retirement accounts or real estate they can't access without penalties. If I built an app, it would be a "Liquidity Health Monitor" that tracks your accessible cash as a percentage of your fixed obligations over the next 12 months. When we added JPM and WMT during that 2,500-point swing in April, our clients could act because they had dry powder--most Americans can't survive 30 days without a paycheck. The app would alert you when your accessible funds drop below 3 months of obligations and force you to see the math: "You need $18,000 liquid. You have $2,400." The key feature would be "stress testing"--it would simulate what happens if you lose your income tomorrow. I watched this play out with UnitedHealth dropping 40% last year. Employees who were overweighted in company stock and had no outside liquidity got crushed. An app that shows "if X happens, you'll be insolvent in 47 days" would terrify people into building actual safety nets instead of pretending their 401(k) counts as emergency savings.
I'm Cody Jensen, the CEO and founder of Searchbloom, an SEO and PPC marketing firm. If I could build an app to stop bankruptcy, it wouldn't claim to fix money problems. People tune that out. I'd build something closer to a financial mirror. An app that shows you what's actually happening before things slide too far. Most bankruptcies don't come from reckless choices. They come from small decisions repeated for too long. A few tight months turn into a year. A short-term workaround becomes a habit. The app would track cash flow, spending patterns, and debt trends, then surface blunt insights in plain language. The real value would be timing. The app would interrupt denial early, while options still exist. An app that forces an honest pause early could change outcomes long before lawyers get involved.
If I could build one app to meaningfully reduce bankruptcy, it wouldn't be a rescue tool. It would be a real-time financial early-warning system. Most bankruptcies are not sudden events. They are slow-motion failures preceded by the same signals: tightening cash flow, rising fixed obligations, margin erosion, and delayed decision-making. The problem isn't that founders or operators don't understand their numbers. It's that the numbers arrive too late, fragmented across accounts, and stripped of context. By the time the problem is obvious, every remaining option is already expensive or unavailable. An effective app would continuously integrate bank balances, receivables, subscriptions, payroll, debt obligations, and upcoming commitments, then translate that data into forward-looking risk indicators rather than backward-looking reports. The real value wouldn't be dashboards. It would be forcing clarity. The app would surface tradeoffs early, show when runway is shrinking faster than expected, and make explicit which decisions still matter and which no longer do. Bankruptcy usually happens after leaders lose optionality. The goal of the app would be to preserve optionality long before crisis thinking sets in. Albert Richer, Founder, WhatAreTheBest.com
I run a healthcare company that sees the financial collapse up close. I've watched smart, hardworking people go bankrupt not from one bad decision, but from ten small ones made while exhausted, scared, and untreated. If I could build an app to "solve" bankruptcy, it would touch capacity. Most bankruptcies I've seen start when someone's physical or mental bandwidth collapses. Injury, chronic pain, burnout, caring for a parent, a child with disability. Bills pile up because the person can't think clearly enough to sequence tasks. The app would act like a ruthless external brain. It would break life into non-negotiables, pause everything else, and force triage. Rent, utilities, food, meds. Everything else gets frozen, auto-negotiated, or delayed without shame. The real feature would be friction removal. One tap to generate hardship letters. One tap to book a free legal or health assessment. One tap to pause subscriptions, defer fines, or switch to statutory minimums. I've seen people recover financially once their nervous system stabilised. Bankruptcy isn't a money problem first. It's a cognitive load problem.
I've done 15+ years of estate planning and seen hundreds of probate cases, and here's what actually drives people to bankruptcy: medical debt combined with becoming someone's caregiver. A parent gets sick, the adult child steps in without legal authority, racks up $80K in personal debt trying to keep mom alive, then mom dies and there's nothing left to reimburse them. If I could build an app, it would be "Caregiver Financial Guardrails" that automatically calculates when you should stop paying for someone else's care out of pocket. I had a client who spent three years covering her mother's memory care at $8K/month because she didn't realize she could petition the court for conservatorship and use her mother's assets legally. She filed bankruptcy two years after her mom passed--zero inheritance, just debt. The app would prompt you to get a power of attorney before crisis hits, then track every dollar you spend as a caregiver against the assets the person you're caring for actually has. It would alert you: "You've spent $15K on dad's care. His savings: $200K. You need legal authority to access his money, or you're heading toward bankruptcy." Most people caregiving don't realize they're personally liable for debts they're signing for until collections starts calling. The brutal part is I see this in estate administration constantly--the kid who paid for everything shows up expecting reimbursement from the estate, but there's no paper trail proving what they spent or that it was agreed to. They're out $100K and their siblings get equal shares anyway.
I left corporate nonprofit management at 60 to start FZP Digital, and the biggest bankruptcy trigger I saw wasn't poor products or bad markets--it was businesses that looked profitable on paper but couldn't pay bills because nobody understood their digital presence was broken. I had clients with strong financials who were hemorrhaging opportunities because their website took 12 seconds to load or didn't work on mobile devices, and they had no idea how much revenue they were losing daily. If I built an app, it would be a "Digital Revenue Leak Detector" that tracks three critical metrics most businesses ignore: bounce rate by traffic source, mobile conversion rates versus desktop, and cost-per-acquisition trends across channels. I worked with a medical practice that was spending $3K monthly on Google Ads with a beautiful ROI on desktop, but their mobile site was so broken that 78% of mobile visitors left immediately--they were literally paying to drive people away and didn't know it for eight months. The app would send alerts when your mobile conversion rate drops 15% below desktop, when organic traffic falls month-over-month, or when your site speed crosses into the danger zone. One of my retail clients finded through our analytics that their checkout process had a bug causing 40% cart abandonment on iPhones specifically--fixing that one issue recovered roughly $8K in monthly revenue they didn't know they were losing. Most businesses treat their website like a static brochure when it's actually their most important salesperson working 24/7. My accounting background taught me that small leaks sink ships, and in 2024, those leaks are almost always digital and completely invisible until someone actually measures them.
I've run Select Insurance Group across 12 locations in the Southeast since 2008, and I've watched people dig themselves into holes they can't climb out of--not because of one big disaster, but because of small recurring expenses they can't track. If I could build an app to prevent bankruptcy, it would be a "Subscription & Recurring Payment Tracker" that maps out every auto-debit hitting your account and shows you the annual cost in one brutal number. Most people have no idea they're spending $4,000-$6,000 per year on subscriptions they forgot about or services that auto-renewed. I've had clients in our Florida and Carolina offices who were paying for three different streaming services, two gym memberships they never use, and car insurance on a vehicle they sold two years ago. When we help them audit their policies, we find an average of $200-$400 per month in waste--that's emergency fund money disappearing into thin air. The app would send you a monthly "spending intervention" alert when your recurring charges increase by more than 10%, and it would force you to manually confirm you want to keep each subscription every 90 days. Our 30+ years in insurance has taught me one thing: people don't go broke from one bad decision, they bleed out from a thousand small cuts they're not watching.
If I could build anything, it would essentially be an AI-driven collective bargaining platform for consumer debt. The biggest reason people slide into bankruptcy is that they're overwhelmed trying to deal with aggressive collectors, but an app could solve this by removing the human element entirely so that people wouldn't have to advocate for themselves individually. You'd just connect your delinquent accounts, and the app would use AI to analyze a creditor's history, like knowing, for example, that a certain bank almost always folds and accepts 40 cents on the dollar for debt that's six months old. It would be able to dispatch an automated agent and send a formal, legally sound offer that leaves the emotional confrontation out of it. It would be great if it could also use collective leverage to help consumers take their power back. Instead of you fighting the bank alone, the app would bundle you with thousands of other users who owe money to the same creditor. Banks ignore individuals, but they listen to bulk settlements. The AI wouldn't approach them with a $5,000 offer, but it could walk in with a $5 million bulk offer on behalf of 1,000 users to settle everything instantly. It adds union-style power to consumer debt so you can get better deals you'd never be able to land alone and stop the slide into bankruptcy before it starts.
Job loss and low income is one of the biggest issues with bankruptcy, so I'd like an app that helps people manage their cash flow better. A lot of people end up with a lower income for longer than expected, and they can quickly burn through the cash they need to survive. The app would instantly automate the hard stuff when you lose your job, like pausing subscriptions, deferring loans, and cutting your budget to the bone. If you cut spending quickly, it can double your runway by making those painful decisions on day one instead of day ninety. The other side of the equation that everyone misses is immediate cash flow. You can't just save your way out of a crisis—you have to earn your way out so that cash starts coming in again. The tool could immediately plug you into the API of gig economy platforms like Uber or Upwork. It could tell you exactly what you need to earn that day to keep the lights on and then provide you with tasks nearby to make enough extra cash to float your costs until you have a new job.
If I could build an app to address bankruptcy, I wouldn't start with money at all. I'd start with behavior. Over the years, working with founders, executives, and everyday professionals across industries, I've noticed that bankruptcy rarely comes from a single bad decision. It's usually the result of dozens of small, unchecked choices made under stress, optimism, or fear. The app I'd want to create would act more like an early warning system than a financial miracle cure. It would quietly monitor patterns, not just balances. Things like accelerating cash burn, delayed bill payments, reliance on short-term fixes, or emotional spending spikes. Those signals often show up months before a crisis, but humans are very good at rationalizing them away. What makes this important is that shame keeps people from asking for help early. I've watched talented entrepreneurs ride problems far longer than they should because admitting trouble felt like failure. An app that normalizes course correction and offers private, judgment-free insight could change that dynamic. Instead of flashing red alerts, it would prompt reflection, suggest small corrective actions, and connect users to education or professional help before things spiral. From my own entrepreneurial experience, the moments that saved me weren't dramatic rescues. They were timely pauses that forced me to confront reality sooner than I wanted to. Bankruptcy prevention isn't about eliminating risk. It's about increasing awareness and giving people the confidence to act while options still exist. An app that helps people see the truth earlier, without fear or stigma, would be far more powerful than one that simply tracks dollars.