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Sam Turco

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I was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, the 3rd of six children.  We grew up in the meat packing district of South Omaha.  I graduated from Omaha Central High School 1985.

 My wife, Kathy, and I are raising 3 children.   Outside of work, I spend a lot of time escorting children to sporting events while trying to sneak in a long bicycle ride on the weekends.

Areas of Practice
  • 100% Bankruptcy Law
Litigation Percentage
  • 5% of Practice Devoted to Litigation
Bar Admissions
  • Nebraska, 1992
  • Iowa
  • U.S. District Court District of Nebraska, 2010
  • U.S. Tax Court
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The basic concept of the Life Sucks Budget is that for many of us there is just not enough money to pay the claims of bill collectors AND to pay the really important things of life, like retirement savings, emergency cash accounts, mortgage payments and modest family vacations. Something has to give, and too many of us put ourselves last and pay nothing towards our future needs and dreams so that we can just get by another month without receiving embarrassing phone calls or letters. The Life Sucks Budget is a call to rebalance this relationship and to put our legitimate financial and family needs first.

The fact is, many of you are already on the Life Sucks Budget but you don’t realize it or perhaps you are reluctant to confess that is what you are doing.

Spending 25 years interviewing clients about their financial habits reveals that at least half of the people I meet have no hope of being financially successful. They just want to get through the week and find a little peace in their day. They do not believe that they can win financially, and that mindset has a radical affect on their behavior.Continue Reading Life Sucks Budget: Part II

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Rule #1 of credit counseling is when you are trying to get out of debt you must forgo some expenses while paying off debt. The advice is universal. Decrease expenses. Increase income with a part-time job. Sell some stuff to raise cash. Get the debt snowball rolling. Suck it up and double down on the smallest debt and then the next smallest until all the debt is gone. Live like a crazy person until you can scream out loud I’M DEBT FREE!

And if your debt problem is that you spend money like a moron and you just need to grow up and cut expenses and work a pizza delivery job at night until you pay off the debt, that may be good advice. Dave Ramsey has built a 55 million dollar financial empire by giving out such advice.Continue Reading Life Sucks Budget

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In performing financial autopsies for my bankruptcy clients over the past 25 years I have noticed one common mistake people make. They fail to prioritize their money.

Priorities matter. Successful people have a common trait–they prioritize their day and do he most important tasks first. They write lists. They have WRITTEN goals for their day. They plan their day in advance, and then they go out an kick butt.

But when it comes to money, especially money in marriage, even organized people get messed up about how to set priorities with their money. Why is that?

I think part of the answer lies in those sappy marriage courses we take before our weddings.  You know, the ones that say how a man and women become one and cease to have separate identities. No secrets in marriage. Everything is shared. Mutual submission. Love is generous and we support one another give all that we have to each other. Sound familiar? And somehow out of this marriage class people conclude that in marriage you should have a single joint bank account that is shared and all money earned goes into it and all expenses are paid out of it. No secrets. Complete transparency. Mutual submission. Yeah, what could go wrong with this plan?

When all of your money sits in a single bank account you effectively have no money priorities.

It is moronic for a married couple to handle all of their finances out of a single bank account. This is pretend land. It’s crazytown. When all of your money sits in a single bank account you effectively have no money priorities. Buying pizza has the same priority as paying the mortgage or insurance or saving for emergencies because when money is not divided into separate accounts there is no priority to the spending, and that is just not true.

Some expenses are more important than others.  We all know that. Paying the mortgage or the insurance premium or saving for emergencies is vastly more important than paying for temporary needs, like a slice of pizza. And even if we verbally agree with this statement, if we just nod our head and do nothing more, then nothing has changed. Establishing priorities means taking action. It means dividing money into separate accounts based on their priority level.Continue Reading Pay Yourself First Part II: How to implement it.

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There is one simple habit that all financially successful people do–they pay themselves first.

That phrase has always annoyed me.  Pay myself first?  What exactly does that mean? I heard financial gurus say that phrase over and over, and it just came off as cocky and glib.

“Want to become rich boy?  Well, it’s simple. Just pay yourself first!”  What?  You can’t just pay yourself into wealth. You have to create the wealth.  Build the business. Land the great job. Earn the money, and THEN you save money and become rich.  Right?

Wrong. Want to get rich? Pay yourself first. Want to pay off the mortgage in retire with money in the bank? Then pay yourself first. Have financial problems? Pay yourself first.

In fact, the less money you earn the more important it is to pay yourself first.Continue Reading Pay Yourself First

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The Eight Circuit Bankruptcy  Appellate Panel denied an application seeking to discharge student loans because the debtor voluntarily quit a full-time job eight months prior to filing bankruptcy.

The debtor, Erin Kemp, is a 36-year-old single mom raising a 13-year-old daughter in Arkansas.  She obtained a psychology degree in 2010 and for the past 17 years she worked for a bank earning up to $45,000 per year.  However, eight months prior to filing bankruptcy she quit her full-time bank job due to problems with depression and anxiety and took a part-time job at Lowe’s earning $13.46 per hour. She supplemented her income by performing home daycare services as well.Continue Reading 8th Circuit BAP Denies Discharge of Student Loan

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Since February 5, 2018  debtors filing bankruptcy in Nebraska have been allowed to sign their petitions and other court documents using digital signatures pursuant to  General Order 18-01.  So what have we learned about the use of  digital signatures in bankruptcy since then?

I recently had the pleasure of speaking to an official at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts who was seeking some feedback on how digital signatures were affecting the bankruptcy practice. (Nebraska is the only bankruptcy court the nation that allows debtors to sign documents digitally.)  Here are some of my observations:Continue Reading Digital Signatures in Bankruptcy Update

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The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has turned away an appeal of a $28.1 million dollar judgment awarded to 6 plaintiffs (commonly referred to as the Beatrice Six) for damages imposed by a federal jury for a reckless investigation and manufacturing false evidence orchestrated  by the Gage County Sheriff’s department. The plaintiffs spent two decades…

Money is a complicated topic. It is often very obvious what a person must do to improve their financial situation, but getting someone to change their financial habits and attitudes is hard. Good financial advice seems to go in one ear and out the other as clients continue to repeat the same destructive patterns over…

Nebraska becomes the first bankruptcy court in the nation to allow debtors to sign bankruptcy petitions digitally.

An amendment to Nebraska Rule of Bankruptcy Procedulre 9011-1 became effective February 5 allowing attorney to use services like DocuSign and SignEasy to obtain client signatures on official court pleadings.

The immediate reaction? One central Nebraska attorney emailed…