Real Housewives has become synonymous with faux riches and bankruptcy! And some girls are going bust before they ever pretend to play rich on TV! Claudia Jordan just joined Real Housewives Of Atlanta, and she’s already dealt with a shady financial past! Which means that hopefully she has learned from her mistakes and won’t be repeating them! No amount of ‘Red Bottoms’ is worth a day in court!
In 2012 Claudia filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy. The former Celebrity Apprentice cast member admits that bad borrowing, coupled with loss of employment and a divorce put her into that mess. Well at least it wasn’t shoes! Or $100,000 worth of furniture… “I definitely had money and lost it all and got it back, lost it all again and now I’m on the upswing,” Claudia admits. “I was a victim of some predatory loans.”
While a court order dismissed her bankruptcy after one month, Claudia says that her financial pitfall, on top of an annulment and Deal Or No Deal being canceled took her to a very dark place emotionally.
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“I remember I was depressed for a while to the point I was actually suicidal,” Claudia recalls. “I was very proud of buying all my real estate on my own and [then] my show got canceled, I went through a divorce, basically I lost my work.”
“I hit rock bottom. I lost everything, including my real estate,” Claudia shares. “Everything happened at the same time and I was depressed.” In fact it was actually depression that ultimately caused her finances to suffer the most. “I laid in bed for months, and honestly I didn’t work. I was depressed and I fell behind.”
Feeling out-of-control and emotionally vulnerable Claudia felt she had no other option but to file for bankruptcy. “There was someone that came to me that said, ‘Hey, I can help you. I can thaw it out,’” she tells Radar Online. “I paid him $10,000 and he started to file the bankruptcy proceedings, but then we never followed through with it.”
Having a change of heart, Claudia decided to face her financial debacle head-on and repay her debts. “I ended up paying off what I owed, but someone filed on my behalf and we didn’t follow through with it,” she admits. Claudia says some people still judged her.
Today, Claudia is not embarrassed or ashamed, “I know that’s something people like to throw in my face, but you know what, a lot of people have gone through bankruptcy.” She says a bad economy put her and many others in the same financial predicaments and says she was a “victim” of bad investments.
“A lot of people went though foreclosure when the banks collapsed and the real estate collapsed and all that,” Claudia continues. “I was a victim of that. I was upside down. I had $1 million dollars in property that I had and it wasn’t worth it anymore.”
Claudia decided she would be open and honest with viewers about her past before the show aired because she wants to encourage others. “Like I said, there’s a lot of people out there that are dealing with a lot of sadness and adversity and I want them to look to me like, ‘Wow, if she dug herself out of that hole, then there is hope for me.’”
She also hopes viewers will give her a chance and not judge too harshly – at least not at first. “Be open minded,” Claudia suggests. “I’m not like the other girls. I have a quirky sense of humor. I have a smart mouth sometimes. I’m a little rough around the edges, but I am real.”
Well, you know what – hey, people find themselves in shaky situations financially and so long as Claudia repaid her debts and isn’t making the same mistakes again, who are we to judge? I went through a job loss years ago that caused me to rely on credit cards for a while. I applaud her for being upfront and also reminding people there is hope. And like I said, it’s not like she was spending $13 million or $8 million on shopping and plastic surgery. Or houses all over the world. Or getting Aston Martins repo’d.
[Photo Credit: Alex Martinez/Bravo]
TELL US – WILL YOU GIVE CLAUDIA A CHANCE?
