I’m new to teaching, so a lot of times I encounter new terms.  I started working on a paper last year about the relationship between fringe banking (payday loans, rent-to-own, etc.) and financial distress.  I realized half way into the project that I really didn’t know what financial distress meant.  The concept comes up a lot.  Seriously, I mean really a lot.  But, it is not defined very often.

I’ve looked at the 300 or so times financial distress comes up in law review articles on Lexis, and I still am left without a clear sense of what the word means.  I’ve settled on two definitions for my paper, but I’m curious about what people mean when they say “financial distress.”