called like this

incomeTypes.forEach {
            val incomeType = IncomeType.valueOf(it, IncomeType.UNKNOWN)

Maybe this would be useful https://stackoverflow.com/a/51663849 So you can write

enumConstants.firstOrNull { it.name == name } ?: default

Oops! I forgot to update this after finding a good solution. I think I'm actually going to recommend

inline fun <reified T: Enum<T>> String.enumWithDefault(defaultValue: T) : T {
    return try{
        enumValues<T>().first {it.name == this }
    } catch (e: NoSuchElementException) {
        defaultValue
    }
}

or

inline fun <reified T : Enum<T>> enumValueOf(name: String, defaultValue: T): T {
    return try {
        enumValues<T>().first { it.name == name }
    } catch (e: NoSuchElementException) {
        defaultValue
    }
}

to the dev.

if you care about performance you should probably use

firstOrNull { it.name == name } ?: default

. Creating Exceptions is quite expensive, because of the generated stack trace.

Yeah I know. We don't really care about performance. 😅 it's the mortgage world

Still, small things like this add up, and I’d argue that the version without excpetions looks even better. And while you shouldn’t prematurely optimize code it’s also bad to write code, that is just slow, even though the faster alternative has no donesides (development time or complexity)

I'll recommend your version then. I think it is more readable.