Finally started today....

[Anonymous]

My husband and I started to topic of BK last Oct, and today we finally paid our portion to file. They will prepare the petition for us to sign, and then we're off! I am so nervous and relieved at the same time. I am 27 years old and my husband is 28. We have 3 kids and a good amount of debt. This all started when we met with 2 different credit repair agencies last summer in hopes of buying our first home, and they both said we would be better off filing bankruptcy. After a lot of research, they were right. This is more than just a fresh start for us. This is our oppourtunity at our first home! We have 2 repos from almost 7 years ago that have been looming over our heads this entire time. Both crappy situations and 1 of them was our mistake for going to a buy here pay here and getting the WORST deal possible. If only we knew then what we know now. On top of repos is a surmountable amount of medical bills and my husband has a few CC's from his years in the Army and thinking he was invincible! Haha. I have never had a CC in my name. We have no house in our name. At this point, no cars in our name. My dad was gracious enough to buy myself a car in 2012 and I pay him every month for the payment. Last year he bought himself a new truck and gave my husband his old truck. However both vehicles are on their very last leg and we have 3 kids shoved in my teeny tiny car (at the time of buying the car we only had 1 child) and we are at our wits end. We are so dead set on doing this right and financially becoming what we've always wanted to be. I want to cry and jump up and down excited at the same time. Currently our scores are both in the mid 500's. I know not to expect a huge jump, but seeing as how a few years ago my score was a 393, I am pretty optimistic to see what can change.

Sorry for the long post, I am just so ready to get this going and make a better life for our kids before we can't dig ourselves out of this anymore. 

[christina35]

I’ve been reading these forums in hopes of not feeling like a complete failure. Like you, I began our process towards Chapter 7 on Wednesday by paying our retainer fee. It felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders walking out of the attorney’s office. I made dumb financial decisions & I’m ready to not ever go down that road again.

Best wishes to you!

[Anonymous]

We're all here for so many different reasons but no matter what, we're all determined to make sure we don't end up here again. 

Keep that fire burning, you are going to need it today and tomorrow and forevermore. And you have a bunch of people here to help, if you have questions or just need support :-) 

Best of luck.

[Anonymous]

Thank You everyone! We got our 341 letter today! 3/13 is the meeting with our creditors.

On the letter it says the filing deadline is 5/14. Is that also our discharge date?

[C_DUBYA]

Good luck on the journey.  Yes that second date is usually your discharge as well.

[Scupra]

Congrats and good luck to you! Remember the 341 sounds much scarier than it actually is. Just make sure you have all required documents.

[Anonymous]

We are definitely ready for the meeting! We are doing everything we can go make the best of this.

Unfortunately though we’ve had a set back. My husband was injured at work in 2016 and was out for 6 months. We had a hard time getting ahead of everything and then he started his new job last October. In November when he was paid, they overpaid him. By quite a bit. And honestly that day we were 2 months behind on rent (if we didn’t pay by 9am that day, they were filing eviction on us) and 3 months behind on our car payments, so we decided to use what he was over paid and paid the rent and car payments. It didn’t just happen to him, and since it was a mistake on their end they agreed to make payment arrangements. We had an arrangement for them to deduct $750 once a month from his 15th day paycheck. It’s been going well until all of a sudden they had someone new come in and throw out the payment arrangements. They are now taking away all of his bonuses until it is repaid. Today’s paycheck they took more than $2400 (with 1 days notice). They essentially took 75% of his paycheck and they won’t budge on working with us. It should be repaid by the end of next month, but until then his paycheck is no where near close to paying our bills. His check today was less than our rent. So now we will fall behind on our bills for the next month. I’m sick. I know they can’t evict us etc, but we were finally ahead and we were going to start putting money aside for after discharge to rebuild. It’s such a mess. What bad timing. When it rains I guess.

[Scupra]

I’m so sorry to hear. Keep your head up and continue pushing towards the light at the end of the tunnel.

[Anonymous]

Many on this forum have been in bad situations so no one should feel bad 

mostly due to illness , divorce or job loss. BK is federal law to give people fresh start. It used to be easier to use bk but bank lobbies recently made it more difficult. 

[Anonymous]

Hopefully you will be able to withstand 6 weeks (right?) of less income. Contact all your utilities/creditors and explain the situation and see if you can work something out. You may wish to ask your attorney whether it is wise to mention the BK when speaking to creditors ~ some creditors take this well some don't. If they bring it up, refer all questions directly to the atty and give name/contact info. (This assumes you are still paying creditors. If you have stopped paying, then disregard)
However, utilities should be easier to work with.

You should be able to do this. Trust me, even though BK7 is a "shorter" process MANY of us hit setbacks during the 6mos-1y+ it often takes to save up, file, and be discharged and begin rebuild. I know I did, several times (smaller potatoes than this, but potatoes nonetheless :-)) 

Take heart, sit down at the table and do some planning. You can get through this.