Car Payment

[t&msmom]

I just got a letter from my attorney. I had emailed her asking questions about taxes, etc. She states in her letter that she isn't concerned with exemptions, but is concerned about our high car payment. ($324 mo...2005 Trailblazer.) She can't "MAKE" us give it up can she? We can afford it. I didn't lie on our schedules, but I left a little room. (For food, I put that we spend on a family of 4 $450/month. Some months we spend that much, others we don't. Not to mention we always get back income tax refunds, and we don't blow them. We put them into savings so we can use it for if funds get tight one month.)
TIA

[ameliabedilia]

How much do you show that you have left over on your schedule J? She can't make you give up your car, but she might not be comfortable representing those numbers. I see you mentioned income taxes and savings. Do you have a savings account? How much do you get back?

[t&msmom]

We don't have a savings account right now, for two reasons...we just payed our home taxes, which was $1300, and every extra penny we've had for the last month has gone to the attorney. Normally, I try to put an at least $250/month into savings. I've got it worked up in my budget, we can afford the car. We normally get back around $4,000 for our income taxes. So that breaks down to an additional $333 a month, even though it isn't income, I can still use it if needed. (We normally file the first of February, and then put that into our savings and use it when needed.) My husband also gets overtime periodically. It isn't all the time, so we can't depend on it, but we do try to put that into savings as well. Couldn't we just not reaffirm the loan, and call it a day? Then we could keep it as long as we were paying on it, and it wouldn't tick her off? I don't want to get rid of our car. We just got it. Plus, I traded our old car in for it. The only other vehicle we have is a 1995 GMC Sonoma, which isn't safe for the kids in the back. You can't put carseats in the back. (The kids are 6 & 4. They have to be in a booster seat until at least the age of 8 in VT.) With us filing BK, there isn't any way we are going to be able to finance a cheaper car anytime in the future. And honestly, for a 4wd vehicle, I don't think the payment is too insane. Thanks

[ameliabedilia]

So, on your schedules do you come up negative? If you do you need to change your witholdings and quit getting $4k back every year, you could use that money each month. It is NEVER a good idea financially to give the IRS a huge loan every year that does not charge them interest. I know people like getting the once a year treat, but for so many of us here, if we had that extra money each month, we wouldn't have been using our credit cards so much and been paying the outrageous interest rates each month.
Now, off my soapbox- We filed pro se and we just called the car company, told them we were filing bankruptcy but we wanted to keep paying for the car. They sent us some paperwork and that was it. I do know that if you come up negative on your schedules then the trustee can make you go to the judge to have a hearing to decide if they will let you keep the car. This is for your own good. They don't want you to start off your fresh start already having trouble paying bills. You want to be able to come up about even on your schedule with the car payment included. I know that if you use a lawyer they can sign off on some type of reaffirmation, and sometimes they refuse to do that. I don't know much about that because we didn't use lawyer.

I agree that it's important to have a safe vehicle for your kids and $324 isnt' bad for a 2 year old car.

[t&msmom]

Thanks for the advice on the taxes. We plan on changing his withholdings January first. (We are a family of four. DH has (2) for his withholdings. How many can we have?) I don't want to do it now, because it'd look a little fishy changing stuff as we're trying to file. When the lawyer was doing the budget up, she was adding in things like Tires for the car, clothing, etc...stuff we DO buy. However, we don't do it monthly. And food...I could cut it back on our expense sheet to say, $275 a month. We normally spend at least $120 every two weeks, but we also buy a half a pig a year, DH hunts, we buy meat on sale, etc. So I KNOW we can afford the vehicle. Couldn't we just cut out our entertainment expenses, etc on the budget form? Is there a chance we could just nor reaffirm the loan, and pay on it? They can't make us not pay right? That sounds funny. lol. I can understand the lawyer not wanting us to reaffirm...I agree with her we shouldn't. But I also don't want to lose our vehicle. ugh, and my lawyer doesn't like getting back in touch with me, and is very vague with her answers. She told me her job is to protect us...I understand that. But it's driving me nuts that she won't get back to me on anything!!!