Filing today...feeling relieved but worried

[jhy12]

Hello all,

Filing today officially. Been a month and a half since meeting with the bk lawyer. She seemed to think everything would go through just fine (no red flags in our expenses, everything documented if it's over the average). But...I guess I should be celebrating but I'm worried about how low our payment is. When we were trying to make ends meet, our payments to creditors was over $2400. Our first payment was estimated at $1800 but that was during the really quick intitial consult (before we really looked at our expenses). Our payment in bk will be around $600. It just seems so crazy...

We did add in a car payment (was told to get a new car before going into bk, hence the delay from meeting to filing) and much of our daily expenses were getting charged to the credit cards. We also were living VERY VERY frugally with groceries and my daughter wasn't in any activities (and we were really living cheaply/cutting out everything to make ends meet).

So I guess I'm just kinda shocked and worried but yet relieved to finally get the process going. Anyone have experience with this (payments going wayyyy down from what you were paying before?!)

[justbroke]

Yes, payments go WAY down before! This is because, in a Chapter 13, you only pay what you can afford after your necessary expenses are taken away. The only time this magic formula doesn't work, is where a Chapter 13 debtor decides to keep property that they really can't afford or they are trying to protect equity in property.

Now you can relax and just keep up your payments to the Trustee. It's nice not having the wrong ring incessantly.