Hey Woeisme...

[Buckeye1974]

I really don't know how I would have gotten through all of this without this forum. You all have been amazing!

I really hope we get to keep our return. We will finally have an emergency savings again. My hubby and I put every last penny into his business and rising diesel prices just about killed us.

Is there anything you know now that you wish you would have asked before your 341?

Ours is May 20. If you don't mind me asking, did your payment stay close to what your lawyer worked out? I am afraid when we get in there, it's gonna change. My husband's work just depends on how busy the terminal is and for some reason it's been horribly slow.

[helpless]

My payment stayed the exact same as what was listed. We had to add the IRS after confirmation, so that added 3 months to our plan, but no change to the amount. Good luck.

[Buckeye1974]

Helpless-
Thanks! We will need the luck to keep our sanity! I am sure I will have more questions in the future. Nice to know I have folks I can turn to.

Take Care!

[woeisme]

My plan payment also stayed the same as what the original filing proposed. I was very worried because I felt like we had "too much" flexibility in our budget, maybe a $300 buffer zone, so with all I had read about people having to resort to ramen noodles and having yard sales to get by, I was really thinking they would up the amount and try to force us into 100% payback. I was worried at the 341 meeting, and continued to worry all the way until confirmation, to tell the truth, I'm only starting to feel more relaxed about it now and we had our confirmation early in January. We had a few snags that almost gave me heart failure between the 341 and confirmation, because of a couple objections the trustee had (my lawyer hadn't filed my house appraisal, even though I sent it to her assistant before the 341 and gave it to her and the trustee's assistant at the 341, but somehow since it didn't come direct from the lawyer to the trustee, they lost it, and then they needed some verification form from my student loans on monthly payments since they are allowing us to continue paying on them outside the plan, and then there was some clerical error on one of the forms that my lawyer had to fix.) When you get that letter that the trustee "prays" that the judge reject your plan, it gets your heart racing even when you know the objections are all easily fixable! But anyhow, I'm slowly starting to adopt my husband's attitude that it will all work out and worrying about it doesn't help anything.

[helpless]

Sounds like we have the same husband, woeisme. My husband's take is what is is and we can't change it. It is so hard to have that same attitude!!

[woeisme]

Hi helpless, yes it is so hard to just let these things go and not worry about them. The attitude drove me crazy when we were first discussing filing. He did no research, just willing to go along with whatever the lawyer said and question nothing, seemed like a disaster waiting to happen to me!!! When we first got married, we had many arguements because he would get bills from credit collectors and never bother to open them, would just throw them away, and is how he got 3 default judgements against him!!! He had his wages garnished since before I met him and was just content to have the 25% taken out and ignore all the debts for the rest of his life I think! After 5 years of it where everything was put on my credit lines because his were in the tank, I was also at a breaking point financially and finally told him we had to file BK and he had the same attitude, gee okay-dokey, whatever, just have the trustee take out the wage order instead of the credit holders with their judgements...la..dee..da! And it kills me that in some ways he was right, despite being so laxidasical (sp?) it did all work out just fine and dandy (at least so far) and now they are only taking ~20% of our take-home pay instead of 25%, and since we no longer have to pay child support for his oldest son (19 years old) we actually have more money than we ever did before filing, go figure!

[helpless]

I know in my case, I am the one to figure out how we are going to pay everything when something breaks down. Last month we had both car repair $424 and state taxes of $450, so I had to do some creative financing!! Good Luck.