Plan Modified, woo-hoo!

[woeisme]

Checked PACER this morning, got my plan modified from $1100/month to $400/month. Hubby became disabled (back injury) so our income dropped. First attorney put in a 3-month suspension of payments in March, when that was up she put in for a modification of plan. We also got permission to buy a car as part of the modification (this adds $300 to our monthly budget, so the real change in our total budget is only $400, but much better to be paying less and getting a used minivan in the deal!). We've been waiting forever for the ruling it seems (ok, just since June 2nd) but the judge back-dated it to June and since we already paid our June and July payments, we're also going to get a refund of $1400! So, while being in a CH 13 sucks most of the time, today it is pretty sweet! Just had to share that 1) yes, you can get your plan modified if "life" happens, and 2) yes, you can get a car in CH 13, although finding financing was tricky but do-able.

Only 37 payments to go!

[optimistic1]

Good for you!

[justbroke]

Nice! That's how it's done folks... take notes!

[Billssuck]

How did you find financing for the car during the ch13? This may be an issue for us down the road as we didn't get a new car before we filed (ours all have over 130K miles or more on them).

Currently we don't have enough DMI to afford a car payment. But I'm looking possibly at modifying our plan due to an increase in income (finally a full-time position at work that I've been waiting on for 6 years may come open) and if so, I will have a higher DMI that could afford a car payment plus pay into the plan more (yuck!)

I'm taking notes!

[liz417]

Great news!! Congrats

[woeisme]

Sorry I didn't answer your question about financing earlier Billssuck, I was out of town for a week. Anyhow, Once we got approved by the trustee to include a $300/month car payment in our modified plan, (well, actually while waiting for approval) we started looking into financing. I tried a couple places online that say they do financing for those in BK, but finally went with a local car place that does in-house financing. A "buy here-pay here" place. My trustee required that the financing rate be 17.9% or less (I would have turned up my nose at a rate above 9.9% in my pre-BK days before my credit went to hell...) and they worked with us on both the % and getting a car that fit our $300/month payment limit. As soon as trustee gave the ok, we bought the car, the judge didn't approve the modified plans until a few weeks later, so I was a little nervous until I got that final confirmation since we were now making car payments! But lawyer said once trustee approved, the judge would rubber-stamp, it was just a waiting game at that point since creditors have to be notified and given a certain amount of time to respond.