Keeping a computer in Ch. 7? Friend of mine's vehicle repo'd by unsecured creditor!

[debtmonster]

DebtMonster...as to your items (computer and Sony TV), I am assuming you are still or were making payments on these items. Sony probably doesn't want a 3 year old TV back when their models have been upgraded substantially since that time and it's value has dropped considerably since that time especially with all the newer models now on the market at lower prices than three years ago. I am not certain as to your Macintosh since the purchase was only 9 months ago. It all depends who sold it to you, the agreement you signed at purchase and how you purchased it (store credit card, Visa, M/C, etc.).

My wife did it on her AMEX card and bought it from the Apple store on Apple.com.

Why would Sony take it back when Sony didn't sell it to me? Best Buy is the one who sold it.

We also bought a PS3 last year as well. We owe just over $2600 on our Best Buy card I think. All of this stuff is in my wife's name. We also owe $3800 to Rooms to Go for our living room sofa's and dining room table.

I would be happy to give it all back and start fresh. You have not talked to my wife. She is the most stubborn person you would EVER have met in your life. She totally refuses to give back anything. I have been hounding her forever to go bankrupt and she refuses. Now our money situation is REALLY getting bad. Before we had 3 incomes. Now we have one and it's starting to dwindle.

[ThreadsSnapping]

DebtMonster,

You seem to have made up your mind and are intent on keeping the SUV one way or another. And I also live in the country so I understand the long drive but I never once thought I had to have a BMW SUV because of it. Have you looked into the Huyndai SUV's lately? I know 2 people who have both bought one over the summer and one bought it instead of a BMW SUV and the other instead of the Mercedes SUV. I have a Huyndai sedan and hubby says it handles just as well as his BMW did.

And there are other SUV's that get 30mpg. I believe the Toyota Highlander is one of them and you can pick up a 2 year old one for about 18K. I don't see why you need to pay for a 43K vehicle when it can be replaced with a vehicle just as reliable and safe for less than half that. At the very least try and find a used version of the one you have now and buy that one. Yes, the interest will be sky high at first but your payment will still be lower and you can refi it in about a 6 months to a year to a more reasonable rate.

TS

[Flamingo]

It's a Macintosh, not a PC. It's a Mac Mini with a 23" monitor.

I've tried to sell stuff here in the past and I am lucky to get 10 cents on the dollar for anything I bought. People in my area are soooooooooooooooo cheap when it comes to buying used stuff.

I paid $1200 for a new sofa and love seat. It looked really nice. All I could get was $120 for it off of Craigslist. I kept lowering the price over and over until I finally got the phone call. It's going to be the same.

We also have a Sony 50" HDTV we bought in 2005 from Best Buy for $3200. What will happen to that? You know I'd be lucky to get $300 for it. Would Best Buy want it back?

DebtMonster...as to your items (computer and Sony TV), I am assuming you are still or were making payments on these items. Sony probably doesn't want a 3 year old TV back when their models have been upgraded substantially since that time and it's value has dropped considerably since that time especially with all the newer models now on the market at lower prices than three years ago. I am not certain as to your Macintosh since the purchase was only 9 months ago. It all depends who sold it to you, the agreement you signed at purchase and how you purchased it (store credit card, Visa, M/C, etc.).

[debtmonster]

Dump the SUV! YOu may be able to make the payments but you can't afford it. If you bought it last year and it has lost almost 20K in value in 1 year just imagine what the same model SUV that is 3-5 years old is going for now. Maybe $10K? You could buy one of them and cut your payment in half and it would probably be cheaper to insure too!

TS

Because it's a BMW SUV and costs a fortune to fix for one that's old and used. They changed the engine for 2007 for this model. That's why it gets such incredible gas mileage. We live way out in the boonies and gas mileage is important. I can't have some old 5 to 10 year old SUV breaking down out here. We travel a lot and need an SUV. We have two dogs that we carry in a dog cage that will not fit in our sedan. That's why I wanted to give the sedan back. This SUV has stability control and handles like it's on rails. A friend of mine crashed his car when he veered off the road and flipped. He was in a coma for 32 days and has permanent brain damage. Believe me... if he had the option of paying $740/mo. for a vehicle that would have saved him, I'm sure he would have rather paid that instead of the $1,400,000.00 hospital bill that he has now.

I went to some used lots and asked them what would happen if I went bankrupt. They told me that the payments would be a lot higher than what I am paying now.

What I would need is the free use of a car for about a year so we could save cash to buy a used car. Since we live so far out in the boonies, we cannot buy groceries or do anything out here without a car. Just go to go Publix, Walmart or any major store is a 25 mile drive ONE WAY! This is why it's so important for the SUV to get good gas mileage. We had a Saturn SUV and it kept breaking down. It broke down 9 times in the first year. That's why I got pissed off and bought the BMW. I tried to get a Honda CRV which is a lot cheaper but they would not approve me for the loan.

The sedan is a 2007 model and we put 60,000 miles on it already and blew it out of the basic warranty. The BMW has 21,000 miles on it and has a 50,000 mile warranty.

At least I made the first step and contacted a BK attorney. I am waiting to hear back from him. I live in Florida. I can use any attorney in the entire state of Florida to do the filing, right? It doesn't necessarily have to be in my same county, doesn't it?

[debtmonster]

Keepmine is right. Computers devalue fast. If you are able to give it back make sure you remove all data on it. Don't just format C:, but get a program called wipedisk (komando.com) free as you would be surprised as to the info that can be gleaned. Also, get rid of the gas guzzler. BK will stop all that lien stuff from happening. I'm sorry about your friends expense, but learn from it. Good luck. 'Hub

It's a Macintosh, not a PC. It's a Mac Mini with a 23" monitor.

I've tried to sell stuff here in the past and I am lucky to get 10 cents on the dollar for anything I bought. People in my area are soooooooooooooooo cheap when it comes to buying used stuff.

I paid $1200 for a new sofa and love seat. It looked really nice. All I could get was $120 for it off of Craigslist. I kept lowering the price over and over until I finally got the phone call. It's going to be the same.

We also have a Sony 50" HDTV we bought in 2005 from Best Buy for $3200. What will happen to that? You know I'd be lucky to get $300 for it. Would Best Buy want it back?

[ThreadsSnapping]

Dump the SUV! YOu may be able to make the payments but you can't afford it. If you bought it last year and it has lost almost 20K in value in 1 year just imagine what the same model SUV that is 3-5 years old is going for now. Maybe $10K? You could buy one of them and cut your payment in half and it would probably be cheaper to insure too!

TS

[JRScott]

The SUV is to much it is 23% of your Gross income. A vehicle should be between 10-15% and no more. I would not reaffirm the SUV.

What's your mortgage?

[arkienurse]

Pay the KGB, er IRS. Their debts are non dischargable in any bankruptcy I have ever heard of. I am sure you could google some horror stories about the IRS and back taxes if you need to to show your wife.

And I would seriously look at the vehicle situation before I reaffirmed the debt. Perhaps get a less expensive one with a more affordable payment. I am female, and I don't necessarily LIKE my 99 Jeep, but it only cost us 3500. It runs and is paid for. It also gets better gas mileage than the one it replaced. Not nearly 30 mpg, but that is a tradeoff- do you want a 750 payment that has to be paid every month, or do you want to have a smaller payment, and therefore an easier time to buy that extra tank of gas(which is nowhere near 750 yet).

[AngelinaCatHub]

Keepmine is right. Computers devalue fast. If you are able to give it back make sure you remove all data on it. Don't just format C:, but get a program called wipedisk (komando.com) free as you would be surprised as to the info that can be gleaned. Also, get rid of the gas guzzler. BK will stop all that lien stuff from happening. I'm sorry about your friends expense, but learn from it. Good luck. 'Hub

[keepmine]

The computer is a non issue. Nobody wants a worthless consumer product.
Your big problem is, breaking the habit of buying cars you can't afford. You should not even have a 2nd thought about letting the SUV go.

[debtmonster]

Last year (around 9 months ago) we bought a Mac computer on an Amex card for around $2100. I was in the hospital in June and do not have health insurance. The hospital wants $31,000, so this was the straw that has broke the camel's back. I plan on filing a Ch. 7 in several months. I have to wait until I can show 6 months of making less than $4100/mo. in my state to qualify for the means test.

Anyway, this computer is worth nothing if we tried to sell it on Craigslist. Computers lose value faster than anything. Do you think Amex would want the computer back or would we get to keep it since it was unsecured debt?

We also plan on giving back one of our cars. We paid $43,000 for our SUV last year. Today it's worth $25,000. My wife really loves it and it gets close to 30 MPG on the highway, so I don't know if I should include it in the BK or not. The payments are $740/mo.

This month's gross income may be between $2800 and $3500. I can afford our mortgage and that SUV and not much else. We need to discharge about $20,000 in debt on my wife's credit and over $100,000 for me for repo's I've had in the past. I had a repo in March of this year and another one last year, plus numerous others from 2003 and beyond. I don't want any of them coming back to haunt me. Out of this money coming in for this month (I get paid only once per month), I have to pay self-employment taxes and I sometimes have $300-500/mo. in advertising expenses. Instead of putting away money for taxes all year, I've been paying creditors instead. I need to start paying the IRS now with the vouchers and stop paying the creditors or I will be in much deeper trouble for 2009 when it comes tax filing time. My wife doesn't see it this way. She has no idea how nasty the IRS can be and how high the penalties will be.

A friend of mine bought a brand new SUV in 1999. He got into trouble with a credit card and did not pay it in 2001. In 2007 he started a new job. Just over a month later, he came outside and found his SUV missing. By then, he had it fully paid off. It turned out that the credit card company put a lien on it and repossessed it right from under him since it was paid off. He was in shock. They said, "If you want it back, you're gonna have to pay us $7,000 with the fees." So he borrowed the money and got it back. The sad thing is, less than a year later, the transmission and transfer case went out. That cost him another $5,000 in repairs. Between the $5,000 and $7,000 he had to pay on a vehicle that is now worth $2500 today, he would have been much better off letting them keep it.

This is why I want to go bankrupt on those repo's and stuff from the past. If we ever did pay off our SUV, those people could attach a lien on it and make a big, nasty mess of it things like they did for my friend. He lives in north Florida.

What are your thoughts on the computer?