Expense versus Income

[Denmarie]

Me and my husband are filing chapter 7 on Thursday. Do we want our expenses to be high compared to our Income and the amount of debts we have? For instance: I have $525 listed for groceries because it says to take the number in family times 175.00. We have a 31 year old daughter that we pay total groceries and room and board for.
Do we list the current price we will be paying for gas, or what we have been paying before it went up? (gas for car)
Also, we own our home and I have listed $50 for Home Maintenance.

Electricity & Heating I listed $120 even though my electric bill for July was $175.

Do I want to go up on these expenses or lower?

[newday]

you want to list what's accurate.

[herekitty]

Newday is right - you want your expenses to be towards the higher side - but accurate. If anything looks fishy, it will redflag the trustee and you may need receipts to back it up. The best thing to do is to take 3-6 months worth of bills and average them out and record those numbers.

[Whittio]

Your expenses are what you PAY. Not what you might pay, or what you could pay.. it's what your actual expenses are.

You also include annual expenses, like car registration.. there's a site (darn, I need to find that link again).. hopefully someone will post it for you. It works everything out for you. You put in what your expense is, how often you incurred that expense and it tells you what your "monthly" expense is for it.

Does your daughter have a job? Hopefully others will chime in here on this one, but wouldn't you have to include her income too? It's a "family income?" It's money coming into your house, so shouldn't it be listed??

[Denmarie]

Thanks For Great Info. And Help

actually we're not listing my daughters income because she's having allot of financial problems as well. She's working two jobs to pay for a brain surgery she had a couple of years ago and a medical condition called Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension.She had a Pacemaker put in this year and we pay for her basic needs and she pays her medical bills.
I think I was a little low on the expenses,especially since I spend allot on medical OTC and thngs for my hubby who has severe Rheumatoid Arthritis ,etc...

We're dropping the papers off in the morning to set up for filing. I've spent the last two days working until late in the evening getting everything together. I didn't realize how time consuming it can be to find dates, papers, etc...
On top of everything else, we just changed to a new payroll company at my job and they are located in New Orleans.

[Whittio]

Sorry about your daughters health issues. Sounds horrible! I wonder if you could list her income AND take her expenses then?? It is "household income/expenses"..

[StaciMM]

Regarding expenses, if it looks like your budget shows alot remaining and you know that isn't the case, try to think of everything. We pay about $350 once per year for car tags, plus quarterly oil changes on 2 vehicles, and an occasional tire replacement or brake job. So, I figured that runs about $800/yr or $70/mo. For fuel, I made an estimate based on weekly spending. (For us, its about $60/wk which averages to be $260/month.)

For electric/heating, try to take a year round average.