have to file bankruptcy again

[fp1213]

when my wife and i got back together in 1994 we were just making it. we were renting and and just could not afford to live with raising our 2 boys. we filed in 96. i make a decent amount of money. we had bought a house in 96.
we are current with the payments. we got into a little credit trouble. we took out a second mortgage at a pretty high rate. i got a personal line of credit. my wife had started to make pretty good money. we started to buy things. got some more credit cards, store cards(especially me). all of a sudden my wife is barely working now. we started using credit cards for living.
took a long hard look and we were short by over 1000.00 a month. i took the means test online, and i fall under the allowed for a family of 3 in ny(my oldest son has since moved out). i have 2 cars one a 94 ford and one 92 toyota. way back it was different we did not own a house. now we do. i guess i'm just afraid to loose the house. what do you folks think?
any extra advice would be appreciated. thanks fp1213

[AngelinaCatHub]

My Friend, you are classic. You have made a very common mistake and in this economy it is a bad mistake.

You are meat for a bk. Question, if you could get rid of your CC payments, could you pay the house?

That being stated, would you STAY AWAY from those cards in the future and go cash?

If all is yes, you need to bk and get your life fixed or your marriage again could suffer.

This is only my opinion. 'Hub

[fp1213]

hi hub, yes we can pay for the house and the cars. we would STAY AWAY from any and all credit cards! cash only. any other advise reguarding bk? it been a while since we last filed and i know the laws have changed.
thanks,
fp

[hereforinfo]

How much do you owe on the mortgages and how much is the house worth? What is your total income like?

[fp1213]

61,000.00 on first, 28,000.00 on second. i make 55,000.00 a year. its a manufactured home. doubt if its worth much more than that. cars are 262.00 and 203.00, refinanced first one from 428.00 per month to help with bills, but still leaves us way short, well over 1,000.00 a month.

[hereforinfo]

If there is no equity or not much equity in the house, you are not likely to lose it, especially considering your income makes the mortgages affordable once you lose the other debt.

[fp1213]

ok here is the deal. rounded up. we are 57,000.00 in debt from credit card and personal loans. one of them is a 10,000.00 line of credit from hfc/beneficial. need to check if that one is tied to the mortgage. if it is will i still have to pay for that? my wife is now officially jobless. as far as assets go i'm a little unclear on that. we have tv's, computer's (one desktop an 2 laptops-one of the laptops is for my 16yr old son that i just got thru dell.) nothing of real high value. a snow blower my brother in law gave about 5 yrs ago. no collectibles. my 94 ford is worth 3500.00, owe 7000.00.
my sons x-box and wii. any idea what they look for of value that you own?
thanks again.

[StartingOver08]

When you are listing your "assets" the trustee is looking for everything (furniture, household goods etc), but it is a garage sale type value. Usually an entire household of stuff does not have much value to anyone but ourselves. That is fortunate because it allows you to keep everything even if the exemptions are small. Search the threads for valuing household items.

If you have collectables or expensive jewerly, that is a different story. Most of us just have stuff.

[fp1213]

exactly what i was thinking. i have speakers that i purchased back in 2003. if i tried to sell them at say a yard sale, i would get pennies for them compared to the original cost.
my wife has some precious moments bought at a yard sale for 5.00 each. just compare that to original cost of 40 to 60 dollars each i guess. i mean we have furniture but with my sons friends sleep overs and such now its like sitting on the metal frames.
no one wants to sit on steel, thats what the benches at the park are for.
fp

[debtmonster]

exactly what i was thinking. i have speakers that i purchased back in 2003. if i tried to sell them at say a yard sale, i would get pennies for them compared to the original cost.
my wife has some precious moments bought at a yard sale for 5.00 each. just compare that to original cost of 40 to 60 dollars each i guess. i mean we have furniture but with my sons friends sleep overs and such now its like sitting on the metal frames.
no one wants to sit on steel, thats what the benches at the park are for.
fp

I listed all of my stuff at like $.10 cents on the dollar. The bankruptcy trustee at my 341 meeting looked at all of my stuff and didn't say a peep about any of it.

We bought nice Polk Audio tower speakers for our surround, but they aren't worth anything. All consumer electronics are worth nothing shortly after buying them. Try bringing all of your stuff to a pawn shop and you'll see that you get nothing for them. Those are the same values that you would put on your petition. Really simple stuff. Believe me, it will be no sweat for you to file.

As an example, if you paid $1,200 for a stereo receiver, you'd be lucky to get $200 for it at a pawn shop. So that would be the value you'd put down.

We paid $1,200 for a set of nice sofa's. A year later I tried to sell them and the highest offer I got from Craigslist was $120 bucks. That's $.10 cents on the dollar.

[shabam]

Everything I have read from the legal side of things states it should be the replacement value of it. Which means, what would it cost to buy the item in the same condition.

[hereforinfo]

The only issue I can see is with Dell if you recently bought that computer on credit through them.

[fp1213]

exactly that. i just got it for him. i would hate to have to tell him that its going back.
he uses it for school and takes with him for projects. his other one crapped out on him.
fp

[bkmaggster]

Everything I have read from the legal side of things states it should be the replacement value of it. Which means, what would it cost to buy the item in the same condition.

Really? The NOLO book says 2nd hand retail, like goodwill, craigslist, or ebay.

I think pawn shop is too low. Since the IRS approves the goodwill/salvation army values, I used those.

I used recent ebay sales to value my jewelry. There is no way I would have been able to exempt my jewelry at replacement value. My trustee looked at my jewelry and had no problem with the 2nd-hand pricing I got from ebay and exempting it.

Edited to add: I reread the quote from Shabam and realized we were saying the same thing. I'm used to seeing the term "replacement value" applied to new items.

[PdxDavid]

exactly that. i just got it for him. i would hate to have to tell him that its going back.
he uses it for school and takes with him for projects. his other one crapped out on him.
fp

When you say you just got it for him are you talking days/weeks/months ago? Also, what model is it? Was it the entry level, medium level or some XPS gaming machine? If it is new and expensive Dell might try to get it back or make you pay for it if you used the Dell credit card to get it.