No pay = Extra money

[artgood]

This forum is helping me a lot - thanks!

Next question:

Now that I've stopped paying all my creditors in anticipation of filing, is it ok to do things with the money we have extra that we couldn't do before: brakes for cars, buy propane for home heating, etc., or is there something else we should be doing with it?

What does everyone else do?

[keepinitreal]

I used the money that wasn't going to creditors to pay my bankruptcy attorney.

[artgood]

Yeah... we'll have to do that too. We were paying out nearly $2000 a month to creditors though. So, at some point we're going to have some extra. Probably try to stock up on food and necessities. Get brakes fixed.

[catleg]

You're on the right track. Any reasonably necessary expense, or put the money into an exempt asset, or pay down a student loan or secured debt for something you're keeping so long as you can exempt the asset.

[keepinitreal]

Yeah... we'll have to do that too. We were paying out nearly $2000 a month to creditors though. So, at some point we're going to have some extra. Probably try to stock up on food and necessities. Get brakes fixed.

I recommend printing out the Schedule I (income) and Schedule J (expenses) and filling them out. If you show lots more income than expenses, then you could be headed for a Chapter 13 for 60 months. If you show more expenses than income, start tailoring your spending now to match what you're reporting on the Schedule J.