Confusion-No logic-Numbers don't add up

[mommi2many]

Count me in too. I have asked myself this question so many times during this process. When I first stopped paying the credit cards I felt so liberated at the thought of all the extra money we were going to have. Problem is I never came across that extra money and I am baffled as to where it went. We are certainly making ends meet now and I am not nearly as stressed juggling who gets paid, but we definitely won't be taking that vacation I was sure we would be able to afford. Nor are we buying that big lcd tv my husband wants. We don't even have our daughter in gymnastics classes like I was so sure we would. But, I choose to rejoice in the fact that I am stress free with shelter, food, and transportation.

[stueban]

I totally am in this boat. Looking now at our real budget, which doesn't allow for a whole lot of extras, and I have now idea how I was able to keep paying the CCs as well as our bills. Like you said, the math doesn't add up! I guess that is why we have no savings or rainy day fund atm, it was bled drying to make the minimum payment on the CCs.

[ccsjoe]

I have to agree except for one compounding factor in my case-All our credit cards were maxed out, so there was no open credit to make ends meet from.

[Lockeout]

Yeah, same thing. We thought once we stopped paying the cards we'd be able to save up and have allthis extra to spend down before filing. Instead, we're still running a tight budget and didn't get half the stuff we need (I bought 2 new shirts and a pair of pants instead of replacing my entire years-old wardrobe). But somehow before deciding on bk I thought we had enough for a vacation to visit family. Open credit is quite a mirage.

[ccsjoe]

Real point of this post is confusion.

How in the world did we ever make ends meet before filing? Yes, we have some money left over at the end of the month now, but not to the tune of the cc payments we were making.

This is really baffling, looking at it in black and white. No wonder we filed. But still, it defies all logic and reasoning that we were somehow making ends meet previously. I do not understand.

Anybody else come upon this realization?