We were right on the line of the median for our state. I'm sure that even if we had to take the means test we would have passed, with high insurance costs, daycare costs, etc. But who knows since it is debatable if we could have included our student loan payments or not. And our car would have had to be amortized over the 60 months for the means test even though we had it almost paid off.

We didn't want to risk having to take the means test. Or risk having to do a chapter 13. However, we knew that we couldn't continue as we were.

We were well under the median as we filed in October. I had had a baby in April and had taken 8 weeks maternity leave. I didn't have quite enough vacation to cover the whole leave. So took the last week as leave without pay. Then in July they moved our pay period by a week resulting in a short paycheck.

Those two short paychecks kept us under the median.

So it was in our best interest to file while those two months were in our six month look back. Additionally, my husband was looking for work. At the time we filed my husband had already made it to the second interview for one company (didn't get the job in the end). We were concerned that a new job would make enough money to disqualify us for a chapter 7, but not enough to allow us to repay our debts.

We decided that it was time to plan on lives on the here and now and not on someday and decided to file despite the job search.

The final reason we filed when we did was for my peace of mind. I'm not good with uncertainty. I need to make decisions and take action. Waiting to file would have driven me insane.