Sorry for the long post, but I have been lurking again and not contributing much (sorry). Here is a not so quick rundown of what has happened since my last post (late November of last year). We went ahead and finally filed on 12/23/09 (Merry Christmas, Bank of America, WellsFargo and credit cards!).
I was shocked but we received immediate notice that our 341 would be on 1/20 in Lexigton (bit of a drive for us). I spent the next 3 weeks worried about our 341, not because of anything in particular but because of my high income I was concerned that the trustee would ask me to pay more (we ended up proposing in our plan about 9% payback to unsecured, $480 a month for 60 months).
Our budget was pretty modest but we felt that it was more than fair and we could definitely live with it (it even left us room to save some money at the end of the month). Finally we went to our 341 and I'm happy to report that I was worried for no reason at all. None of our creditors showed up (which was typical I guess) and the trustee did not blink at all at our plan.
Even my lawyer was a bit concerned before the 341 because of my high income and some of our expenses (5% contribution to 401K, $558 a month on one car payment, preschool, some school expenses for my wife, etc). I was also worried a bit because I receive a yearly bonus that amounts to about 5-10% of my yearly salary. I just answered truthfully about it and said that the bonus was not guaranteed (which is not) and was not sure if I was going to get one this year (which since I found out I am and it will be bigger than normal!). Trustee was not interested in the bonus since it was not guaranteed I guess (yay!). I also get to keep any tax returns (yay again!).
To make the long story short, today we received our confirmation in the mail! We are good to go and we are finding that our budget is more than enough to live on comfortably and have had to change very little in our lifestyle (except for the fact that we obliviously are very careful now about what we buy, where we eat out, etc). We have even managed to open up a savings account and now have a decent emergency fund which will hopefully be increased significantly with my bonus and any tax return money we get.
In the end we ended up surrendering our old house in the west coast (which was way under water anyways) a travel trailer that was fairly new (we probably will buy another one later when we have saved up to buy it cash and used of course) and nothing else. We have a beautiful new home in Kentucky and are now ready to move on and forget about the stupid housing bubble that got us into this mess to begin with. We also have learned our lesson with the credit cards and feel that this whole experience has been a learning one for us. Thankfully both my wife and I are fairly young so we have plenty of time to rebuild our credit.
If anyone needs any advice on the process here in Kentucky please PM me, I have spent the last year studying the whole process and became very familiar with everything (thanks to this forum as well).
I was shocked but we received immediate notice that our 341 would be on 1/20 in Lexigton (bit of a drive for us). I spent the next 3 weeks worried about our 341, not because of anything in particular but because of my high income I was concerned that the trustee would ask me to pay more (we ended up proposing in our plan about 9% payback to unsecured, $480 a month for 60 months).
Our budget was pretty modest but we felt that it was more than fair and we could definitely live with it (it even left us room to save some money at the end of the month). Finally we went to our 341 and I'm happy to report that I was worried for no reason at all. None of our creditors showed up (which was typical I guess) and the trustee did not blink at all at our plan.
Even my lawyer was a bit concerned before the 341 because of my high income and some of our expenses (5% contribution to 401K, $558 a month on one car payment, preschool, some school expenses for my wife, etc). I was also worried a bit because I receive a yearly bonus that amounts to about 5-10% of my yearly salary. I just answered truthfully about it and said that the bonus was not guaranteed (which is not) and was not sure if I was going to get one this year (which since I found out I am and it will be bigger than normal!). Trustee was not interested in the bonus since it was not guaranteed I guess (yay!). I also get to keep any tax returns (yay again!).
To make the long story short, today we received our confirmation in the mail! We are good to go and we are finding that our budget is more than enough to live on comfortably and have had to change very little in our lifestyle (except for the fact that we obliviously are very careful now about what we buy, where we eat out, etc). We have even managed to open up a savings account and now have a decent emergency fund which will hopefully be increased significantly with my bonus and any tax return money we get.
In the end we ended up surrendering our old house in the west coast (which was way under water anyways) a travel trailer that was fairly new (we probably will buy another one later when we have saved up to buy it cash and used of course) and nothing else. We have a beautiful new home in Kentucky and are now ready to move on and forget about the stupid housing bubble that got us into this mess to begin with. We also have learned our lesson with the credit cards and feel that this whole experience has been a learning one for us. Thankfully both my wife and I are fairly young so we have plenty of time to rebuild our credit.
If anyone needs any advice on the process here in Kentucky please PM me, I have spent the last year studying the whole process and became very familiar with everything (thanks to this forum as well).
.. Just want to get on with it !!
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