Chapter 13 and OT

[tightgrip]

Once you have decided to do a Chapter 13 and start the plan. Are you allowed to work OT to have some extra money or will that hurt your payment plan and increase your payment?

[SMinGA]

As always consult with your attorney to see how your trustee handles it, but if its occasional OT it should be fine. If you normally work OT then it should be factored into your plan payment.

[momofthree]

Ditto, consult your attorney. It varies by district/trustee. I'm in the Eastern District of CA and my attny told me that the trustee doesn't care about overtime or pay increases, they just want to know if you get an inheritance or win the lottery. He encouraged dh to work as much OT as he wanted (like that'll ever happen, lmao!)

[tightgrip]

Momofthree~

I know we were kind of in the same boat with husbands overtime. We just got told that we didn't pass the means test and we will prolly be pushed into a 13. We go Monday to meet with our attorney and go over our options. I am a little nervous about how everyone says 13's are hard work and I am worried about all the percent payback and everything. I see you got 0% to unsecured creditors. Do you mind me asking what your circumstances are with your expenses and your income? Thanks soo much!!

We currently have:
1 vehicle that we are current on 460/month
1 vehicle that we surrendered with a d balance was 750/month
1 camp trailer repo'd with a d balance was 260/month
1 UTV that is current 260/month

HSBC Retail Card that has 2 dirtbikes on secured? 10K
cc debt 7K
*had the above two in a DMP program and was paying 476/month*

Student Loans 42K 300/month
Medical 2k

My husbands total gross is about 2400 biweekly

[momofthree]

We are in a VERY unique situation. We are actually $20k under the median for a family of 5 in CA and could easily have filed ch. 7. However, we wanted to strip our 2nd mortgage lien so we decided to file ch. 13. Since we are so far under the median, I'm sure you can imagine that our budget is super tight.

We literally were having to cut back on our schedule J expenses just to find an extra $98 a month to fund the chapter 13 payment. Our attorney was literally saying "okay, we'll take $50 off of your groceries (putting us down to $450 a month!) and get rid of your home maintenance expense altogether." Ouch!

Our debt was:
***$32k-ish in credit cards (mostly medical bills from our autistic son & living expenses from dh's paycut before I found a job--we were debt free aside from our mortgage only 2 short years ago)
***$31k 2nd mortgage.
***$26k minivan payment (bought 7/09)

All of our property is exempted. In fact, I almost wish (this is horrible, I know) that I would have planned better and bought some new furniture a year or two before filing because all of our furniture is literally falling apart. We bought it all secondhand and that was 10 years ago, lol. But, of course, you don't really see bk coming until it smacks you in the face. 2 years ago I never would have thought we'd be here right now. C'est la vie!

Since our budget is so tight, all we're paying in our plan is our car payment + trustee fees + attny fees, which ends up being about $98 a month over our car payment. Sadly, even this is a bit of a struggle since we didn't have excess income to "pad" our expenses in other areas the way that most ch. 13's get to. But, it's only an extra $98 a month and then all of our debt will be gone including our 2nd mortgage, so we realize that it's worth the next 5 years of struggling.

Now, if I can just convince my dh to work just 8 hours of overtime a month, we may actually be able to eat well. Sheesh. It's hard to feed 5 mouths for $450 a month (and that includes school lunches, household supplies, diapers, everything!)

So, yeah, VERY unique situation.

What are the deficiency balances on your surrendered items? Your credit card & medical debt is really low....