Thoughts on my Schedule J?

[micahCT]

We're a family of 4 in Connecticut (my kids are 3 and 5). My wife and I are filing pro se and I already started the process with skeleton paperwork last week (to stop a pending wage garnishment) now I'm trying to get through all the other paperwork.

Here's what I'm figuring for our schedule J. These are based on actual numbers for what we've been spending recently. Including a fairly excessive food budget and high "recreation" expenses. Our 341 meeting is in 4 weeks; any thoughts on what the trustee will say/do based on these figures? Thanks for any thoughts or opinions you have.

Also, we are trying to keep both cars even though I know at least one of them is a fairly high payment. Do you think thats going to be a problem?

		actuals	Notes
4	Rent	$1,300.00
4b	Renters Insurance	$21.73
4c	Home maintenance (repairs and upkeep)	$20.00
6a	Electricity and Heating Fuel	$240.00	based on YTD
6b	Water/Sewer	$21.75	based on 3 YTD quarterly average
6c	Telephone, cellphones, internet and cable	$240.00	$160 cellphones; $80 cable & internet (no home phone)
6d	Other utilities
7	Food and Housekeeping	$1,200.00
8	Child Care / Child Education	$50.00	$600/year preschool
9	Clothing, Laundry, Drycleaning	$150.00
10	Personal Care Products	$40.00
11	Medical & Dental expenses	$5.00	doesn't include FSA spending included in Schedule I line 5h
12	Transportation (not including car payments)	$350.00	Gas and Maintenance
13	Recreation, clubs and entertainment, newspapers, magazines, etc	$300.00	includes kids toys, books, art supplies, dance classes plus other multimedia subscriptions (like netflix etc)
14	Charity	$0.00
15a	Life Insurance	$0.00	already included as payroll deduction on scedule I line 5e
15b	Health (not included in insurance deducted from pay)	$0.00	this comes out of "income" on schedule I, line 5e
15c	Auto Insurance	$145.00
16	Taxes (not deducted in wages)	$90.00	property taxes on cars
17a	Vehicle 1 payments	$539.70
17b	Vehicle 2 payments	$372.22
18-20	n/a	$0.00
21	Other: Student Loans	$181.44
22	Monthly Expenses	$5,266.84
23C	Monthly Net Income	-$425.48

[justbroke]

micahCT while the Trustee may gripe over the student loans being lumped into these numbers, it "looks" reasonable for a family of four living in Connecticut! A Trustee may not like that your Food and Housekeeping is above average (average for "Food" and "Housekeeping" is $821 plus $78 respectively based on the current (5/15/2015) "Food, Clothing and Other Items" standards. You may need to balance those numbers or provide a reason that they exceed the standard (e.g. your infants have post-natal issues and have special dietary needs).

Your clothing, dry cleaning, etc is a little low (the standard is $244). I personally used $60 per person per month for clothing. Likewise, you have $40 for personal care (the standard is $70). I personally used $15 per person per month for personal care.

I think you can overcome my specific observations because you get an allowance of $1,513 (from the "Food, Clothing and Other Items" standards). If you add up food, clothing, personal care, and your entertainment, they are less than that specific allowance for "Food, Clothing and Other Items".

By no means should you believe that I'm telling you to change your numbers or that I'm suggesting a number to plug in. I hope that my feedback allows you to see some areas that you may need to rethink and that you are also ensuring that you're not exceeding USTP Program Standards without double checking the numbers.

[Pandora]

First and foremost, are you above or below median? That will dictate certain allowances by IRS standards. Second: your entertainment expenses are EXCEEDINGLY high regardless of where you live.

[micahCT]

Thanks for the replies.

Pandora, the median in CT is 109k for a family of 4. My income is in the mid 80's.

I've re-evaluated some of our recent spending and updated a few numbers on the final draft that I'm submitting in about an hour.

I lowered our Food/Housekeeping from 1200 to 1000
I bumped up clothing/laundry to from 150 to 200 and personal care from 40 to 60 and used those difference to lower the entertainment expenses down to a hopefully more reasonable 180.

This brings up our monthly net to -175.