Have lost all hope.

[lrprn]

We might finally be out of debt by the time he's ready to retire.

Yomama, your story is very similar to ours, except I woke up when we owed$80,000 in unsecured debt plus $21,000 in parent Plus loans for our kids' educations. We've been married 27 years and we're 61 and 55 respectively. After an eight-month abortive attempt to use a USJ-approved credit management program to get us out of the hole (wasted $6000 - a sad story for another day), we filed Ch 13 in June. When I dreamed of our lives after our kids launched themselves, this is certainly not what I pictured we'd be doing as we head into our 'golden years'! But we are grateful for the chance to start over, even if we won't have much time to sock money away for retirement. It's far better than the constant worry and stress robbing Peter to pay Paul month after month watching ourselves falling farther and farther behind. Hope you will find the same relief after filing that we have!

[yomama]

Cab, Thanks so much for you words of support. Sometimes that's the only thing that keeps me going day to day. I also believe in 'what goes around comes around'. My husband ex-boss and that gang banger worthless kid might be laughing now thinking about what they pulled off, but I believe that they'll get theirs someday. It's hard for me to understand how people can be so heartless as to make someone else look guilty for something. It really upset us when someone told us that there was an article in the paper about the incident, and it really upset us when we read the article. The very first sentence came right out and said that he did what he was accused of, and that was even before my husband decided to take the plea bargain! I thought he'd never get a fair trial if the jurors had read the article. The fact is that my husband would never have anything to do with drugs, but he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The prison had been having trouble for awhile already with drugs getting in somehow, and he unfortunately became the scapegoat and I can imagine his boss gloating over how he found out who had been bringing the drugs in. I told my husband I wouldn't be surprised if his boss had actually been the one doing it, the creep. I have nothing good to say about him or the kid who put the drugs in the envelope that was in my husband's lunchbox.
Anyway, our already bad financial situation turned really bad when my husband got suspended. Thank goodness I was working at the time or else we would have had $0 coming in at all! I do temp jobs and it's been awhile since I've been working. I keep calling the temp agencies and they say it's slow. My husband and I eventually came to the realization that we really have no other choice but to file. I'd rather have paid off our debts, but it's impossible, we see that now. Of course, now we're getting letters in the mail from collection agencies and getting phone calls, but of course we don't answer. I can't wait until this ball gets rolling now because I want them to go away. I want this to all be over with as soon as possible so we can get on with our lives. This isn't what I had in mind when we got married all those years ago. How do you not envy people who have money and don't have to worry about things? I'd love to be able to afford to go to the doctor. I have a sinus infection right now and my head hurts so bad, but we don't have the money. I got a reminder card in the mail saying that it's time to schedule a dental cleaning. Nope, can't afford it. No insurance. Heaven forbid should one of us have to go to the hospital. We don't have any kind of insurance to cover anything except we do have life insurance, not much, but we do have some. I said that for wanting to have so much years ago, we turned out to be about as dirt poor as people can be without actually living out on the streets. If all of our household items were sold at an auction, I doubt that they'd bring more than just a couple thousand dollars total. It's sad to think that this is all we have after 26 years of marriage. No money in the bank. Some things that only work for the half. A mattress that gives me a backache all the time. Our kids probably wonder how they were so unlucky to end up with us for parents. We could never afford to get them much. We always thought things would get better, but instead they've gotten worse and worse.
I'm sorry that you were also accused of something that you didn't do. Life is tough, I realized that a long time ago. So your accuser suffered in some way then, I guess. Guess what my husband just found out. His boss had to go out on disability because of trying to restrain one of the kids at that place. My husband said maybe he's getting what he deserves now. I know it's probably awful to think that way, but I was also here thinking that maybe some kind of justice was served after all. I hate to be a vindictive person, but then on the other hand, my husband and I have both been thinking all along how unfair this whole criminal thing is. He won't ever get cleared of it. He took the plea bargain, which I guess basically means that you're admitting to doing it even if he didn't actually do it, but we felt that was about his only option. What does a person do when he doesn't have money for a lawyer and the public defender turns him away? If anyone ever says to me that our "justice" system is rotten, they won't get any arguments from either of us.

Well, at least there is the option of bankruptcy and at least a big part of our financial problems will be behind us someday, and that will be a happy day indeed. Thank you for thinking about us.

[yomama]

lrprn,
Yes, our stories do sound similar. We woke up too. Ours wasn't quite as much debt as yours but it wouldn't have taken a very long time for it to get as high. Those finance charges sure do add up in a hurry. We were just barely making the minimum payments and sometimes they'd be late, so they'd sock it to us with a $39 late fee yet! I just don't think that is right at all! Why does the government let these darn credit card companies get away with all the stuff that they're allowed to do??!! And those high interest rates! People who have savings accounts barely make anything at all, yet we're expected to pay these outrageously high interest rates. I think the government wants most of us to be poor. I realize now that my husband and I will never get out of being amongst the poor class.

By the way, you couldn't discharge y our Parent Plus loans, right? I guess no school loans can be discharged. Boy, do I wish they could be! It really doesn't look like my husband will get any jobs as a result of his education anyway, either because of the criminal record or his age or both. Here he was trying so hard to get somewhere and life just slaps you down. Very discouraging.

I guess I'm naive, but what's USJ? You said you had attempted to pay off your debts with a USJ-approved program. I wonder just how many of us attempt to pay off our debts in that way or similar ways only to find out that it just won't work for us and we end up just basically throwing away our money. That's what we did with that debt negotiation company. I think they got over $3000 of our money and we got $1800 back. It got us absolutely nowhere. If only we had known last year what we know now, we would have just filed then and it would all be behind us. I know what you mean when you say about how you dreamed your lives would be after the kids launched themselves. Our son, who is 24, no longer lives with us. He is managing fine on his own now. He flunked out of college and hasn't gone back, but he has a good job now. Our daughter is in her third year of college and wants to go for a doctorate. I hope both of our kids manage their lives better than what we've managed ours. Golden years, HA, what a joke! It's like a friend of mine said to me, "Who the $#%* called these the golden years? They aren't golden for me!" She and her husband aren't rich either, but at least they've never found themselves in enormous credit card debt.

Yes, we're grateful for the chance to start over again, but I really don't think that we'll manage to get any money saved up at our age, not with what my husband makes and what I would make working. It just pays the bills and that's it. I told him we'll be eating a lot of soup and sandwiches in another 10 years or so. Of course, even those aren't cheap anymore!

Thanks for your concern. It's so nice to come on here and talk to other people who are going through this or who have already gone through it.

[lrprn]

See my answer to your questions in red below....

lrprn,

By the way, you couldn't discharge y our Parent Plus loans, right?

Right. The new bk law that went into effect last year made discharging student loans nearly impossible. This debt is one that we'll be paying off even after bankruptcy....sigh...

I guess I'm naive, but what's USJ?

My fault - I shortened USDOJ (U. S. Department of Justice) into USJ. Sorry for the confusion.

Thanks for your concern. It's so nice to come on here and talk to other people who are going through this or who have already gone through it.

So true! We are all very lucky to have such good virtual friends here who really do understand what's going on because they are living it or have lived it themselves. Being able to vent on the bad days and celebrate the good days together makes everything seem a little more bearable. Glad you are here with us!

[Spartan]

I am new here. After reading and browsing around the forum a bit, I realize that this forum provides a very healthy support for members here. That is very nice.

Bk is like a process that enable the phoenix to rise from the ashes....

[jetset]

Hi Emmy welcome to the board. I remember when I first posted about my situation, I was really worried that I wouldn't be able to file. My attorney told me that my case was probably the easiest he'd ever had.

I used my tax return of $860 to pay attorney fee's and court costs. The attorney nor trustee had no problem with that.

You said you are in the midwest, if by chance you are in Northern Ohio I have a great attorney for you if you need one.

jetset