Sorry to bring this up because I know there are a lot of threads out there, but I got to reading about people who have filed and there case comes up with possible abuse.
I live in Vermont and the median income for a family of four is $75,938 or $6,328 a month.
I work and my wife stays at home with our 2 daughters and last year, I brought home roughly $36,000 gross from my job and an extra $2500 from money I earned online.
My monthly gross income is around $2911.00, so obviously, I meet the requirements for a chapter 7. My lawyer says we meet this and I take his word for it.
Where I am a little confused is when it comes to expenses.
According to the means test, in the county I live in, there is a $782.00 monthly expense allowance for housing and utilities.
Since we rent, I think we pay roughly $200.00 a month for our heat and electricity. With other household expenses, we don't even come close to that amount.
The same goes for allowances for rent / mortgage payment which is set for $1130 a month, but we only pay $679.00 a month for rent.
To make a long story short, for my family size and the median income, we are allowed $4,006 in expenses a month. As you can see, I don't make that amount in a month.
When it comes to expenses, do they automatically take the $4,006 that we are allowed since we are not over that, or do they go by what we actually spend each month and add it all up?
Without our credit card debt, we can make our car payment, pay our rent, pay our utilities, put gas in both our vehicles and even save a little each month. That is the part that gets me. That money we have left over with the way we spend now, will that come back and bite us some how?
I live in Vermont and the median income for a family of four is $75,938 or $6,328 a month.
I work and my wife stays at home with our 2 daughters and last year, I brought home roughly $36,000 gross from my job and an extra $2500 from money I earned online.
My monthly gross income is around $2911.00, so obviously, I meet the requirements for a chapter 7. My lawyer says we meet this and I take his word for it.
Where I am a little confused is when it comes to expenses.
According to the means test, in the county I live in, there is a $782.00 monthly expense allowance for housing and utilities.
Since we rent, I think we pay roughly $200.00 a month for our heat and electricity. With other household expenses, we don't even come close to that amount.
The same goes for allowances for rent / mortgage payment which is set for $1130 a month, but we only pay $679.00 a month for rent.
To make a long story short, for my family size and the median income, we are allowed $4,006 in expenses a month. As you can see, I don't make that amount in a month.
When it comes to expenses, do they automatically take the $4,006 that we are allowed since we are not over that, or do they go by what we actually spend each month and add it all up?
Without our credit card debt, we can make our car payment, pay our rent, pay our utilities, put gas in both our vehicles and even save a little each month. That is the part that gets me. That money we have left over with the way we spend now, will that come back and bite us some how?
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