So upset! advice please? Trying to file in December but cc had charge in October

[kartoons19]

Prior to filing I had a similar situation in which my insurance was posted and as I didn't have enough to cover it in my checking account, it drew out approx. $75 from my line of credit account. I was upset because the insurance changed their billing cycle and didn't notify me, so the payment was made 10 days earlier than normal. Long story short, I just paid back the $75 a day later. This happened 30-40 days prior to filing.

As others mentioned $39 is such a small amount. So either pay it back or see if the newspaper will credit it back the charge as long as you pay with another form of payment. If this is the only thing holding you up, then I wouldn't let it stop you from filing. Good luck to you.

[BKlooker]

I think a lot of this worry about using ccs before filing is a little overplayed. There are reports on this forum of people racking up 6 grand in the 3-4 months before filing and not hearing a peep. I have yet to see/read anyone on this board being forced to do APs for less than thousands of dollars, and usually for really out-there stuff. I read where one lady had a dental emergency and charged it to a card AFTER she filed, and all they did was make her pay for that out of pocket in a settlement deal...her lawyer just called the lawyer for the CC company, sent a settlement over for the amount(it was like $1600 or something), charge her a couple hundred for writing the deal, and that was it....rest of the debt was discharged, no problem. There was another guy who had a creditor object, and it had to do with some personal loan he took out with some local federal credit union that was tied to some auto loan-yada yada, to the tune of some 10 grand, and this was just 2 months prior to filing. They also end up settling out of court for some amount, a fraction of what he spent....rest of the debt discharged no problem.

You have to understand it costs them money to come after you, the CC company has to get a lawyer involved who gets a percentage of what they get back from the debtor, so think about any lawyer taking a case for $40 bucks; yea right. The company would lose waaaaay more money chasing you down for your measly $39 (that you don't have, cause you are insolvent), when they have much bigger fish to fry. I was worse than you...i stopped using my ccs just 6 weeks ago and filed yesterday. My attorney assured me not to worry because i had been paying and current on all my cards up until the month i filed (and had pumped about $4 grand into each card to pay them down from savings before i thought about BK), and i hadn't really charged much over the past few months, less than $1K in total, and mostly on necessities (car maintenance, groceries, etc.).

If it makes you feel better, check online for your state's BK statistics. In my state, out of the average 1.5-2 THOUSAND chapter 7s filed each MONTH, do you know what the AP rate is?? 2.5%!! As in out of over 2,000 people, only about 50-70 per month has issues, and i promise you more than that have used the CC and taken out excess debt leading up to filing than that, probably to the tune of thousands of dollars. Most APs are related to local creditors (car loans at credit unions, personal loans for business deals, etc.). Now think about it...do you think that your little $39 charge is going to plunk you into the 2% unlucky pile? Sleep easy, man. You will be fine....AP's are rare, especially on unsecured debt.