1st Post! : CH7: If You knew then what you know now? What would you do differently?

[btbeme]

A common response from a lot of people here would be "don't deny the obvious." A lack of action and a lack of planning only make it more painful lesson to learn. BK should not come as a surprise. That means that you can plan for it, recognize the causes, and even avoid it in many cases. Kinda like tooth decay.

A second common theme would be "plan for post-BK better." A fresh start isn't any good if you don't change the circumstances which brought your financial demise. If BK leaves you with little more than a hard lesson learned and still very little hope for next month, you probably waited too long to mend your ways. Plan for post-BK early; the actual filing of BK should be the tripwire that starts your new financial life.

Otherwise, do as others have done - read these forums until your eyes bleed. We welcome your specific questions if and when you have them.

[pamkev]

Ok... here is what I think most would have done differently.
NOT kept paying on dischargeable debts. NOT emptied their retirement savings. NOT been scared of bk. Put families first before creditors. FOUND THIS FORUM SOONER.
These are recurring themes in most people's stories.
Come on in, the water's not so bad,
and frogger's got a little room to slide over on his lily pad.

This post says it all. I'm thankful we found this forum before we cashed in our 401k it saved us our retirement which we will be every grateful for.
I can't tell you the relief it is to be able to pay cash for things and the start of having savings. I'm glad we are off the merry go around of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Pam

[Drazil65]

Yes, would have never emptied the savings and retirement funds just to keep the creditors happy. Hubby was full time student after being laid off 2x's in less than a year and all we kept doing was to make sure the creditors got theirs no matter how it hurt our family finances. We were so afraid of the stigma of bankruptcy and not paying something and we paid it no matter what. After stepping back and taking in the whole picture and deciding to put our family first we finally saw the light and knew what we had to do for the sake of our families future. Our family then became priority and we made decsions based on that. Not only was it the right decision for our finances but the physical aspect with the relief of stress is bigger than we could have imagined. This is one decision we would have made sooner.

[kawh]

Ok... here is what I think most would have done differently.
NOT kept paying on dischargeable debts. NOT emptied their retirement savings. NOT been scared of bk. Put families first before creditors. FOUND THIS FORUM SOONER.
These are recurring themes in most people's stories.
Come on in, the water's not so bad,
and frogger's got a little room to slide over on his lily pad.

This is the most quoted response here, fer shure!

In addition to the items above, I would have

Taken much more time and care in choosing an attorney, altho the misrepresentations of the one I did choose, would have been hard to detect. The main value of an attorney in a straight-forward Chapter 7 is two-fold, just IMO, of course:

1. Letting your creditors know you have representation, making them perhaps less likely to file an AP.

2. Letting the local trustee know you have been vetted and have provided whatever documentation is required by the bk laws, and avoiding having to provide a (perhaps more demanding) set of documents to the trustee yourself.

I have not listed any other benefit of having an attorney because I believe there is none. Any advice you receive is as likely to be wrong as right. Your petition will be prepared by someone careless and will have errors, despite having an attorney. An attorney will be more cranky than a petition preparer when you call the errors to his attention.


If you have no dubious situations, have given honest information and your petition is correct as to the important details, you should be ok as far as the court is concerned no matter if you hired an attorney or not, with the exception of the above two factors.

[slvnomore]

Thank you all so much for your generous reply... I really appreciate it! great advice here! I feel welcome
and the smacks are healing! ; )