Don't do what I did!

[lovebirds]

Why did I wait so long to meet with a bankrupcy lawyer!!!?

After my husband screwed with "pre-existing conditions" with his insurance company for a spinal surgery, got rear-ended at a red light resulting in ANOTHER insurance company rejection, lost his job, and then got denied unemployment for 9 months, WHY DID I WAIT SO LONG!?

We wasted $1400 per month paying minimum credit card and medical bills.

We only met with him once we spent our last dime of savings and of course he said to stop paying credit cards to pay the lawyer fees. We have enough money to cover basics but nothing more.

Now living off my income and no more unemployment, we can barely scrape dollars up to pay the lawyer. Hopefully the tax refund will be big enough to pay for it.

I am very thankful that my salary allows us enough money to pay for our mortgage, utilities, and food. And to have a friend who worked in a bankruptcy office that gave me hope after I was ready to give up.

[frogger]

You waited for the same reason that many do. I know that I should have started this process years ago.......

[Ifonly]

Don't beat yourself up too much. Contrary to the belief of some "posters" here, not too many of us woke up one morning at the first sign of trouble and said, "oh, I'll just declare bankruptcy. Problem solved!" Why didn't I do it before we took my husband's 401K, $32,000 that would have been exempt, to catch up on a 2nd mortgage on a house we no longer live in? Oh well. Live and learn. Look ahead, sometimes it can be refreshing knowing that you've reached this place, now all you have to do is climb UP! You can do it!

[southernbelle]

Don't be too hard on yourself because we've all done it. I thought I could keep my head above water by getting signature loans (while my credit was still good) to pay creditors until I realized the damage was so bad I couldn't afford to pay it all. Only after making matters worse did I decide to face reality and met with a BK atty. I also had to wait to file because I didn't have enough to pay my atty, but my tax refund came just in time.

Trust me, you'll be fine at least you realized the need to file and are moving forward. Things will look up for you soon. Good luck.

[JRScott]

It is very natural to put off filing. The main reason is that many of us want to pay off our debts, we don't want to admit we got to far in and keep hoping that something comes along to bail us out. So we delay it, in some cases for years enduring mental and physical pain through the process until at the final straw we humble ourselves and realize we have no other choice or the stress will kill us.

[justplaintired]

Don't feel bad, most of us waited too long. We personally took what equity we had in our house, which now I know was exempt, and borrowed to pay off cc. Then turned around, and ended up charging again trying to stay afloat with loss income. If only we had filed way back before using our equity in the house.

Another thing, personally I kept thinking I can do this, something will happen and we'll be able to do this. It never happened, we just kept getting deeper and deeper into a hole.

[tkharvey]

Ditto "justplaintired". Your story sounds like ours.

[bluemartini]

I agree with those who said not to beat yourself up.

I struggle with this too.

I would give anything, anything, anything, ANYTHING if I could go back and do a couple of things differently. Mainly, I wish I hadn't taken so long to get out of denial.


I drained my entire IRA trying to keep the sinking ship afloat. It took me 20 years to create that IRA. Stoopid, stoopid, stoopid.

Oh well, nothing we can do about it now!

[Flamingo]

Hey, we waited over a year to file thinking that just if my hubby was able to get a job similar to the one he lost (layoff) and close to what he formerly made, we would be fine...yeah, right...during that time of waiting and hoping, we just got deeper in debt trying not to file. Once you start robbing Peter to pay Paul, that's your wake up call to see a BK lawyer because it doesn't go away on it's own and no one will knock on your door and hand you a check for $100,000. Reality bites hard...

[BigJohn]

The hardest part about filing was trying to get a picture of why the economy was in such bad shape. I bought into what the politicians were saying in that things will get better but the more I looked at the real facts, it looked like gloom and doom.

As others have said, there is a time delay in filing based mainly on not knowing what bankruptcy is all about.

[leena]

I should have filed 5 years ago. I think I was waiting for a a miracle, too. It was obvious I could never pay the CC debts and the student loans, too. I have a degree and am qualified for good jobs (more by my experience than a degree) but I was never going to make the six figure income I would need to make that picture work.

Live and learn, it's what you are doing now that matters.