Who are we? What are people who file for bankruptcy like?

[tobee43]

There must be soooo many people suffering soooo bad with this crazy stretch in our economy. Let's all hope and pray this turns around soon so we can all get back to life.

Living to feed the "system" is taking a toll on many us.

Get back to basics, save, and stay out of the system.

Cheers!

hope you got my pm's!!!!

[phsunny]

Hubby and I have been married for 25 years (Highschool Sweethearts), we have 4 kids, owned our own business for many years and made great money.....nice vacations, never had to use the word "budget". Lost our business due to the economy and it all went down hill fast. Hubby went into a 3 year depression literally staring at the computer for 8-12 hours a day with not a clue of what he wanted or even "could" do. I tried an online business and had quite a bit of success, but the company I represented shut down and I was done! We filed Chapter 7 when we had nothing in the bank and no jobs......we sold personal items for food and gas money. Luckily for us I got a job within a month of the filing and my hubby got one 2 months later. We were able to stay in our home rent free for 16 months and saved enough to move, just last month. Money is tight, but we are so happy we did what we did......life is now a clean slate! Back to basics is the way to live! Thanks for all the support here on this forum!

[kornellred]

I am a 62 year old divorced male with a laundry list of ailments and anomalies that would make the average person's eyes water. I am 70% through my Chapter 13 bankruptcy. This is my 2nd BK - my first was a Chapter 7 in 1994. Two of my three sons have already been through a Chapter 7 themselves, at ages 22 and 27. My 27 year old got his discharge in September 2010, and he just financed a 2011 vehicle with an $800 down payment. My 22 year old is a major reason for my Chapter 13 - I gave him one of my credit cards when he was in college. It had a $20,000 credit limit - he maxed that puppy out in less than one year. They say the apple never falls far from the tree.
Just playing fast and loose with "fiat" money courtesy of the Fractional Reserve banking system!

[JackBondLove]

Mid 40's bachelor, no kids, used to earn over a dollar per minute in software development gigs, but due to changes in technology and outsourcing and imported foreign labor, unable to find any decent gigs for quite some time. Got wiped out in Hurricane Katrina and took on a lot of debt replacing stuff, thinking that I would be getting a big super low interest government loan to rebuild, but since I couldn't find a gig, I couldn't qualify for that loan. Was getting eaten alive by debt service that was about $4K/mo (was raised to $5K for the last month before I stopped paying. thanks Chase!) Took about $35K in capital losses on property and non-IRA investments in the stock market crash of 2008. Took the remains of the settlement for my destroyed home and bought a super cheap home, and bought appliances, etc. to fill it, right about at the level of the homestead exemption on the eve of filing Chapter 7. Wiped away $140K in unsecured debt, kept $180K (somehow made it through the crash w/o losing anything!) in IRA and the house, 150K mileage car, only having to pay $5K to buy my stuff back. Now living like a semi-poor college student in Eastern Europe teaching English and trying to leverage the combination of software development and English skills in outsourcing (if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!) only slightly bleeding my IRA to get by.

[JackBondLove]

Hubby went into a 3 year depression literally staring at the computer for 8-12 hours a day with not a clue of what he wanted or even "could" do.!

I am not the depressive type, but I know what it is like to have one's livelihood just disappear, and have no idea how to get it back. I would look at all the ads that I used to get virtually at will and figure out how to play my resume to get the job. It's definitely a kick in the gut to respond to job ads and get no responses. Or to get an interview and be told that although I have expertise in A, B, C & D, because the client demands expertise in D 2.4 and I only expertise in D 2.2, I won't get the job. Deciding to file for BK freed me from the financial treadmill of absolutely having to find work - it's a lot easier to be marginally employed and living on $800/mo than on $6.5K/mo!

[AngelinaCatHub]

U b o k

There must be soooo many people suffering soooo bad with this crazy stretch in our economy. Let's all hope and pray this turns around soon so we can all get back to life.

Living to feed the "system" is taking a toll on many us.

Get back to basics, save, and stay out of the system.


Cheers!

Yeppers, you got that right. 'Hub

[jjim120]

I am 68, my husband 69. My husband had a very successful 45-year career as a Professional Engineer and commercial contractor, 25 of them as the owner of his own general contracting firm. He built school buildings, prisons, city halls, office buildings, industrial plants, and even portions of a nuclear plant facility. We were well off, owned our home free and clear, had money in the bank. We were slowing down and turning the construction company over to our son when approached by a man who had started a four building condominium project at the Lake of the Ozarks.

The man was a lawyer who had had surgery for tongue and jaw cancer, had a disfigured face and could not eat solid food. His partner had just had two stents. They told us that they were looking for the most honest, reputable builder in the area to take over the construction on their project, and had asked the Builders Association for recommendations. They wanted someone of utmost integrity who could control the overruns and change orders they had on the first phase. We were one of only three that the Builders Association would name, and were at the top of the list.

To make a long story short, we were suckered. My husband had had an employee and neighbor with the same sort of cancer and surgery a few years before. His friend had gone into a deep depression, drinking on weekends, and my husband had spent many Saturday nights trying to help him, long after midnight. The friend died, basically an alcoholic suicide. My husband's sympathy and compassion for the crooked snake lawyer's story suckered him into doing the project. When it was about 80% complete, the man and his lawyer (whom we later found out had been fired from the project early in the first phase) conspired with the bank's foreclosure lawyer and destroyed everything we had built up for 50 years.

Not only did they take us down, causing us to lose our home of 38 years, but destroyed other businesses, the jobs of over 100 people and other banks, and the man's former partner. They also caused the total collapse of the realtor who had worked on the project long before we knew about it. Two people have died from what this man did, and two more are currently close to death, broke and unable to even get proper medical care.Today, we have nothing but our social security checks.

We were so totally honest that we hid nothing, had no money that we could tap in other hands. We mortgaged our home and pulled money out of our retirement accounts to pay the lawyers. Several hundreds of thousand dollars later, the lawyers said we could win the case, if we could come up with another $500,000 to $1,000,000, but winning on principle would not likely get any of our money or assets back.

[AngelinaCatHub]

I am 68, my husband 69. My husband had a very successful 45-year career as a Professional Engineer and commercial contractor, 25 of them as the owner of his own general contracting firm. He built school buildings, prisons, city halls, office buildings, industrial plants, and even portions of a nuclear plant facility. We were well off, owned our home free and clear, had money in the bank. We were slowing down and turning the construction company over to our son when approached by a man who had started a four building condominium project at the Lake of the Ozarks.

The man was a lawyer who had had surgery for tongue and jaw cancer, had a disfigured face and could not eat solid food. His partner had just had two stents. They told us that they were looking for the most honest, reputable builder in the area to take over the construction on their project, and had asked the Builders Association for recommendations. They wanted someone of utmost integrity who could control the overruns and change orders they had on the first phase. We were one of only three that the Builders Association would name, and were at the top of the list.

To make a long story short, we were suckered. My husband had had an employee and neighbor with the same sort of cancer and surgery a few years before. His friend had gone into a deep depression, drinking on weekends, and my husband had spent many Saturday nights trying to help him, long after midnight. The friend died, basically an alcoholic suicide. My husband's sympathy and compassion for the crooked snake lawyer's story suckered him into doing the project. When it was about 80% complete, the man and his lawyer (whom we later found out had been fired from the project early in the first phase) conspired with the bank's foreclosure lawyer and destroyed everything we had built up for 50 years.

Not only did they take us down, causing us to lose our home of 38 years, but destroyed other businesses, the jobs of over 100 people and other banks, and the man's former partner. They also caused the total collapse of the realtor who had worked on the project long before we knew about it. Two people have died from what this man did, and two more are currently close to death, broke and unable to even get proper medical care.Today, we have nothing but our social security checks.

We were so totally honest that we hid nothing, had no money that we could tap in other hands. We mortgaged our home and pulled money out of our retirement accounts to pay the lawyers. Several hundreds of thousand dollars later, the lawyers said we could win the case, if we could come up with another $500,000 to $1,000,000, but winning on principle would not likely get any of our money or assets back.

WOW, you are a classic for "things could be worse" cases. We lost 10 mil during our ordeal but not by fraud but by love. We gave our property with life rights and life estate to our State for a Park. Got our "free" park, but lost our assets but we had a mil. Got into a pizzing match with an evil multi millionaire who gave us serial law suites but never took any to trial, we lost all of that. We too are on SS, but we do have our house free and clear.

Karma is truly a bitz so this man ended up dying in sever pain going on for a year and half. They will get theirs for sure. At this time do your best and know there are like people out there as you are and we have been. Good, honest, trusting, sincere, and sometimes foolish. Life is a journey, by all means, enjoy that trip as the station soon comes for all of us. You will be judged by your good works. They by their works. GBWY. 'Hub

[jjim120]

Thanks, 'Hub. Seems the more one acquires, the more of a target one becomes for the unethical and the crooked. We never made it to court, either. The bank foreclosure lawyer in the conspiracy explained that she was good friends with the judge in the only court that would hear the case, and our country hack lawyers couldn't do anything to keep her from getting the judge to rule in her favor.

We had always believed in helping others, but in doing it quietly with as much confidentiality as possible. The number of firms my husband mentored, the people that he co-signed notes for, the employees he kept on the payroll when they couldn't work but the family needed assistance, the projects he created at a loss so that he wouldn't have to lay people off, and so on, are many. Today, most of those people are doing well, but they avoid us like the plague. It seems that those people we know who have the least are the ones who have stood by us, while the millionaires who had always asked for favors and pretended to be friends turn their heads or refuse to talk to us.

[jjim120]

Sounds like your situation was very similar to ours. Evil powerful and influential individuals have figured out how to do as they please and use the system to cover their crimes, or even to change the laws to make what they do legal. Their big law lawyers have thrown ethics and adherence to law to the winds, knowing that, with enough money, they can win anything for their deep pocket clients. The easiest way to do that is to bankrupt the opponents so that they can't afford to fight and truth never gets told.

As economist William K Black titled his book, "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One."

BTW, I posted an update to our situation on the thread I started earlier - http://www.bkforum.com/showthread.ph...ischarge/page3