New here - coming to terms

[tobee43]

Yup. Almost always.

and don't forget the interest just keeps piling up.

[Forthebirds]

Btbeme- I also don't think the student loans and BK will be changing anytime soon. Why several months until we file? I need to read more stickies I guess and ask the atty about the cash advance. Actually, I did ask her and she said "not an issue." she didn't seem to think anything w/ our case would be a problem. But I'm feeling like I need more info.

Tobee- That is what I was hoping, to file before being late on payments. That isn't going to happen. I called Citi today and said please cancel the auto pay, we retained a BK atty. the girl was very nice about it and asked if we were "for sure going to file." Not sure why she asked that? My acct was in a forbearance plan for the past year and she said if I missed a payment then the acct goes back to the original interest rate and no other options will be available for me. So that's that. Since I met w/ the first BK atty, the thought of spending money makes me feel ill. I've bought gas, necessary food, and that's it. We don't go on trips or drive fancy cars or own nice furnishings (Ikea for the most part). But I'm noticing what I would have wanted to buy over the past couple of weeks. Small stuff, mostly for the kids. Things they don't NEED! I'm really starting to re-evaluate the "things" we have and why we don't need half of what we do have!

[Forthebirds]

After I called Citi, I started to wonder...WHY did they give me a 20k limit?? At the time I was only making about $25k a year and had a couple of other cards w/ decent limits. My score was excellent...we were pre-qualified for an FHA loan at the time and I remember it being around 800. Not that I blame Citi, but wow.

Any chance of rebuilding my credit to that excellent number again, or am I screwed for life? The only credit I'll eventually want is a card just to rebuild, and I'd like to eventually buy a house and a car when we absolutely need a new one.

[tobee43]

if you atty feel the advance is going to be a non issue then i would go with what they are telling you. the amount was small, most likely small enough to say it went to gas, food and the like. it's just you should have been advanced not to do it again still, here some of the trustees nik pick everything so to me, i'd just rather be safe than sorry. worse scenario is you have to pay back the 4 hundred it's not like it's 4k.

the banks and creditors are looking for a docket number, not the fact you hired an atty. many will not even take you serious until you provide them with the actual docket number that was filed. some on the forum say the C/D letters worked, no way for us. not a one would stop until they got that docket number, that included our atty writing everyone one of them (the creditors) saying we are ready to file and call their firm and not us anymore. that didn't even work. what worked was when we went underground for 2 years and no one could find us other than the atty we hired. we never heard from anyone again. a little karma went with that tho, because our new house phone number well those people owned everyone's mother and their mother's mother and so on and so forth and they refused to believe i wasn't so and so and i was lying to them LOL!! i finally turned them all in to the FTC and finally the phone stopped ringing off the hook looking for these people.

[Forthebirds]

Why did you have to go underground? Why didn't you file earlier?

Funny, a few years ago I started a new job and had a work cell phone. The woman who had the phone before me had some major issues w/ creditors because the phone would ring all the time!

[stray]

This just reminded me, years ago we bought a rural piece of property, a year later, put a house on it, had the phone company run poles and got a phone. I actually got a collection call for the guy that owned the lot before us. Didn't know back then, that "they" will try anything.

[tobee43]

Why did you have to go underground? Why didn't you file earlier?

Funny, a few years ago I started a new job and had a work cell phone. The woman who had the phone before me had some major issues w/ creditors because the phone would ring all the time!

we were just talking about writing a book about ALL the reasons some day. here are a few of them, whom better than an ex undercover state police and a paralegal? LOL!! the bottom line was this. first and foremost, there are areas of the petition that have time sensitive questions. we wanted to be able to answer NO, honestly, no lies. we needed "time" to do that and meet those timelines. secondly, we must establish 2 year residency in our "new" state to take advantage of their wild card exemption or our only other option was to file federally. we didn't want to do that. the state we left was a creditor friendly state, so that was out completely. if we would have filed earlier, then we couldn't rec the wild card exemption, nor be able to truthfully answer those questions as NO's.