What is your life (or what would you like your life to be) like after BK?

[Diesel73L]

My wife and I are just starting to seriously plan for bankruptcy. We are going through a difficult pregnancy but luckily we live near the best children's hospital in the country if not the world, and though we are in loads of debt, we both have jobs and health insurance thank god. We look forward to the day when we can put our little baby girl's illness behind us (she will need a very complex surgery at 1 month but should be fine with no lasting effects) along with our debts. We both put ourselves though school (and into debt) with student loans which was only the beginning of our problems. We financed things like books, gas, food, car repairs, and personal necessities with credit cards while living on our own in our college years because our part time jobs could only pay rent and utilities. We were lucky enough to find jobs, but not the ones we were hoping for, then came the rush to "grow up" (get married, buy a house, etc...) which dug us even deeper. Now here we are, on the treadmill of debt, and wishing we could take it all back. I feel like BK will be the culmination of our "growing up" in that it will be our first step toward living for only what is important. We've learned so much about living within our means, self sufficiency, and frugality-we just learned it a little too late. BK will give us the opportunity to live those virtues and not worry about debt looming over us. We are just now starting to imagine our lives (relatively) debt free. Once the credit cards are gone I'd like to be more aggressive with our mortgage, attempting to pay $500 or $1000 extra every six months toward the principal. I want to continue providing nearly all of our winter heat with wood that I source for free from power line cuts and folks who have had trimming done. We do it now but it's hard to realize the savings when it all goes to credit cards. We've also discovered a passion for the outdoors and hiking-we're blessed to live in an area with many state parks and forests, all free of course-camping is a mere $6 or $7 a night. Finally, we want to try to make sure that we never loose focus on what is truly important-family. For a while we became so enslaved by the almighty dollar (because we were so desperate to keep up with debt payments) that we lost our focus-that won't happen again.

[Resigned2BK]

Well, I (and hubby) like you haven't filed and are in a seemingly neverending planning phase too. But I have some ideas of how I'd like things to go for after discharge too....

#1 - be completely done with this house and renting before or after (leaning towards after as BofA is dragging their feet on even officially calling foreclosure on us, plus I keep reading about that they can't legally do that to Countrywide loans for some reason?)

#2 - me to get a full time job paying at least $25K a year either before filing or later. I have a nice line on a contract that would end up being about $8K over 3 months, if I get that maybe I can convince the company to hire me permanently. Just have to see how it all plays out.

#3 - extension of #1, get a house in the same town as my in-laws (much as I hate to be even close although I get along with them really well, better than my own parents) -- anyway, same town so we can get free babysitting which is part of why I haven't been working a full time job since 2007 as I make as much or more in net (after childcare expenses, lesser food costs, lesser gas consumption, lesser clothes purchasing, etc) doing assorted odd jobs and self-employment than when I made $40K (amazing but true, crunched the numbers several times, several ways)

#4 - extension of #2, get job, get housing cost downsized, then we'll hopefully be able to start saving upwards of anywhere from $10k-25K a year depending on if some stuff hubby is working on pans out into larger yearly net for his work too

#5 - save like crazy squirrels getting ready for hibernation and in 5 years post discharge with compound interest (and on the heavier side of the savings hopeful estimates) be able to not only buy a new car for hubby free and clear but also be able to purchase an auctioned house and be free and clear or nearly so on that too

#6 - never have to finance any car ever again (although we own ours outright for years, just would be nice)

#7 - extension of #5, once house is purchased with cash, then I work another few years to save us up to a $100K (factoring in a replacement car for me too) and then I quit my job, spend time with my kids, and do what I want to do and not even be 50 yet

It's nice to have dreams. LOL. Thing is it all hinges on me getting a full time job sometime before the end of the year or at least being on a good path to get that 1st half of next year. So not impossible, and we're frugal enough to do it too. Barring one of us getting badly sick or injured in that period of time, we're done having babies so it should be completely doable.

[tobee43]

we filed and where discharged and life is good.

i think much depends on where you are in life's journey as to what or exactly your "new" start will effect you. we were preparing for retirement, and on the "5 year plan" prior to both of us losing our high paying jobs and our home of 33 years.

many of the younger people on this forum are riddled with student loans and not working in jobs that match their abilities. i feel so badly for you all that are applicable to that situation. stuck with huge loans and less jobs. thankfully, that is one thing we don't have to worry about at this stage of life.

and, as sad as that is, we didn't have any student loans, (other than those we already paid off for our own children during their under grad and grad schools), we only had our mortgage which we borrowed against for medical bills, our charge cards which were also very high balanced due to medical expenses. actually the question for us after losing our jobs and getting ill is how BAD was our lives BEFORE bk!!!

because of ages and in our fields and after looking now for over 2 years, we have come to realize we are the lost society of workers over 50 that will never be hired again due to our experience and educational backgrounds. no one wants to hire us thinking we will always be looking for better, and not understanding we would work anywhere. so much for that goal after bk...we will never work again. and, again we had to face that fact...moving on.

we are luckier than most, we had a pension from the state, one of us was just old enough to get ss and our unemployment insurance was able to carry us into the next phase of our life time.

we moved out of our house which was costing us over 9k to maintain monthly and went to florida...the launching pad to heaven...(i'm a san fran person so this is culture and climate SHOCK for me, although we lived in the northeast).
began saving money and found ourselves a nice home and was able to buy it the total amount of all expenses doesn't exceed what we were paying for utilities alone in nj. that works! we downsized and now live in HALF the house we had...actually less and are MORE happy...less upkeep, less work and have found LESS IS MORE!!!!!!!!!!!! more money to save, MORE stress FREE, etc.
began saving MORE money to finally start a savings account which is now looking good!!
began rebuilding our credit , NOT so much by being about getting new credit cards..(which we have) BUT by putting as much time distance between our discharge date and today...buidling ourselves back up by the old brick and mortar method.
we pay cash for everything except large purchases like auto repairs if expensive...then we use our charge cards since we found out the hard way that some debit cards do not allow stop payments. we have two, and now we know which to use, but, still we are strangers in a strange land and still don't even have a dentist yet, no less a mechanic we trust and have been ripped off by both so we need to proceed carefully!

our goal after bk was we wanted to be over the rainbow....

we are there!!!

[Logan]

I filed Ch.7, have no debt but have plenty of credit. Life is good

Logan

[Resigned2BK]

We'll have to scrap my #3 which is all about free babysitting out of MIL so I can work a regular day hours job. MIL had a major stroke last weekend and while she's one of the lucky ones to pull through and be working on recovery, it was bad enough that there's no realistic indication that she'll ever be functioning like before the stroke. But you know the saying about a door closing and a window opens? Last Sat (the day we found out about MIL's stroke) I found out a professional acquaintance has gotten out of selling a product I've been interested in pursuing for some time and haven't out of professional courtesy to her. It's a winner of a product for weekend markets (I already have my own small biz doing other things, and none of that is what got me into the BK mess) and I see this as the perfect opportunity to pursue next year once we are fully discharged and case closed. Wish I could do it this summer, but the last thing I need going into a BK is having standing inventory from a wholesale reseller situation. Given I know this acquaintance was making enough on the sales to support her living expenses, this could be the very thing I've been trying to find to make my small business convert from hobby income to sustainable income. And one of the best parts is I wouldn't need a regular babysitter and we wouldn't need to move closer to the inlaws. Things will have a way of working out one way or the other. I have faith in that.