[inajam]

I am sick at my stomach as I type this, and don't have anyone else that I can talk to about this. Here's the situation:

My husband and I filed bankruptcy and it was done on 1/1/02- only 3 1/2 years ago. We have been building our credit back again,and over the course of time, now find ourselves in about $13,000 worth of credit card debt. We have made all of our payments on everything, but in the last several months, things have gotten increasingly harder. It's now to the point, where there isn't enough money to pay everything. My husband works an hour a way, and the increasing cost of gas has been a killer for us. We have 4 younger children that I am constantly having to get to and from places, and that kills me every time I have to fill the vehicle.

Anyhow- back to our big problem. We have all of this credit debt, large mortgage that we cannot take more money on, car payments,etc. We already have a loan on our 401K from a couple of years ago. We still owe back $4000 to it. We do not have escrow on our mortgage and owe $2400 in taxes and the mortgage company sent us a letter threatening a tax sale. We have no money to pay the taxes, BARELY paying the credit cards, and really no idea what to do. My husband has over $35,000 in his 401K (we are both 38) but they will not let us get to any of it unless we cash the whole thing out and are in foreclosure. At this point, I don't see what else we can do except to wait for them to try and foreclose because of the taxes. We can't lose the roof over our head. We have 4 children to take care of and have made mistake after mistake. I simply don't know what to do, and feel helpless. If there is anyone that can give me some advice, I beg of you to do so... please! :(

[jingi1234]

I am willing to show a way to you. All you have to do is "buy stuff from a A company for $2.00 and sell on eBay for $10.00 or more".

I can show you all the things. You could ask me why am I not doing this? Simple answer... I don't have time to do this ( I am already making over $70K / Year ).

You can make anywhere from $200 to $500 per day. But remember it requires lot of hard work.

Let me know.

Thx,
Jingi

[kp2171]

As for the taxes, and I may be wrong here, if they sell your taxes to a buyer that buyer is looking for the payment plus interest... if you cannot pay this over a given period then you may lose the house?.

You should check. You're in a bad spot... but I think the deliquent taxes don't mean you've lost the house yet. You do have a period in which to pay.

Do you have any equity in your home?

[Larrysharon]

My heart goes out to you and your family. I know first hand how hard it is to raise a family, be in debt, go bankrupt and still be in trouble. I don't really know your situation. If you did a Chapter 7 you can go back into court, convert your chapter 7 to a Chapter 13 and it will include all your new bills and what you owe on your house.
I hope I have been of help.
My husband and I went bankrupt in 1993. We walked away from our house.
Got help and were able to buy another home. Now in 2005 we are more in debt than ever. Cannot go bankrupt, it's a horror. Son has a drug problem. Husband diagnosed with prostate cancer. Somedays darkness seems so comforting.

[inajam]

Well, in an update to my situation... the mortgage company paid the taxes on the house, then sent us a letter saying we now owe them. We could pay it in 6 months. Period, OR- we could refinance our loan.

We went to CCCs- and they couldn't help us. Our interest rates would actually go UP on a few of the cards if we went through them. They would only save us about $50 a month.

I've spent the past couple of weeks going through different lenders and their offers to refinance our home. We are now mortgaging to almost the full value- but it will pay off our credit cards, medical bills, and still have money so that hopefully we can eliminate a car payment. I don't know.

I don't know if this is really going to be the right answer- but I keep praying that I'm doing what I should. I know that I don't want another credit card- ever. At least with my debit card, I know the money will have to be there. It will make for a lot of uncomfortable times ahead, but hopefully we'll get a handle on things and eventually it won't hurt so much.

Let's hope that the gas situation improves SOON... for everyone's sake! That's a black hole for our checkbook! Thank you everyone for your help. :o

[kp2171]

Don't know if this will help, but this is what we did to tightly manage our checking.

We have two separate bank accts. One gets an automatic deposit that will cover expected fixed expenses... water, electric, phone, mortgage, insurance, loans, etc. While there is some fluctuation in energy bills, not too tough to estimate the monthly bill.

The other account gets the remainder of our checks deposited. This account is only for variable expenses. This means gas, food, health, fun, etc. Yeah, I know we all need to eat... but by treating it like a variable expense we've really controlled the spending.

The fixed expense account is mostly automated payments... everything is scheduled to be paid on time or ahead of schedule either through the banks system or through the payee's system.

What's been most helpful is that this removes all of this money out of the variable expense account. We've run our accounts this way for awhile now and I cannot tell you how much difference it makes. It may not sound that powerful, but I wish we'd done this years ago. It really keeps you honest about what you have to spend.

This won't get you out of substantial debt... but it might be helpful to keep you from spending more than you have month after month... which is usually how big debt grows.

[slippydippydo]

You can't file another chapter 7 bankruptcy yet, but you might try chapter13 instead.