Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Biggest Financial Decision of My Life



So I promised an update, to be honest I've been avoiding it. I feel shame, I feel lots of things.

I spoke with a lawyer, a financial advisor and a credit counselor. All agree that I am in no position to pay off all of this debt, further I keep receiving summons for various creditors and at this point I'm in too deep.

I must file bankruptcy. I've researched, I've agonized, cried, thrown a fit, and felt relief a bit.

The thing is I don't have a whole heck of a lot of consumer debt, I won't get into numbers here but suffice it to say that I'm not here because of credit cards and overextending myself. I'm here because of not ever saving maybe and huge amounts of other types of debt.

I'm at a point where I want to evaluate how I can keep this from happening and I can't say that I can. I can create an e-fund but in order to cover the expenses that are causing this I'd have to have such a sum in there that I'd be hard pressed to save that much in 5 years or less. This is definitely something I need to ponder quite a bit more.

For now... I'm feeling encouraged by this actually and quite a bit of relief. I'm still scared to answer my phone and tell them what the attorney told me to tell them (them being the creditors/collectors).

I can't pay for this attorney up front... I put down a small sum and will pay him off over 10 months and then he will file. In the mean time if I receive any summons for court he told me different things I can file so I'm not garnished and they realize I'm in the middle of all getting a bankruptcy started.

I'm hoping that since school will be out for a bit I'll have some time to earn some extra money to go towards the lawyer. I plan on a garage sale hopefully by the end of June. It won't yield much but its something. I plan on the more expensive items to go up on e-bay. I don't know what else I plan quite yet but I'm hoping that I can earn the cash quickly and just be done with the whole thing.

I did get some good news out of all of this too, but I'm still processing it and how it will all work out.

7 comments:

  1. I'm sorry Kari, that has got to be hard to go through. You aren't alone though - a lot of people have had to go through this. I read a blog called Bouncing Back From Bankruptcy (http://bouncingbackfrombankruptcy.blogspot.com/) and she is like you - had to go through it, but in the end found relief and was able to use it to start over. Good luck!

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  2. Good luck to you!! That doesn't sound easy, and Dawn is right, you're not alone! :)

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  3. Thanks Dawn and Frugal Dreamer. I've been reading Bouncing Back From Bankruptcy. I've been scouring her old posts and trying to read from the begining.

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  4. I was going to suggest Bouncing Back, too! She's awesome, down-to-earth and honest.

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  5. She really seems to be and a quick google search also proves she is one of a kind. There aren't any bankruptcy bloggers, for the first 3 pages at least, that aren't lawyers (I didn't look any further than that).

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  6. Kari, I didn't know that you had two blogs. Thanks for leading me here.... I'm confident that you can work through this, little by little. Big hug!

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  7. Thanks for visiting Rachel :)

    I like to keep this blog so I'm not bogged down by other stuff. It helps keep things in perspective financially speaking and I need that at the moment.

    Plus... I'm kind of a blog addict now ha ha ha.

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