Mommy2Mason

You guys are wonderful. I love how you all come together to offer up suggestions or just words of encouragement. Thank you for all of the suggestions (all suggestions are good! Even if they can't be done/used!) I feel like I have a much better handle on the situation after talking it out here. At least, I don't feel so bleak! Because I have to go to so many appointments, I have to have a way to get messages. One of the first things I did this morning was call my cell phone company. They didn't want me to cancel service (as you can imagine) and after talking with a very nice man in the cancellation department, they decided to be helpful! I've been with this company for almost 10 years (in November) and pay the bill on time (with the exception of being 2 weeks late at the moment). I'd already dropped down to the lowest plan possible with them and in order to keep our business, they're knocking an additional $30 off every month for the next 6 months! Doesn't make it quite as cheap as the above suggestions but I don't have to come out of pocket to get phones/answering machines. Between the help from them, selling my son's stroller (yay!) and a small side job helping a friend, I think we're good for May. July is the big problem but I'm going to try to get it figured out before then! I definitely need more money! I can't argue with that! Pet sitting might be an option, I'll have to look into it. Babysitting I can't do as my son doesn't do well with other children at this point; I've tried that before. When he was a baby I did ChaCha. I'd like to try that again but I'm not sure how that would go. Just writing this reply I've had to stop four times to handle him. But I might be able to do enough to get by. I can't get an evening job because my husband works management in retail and his schedule is different every day and every week (he works, mornings, mids, closes, whenever). I assure you, however, that I am committed! We're going to find a way out of this. We're already in the right direction. There's not enough money available on the cards to do the trans, unfortunately. They weren't high credit limits to begin with and one I've been using for gas and others we've used for part of my surgery and things like that. The finance company is somewhat nearby (it's near Detroit and I'm about an hour and a half away from the D) and I'm going to call them today and ask how long it'd take to get a title at pay-off. Maybe, if we could sell it, we could all (us and a buyer) take a trip down there and do everything where nobody would worry about getting ripped off. Also, as suggested, there is escrow.com. We are not going to voluntarily repossess the car (or repossess it at all). We're going to keep moving forward and try to sell it in the interim. It won't hurt anything to put it up on Craigslist and note what's wrong with it and see if we can get pay-off. If not this month, maybe the pay-off will get low enough to sell in a couple of months after making those payments. It's worth it to try and we're no further behind if it doesn't sell. Thanks so very much, everyone! With some time to talk it over with the hubby and look into all these options and other options and with some time to breathe, I feel better about this. And once we get to pay-off in December - everything is smooth sailing without that payment and insurance cost!

In the mail that hubby brought in last night we got the referral approval (FINALLY!) for speech therapy and it's in a neighboring town but not at the university! This, my friends, is a good thing. It's in the town where hubby works. He's going to talk to his boss tomorrow and see how open he is to working the schedule around speech therapy once we have the days/times for it. If his boss is willing to do that, it'll help with the gas. I've heard of both the MagicJack and SafeLink. I'll check into both. Thank you for the suggestions. Yes, I believe our bankruptcy was too recent for Care Credit. Butterfly - I don't blame you, I'd never let my son be in a car with people we don't know! It's hard enough to send him to school on the bus. :-/ My son is nearly deaf and they're suspecting they're going to find him on the autism spectrum but they're not sure yet. We're working on the hearing aspect first. It's a very slow (and frustrating!) process. He does go to school 4 days per week for a couple of hours. SSI for my son - we are planning to apply but we don't have a complete diagnosis yet. We're finally on the right track with the university hospital. They're not close by but they're the best. Jimbo - Nope, they won't. We've asked that several times. They refuse to do anything to help us right now other than voluntarily turn over the car. My husband asked them, "you really would rather acquire a car that doesn't run that you then have to sell instead of deferring a payment or two to help us satisfy the loan and pay you off?" They said of course they wouldn't rather do that but it's all they can offer. It really annoys me when companies refuse to help people that are just trying to pay their bills. I know it's not their place to help anybody (they're a business, after all) but life happens. We're good for April so we'll pay like normal and hopefully we'll be able to figure something out starting in May. Thanks again, everyone! And please feel free to suggest anything else that may be helpful.

Hi everyone - thanks for the replies! I'll try to answer everything. Buying a trans - I'd love to be able to do that but there's literally no money to do that. I can't sell the car without a title and the financing company holds the title until pay off. Unless there's something I'm missing? I have asked all friends and family if they (or anybody they knew) wanted to buy it and that's a no-go, too. Repossession - I know voluntary is the same ding on the credit as a regular one. The lender didn't lead us to believe otherwise, they said we would look better to THEM (the bank) in regards to voluntarily turning it over instead of making them hunt it down. Basically, they'd be more willing to work with us after auction. Whether I believe them or not, well, I don't know about all that. Selling at auction - In reading, I thought they had to sell it at auction as close to blue book as they could get? I know very little about this so I may very well be wrong. Medicaid - My son has Medicaid, my husband and I are not eligible. However, when I called the place that we're through to ask about a specific therapy, I did ask about provided travel or some sort of reimbursement and they said no. Also, the university hospital said there was no program that could help, either, cuz I asked them, too! Food stamps - We do get those. Not a lot but we get them. My couponing makes them go much farther but not quite far enough so I have regular grocery money as well. Care Credit - We tried them at the time. We both got turned down. Even called to ask them to assess it on a case basis and they said it was because of the bankruptcy and they would not extend us credit. Refinancing it, I'm not sure if we could. Our new auto loan is through Cap 1 and I considered calling them and asking if they would. Never hurts to ask, right? If the payment were just lowered to half of what it is, we could get by. Thank you for your kind words. It's a scary place to be in but I'm trying to be proactive and realizing that there is a problem on the horizon and trying to find a way out instead of being surprised. I don't like surprises - my son was the only surprise I was happy about. I think that's everything...

I posted something on the boards the other night regarding a family member and I've been trying to decide if I want to post my own or not. I hate that we're even at this point after coming back from the financial crisis we were in a few years ago. But if anybody understands these situations - it's the great people here at the Credit Boards. So, I give you my very long story (I apologize for the length; I shortened as much as I could but didn’t want to leave out info). Background: In 2008 we ended up filing bankruptcy and starting completely over. We were drowning in debt, extremely upside down in a house that had a lot of major issues that we didn't have the money to fix, we had 2 cars with HIGH payments, and a lot of credit card debt. We let all of this go in the bankruptcy - on the advice of the lawyer (and we agreed). Basically, we started humbly from scratch. Right after the bankruptcy (and before they repo'd the cars), we financed a car with a manageable payment and moved into a rental home. Since then, my husband and I have each gotten 2 builder credit cards (Orchard Bank and Cap 1). No late payments on the car or the cards or anything else. We learned our lesson with that one! No more debt we can't afford. One year ago, we bought a home. Good interest rate, great area, excellent schools. We’re very happy here. (And it was the same price as our rental) Up to this point, we’ve done good and we definitely no longer spend recklessly post bankruptcy. My husband works full time as a manager in retail and I stay at home with our special-needs son. Last October, literally (I kid not) TWO WEEKS after the warranty went out on the car we bought after bankruptcy, the transmission died. We didn't have the money to fix it and couldn't get any sort of a loan or anything and went over a month without a car, depending on my brother and our best friends (who live in neighboring towns) to get hubby back and forth to work and to get us to all of our son's appointments (he has a lot) and to the grocery store. As you can guess, this doubled our previous gas budget and was a burden on those driving us everywhere and we couldn't keep it up for the long-term. After trying unsuccessfully to find a way to get it fixed or to trade it in on another car, we got approved for a loan on a new car but couldn't trade in the other. Pretty good interest rate, new car w/ really good extended warranty and it's a small car w/ excellent gas mileage. Having no other choice, we got the new car. So now we have 2 car notes and 1 that doesn't run. After a horrible winter (we're in Michigan) and stupidly high heating bills (and this is WITH keeping it turned down!) we had to go on a new payment plan w/ the utility company and it's based off our bills and I just found out Thursday that the payment is going to be quite high but we have to do it because we have a huge back bill due to the original payment plan we were on (which wasn’t enough to cover what was accruing). Every week to two weeks I have to drive my son to the university hospital (about an hour and a half away) and he's about to start speech therapy 3 times a week and I'm praying it won't be at the university because the gas is killing us. We were doing all right before all the university visits and before I had to have emergency oral surgery on Valentine's Day (I would rather have gotten flowers! ) and had to pay with credit and cash because we don't have insurance. We have a house payment, of course, and that includes insurance. We disconnected DirecTV and we only have a cell (no landline) phone for both my husband and I (and we're on a family share plan so his is only $10 bucks a month) and we're locked into a contract with Internet (it's the only "extra" we have). I have the cheapest car and house insurance, I coupon like crazy, I buy many things second-hand and don't get my hair done or my nails or buy new clothes (I haven't gotten new clothes in years). We don't have any fancy electronics (even though my hubby very much wants one of those flat screen television's!) and we don't go out to eat or do much of anything that requires we spend money. We get together a lot with friends and play cards – cheap and fun! So, present day, I am behind on my cell phone bill (but have it worked out with them to get caught up in two weeks) and we are not behind on anything else. We do have one payday cash advance (I know, I know, I had to get it during the oral surgery debacle to cover what we fell short on) and I'll have it paid off in two weeks as well. I still have to have some major work done on my mouth but that'll have to wait for now. The problem is that we're okay until it all starts rolling off the rails in May. We're strapped for April but we get by. I already take from the grocery budget to pay for the extra gas. In May (and beyond) the bills simply outweigh what we’ll be bringing in. I’ve looked at things we can sell and I’ve already sold some (like my son’s clothes that he’s grown out of) but it’s not enough (again, we don’t have high-end things). This all boils down to this: The only thing we have that we can give up that we don’t “need” or have to have is the car that doesn’t run. Kelly Blue Book on it in “fair” condition (aside from the transmission being out and the gas gauge not working, it’s in pretty good shape and kbb didn’t allow me to pick “poor” as an option) is approx. $3700. We owe a little over $3300. I can’t sell it without a title, of course, which I won’t have until pay-off. We’ve been in constant contact with the lender trying to seek some sort of a solution and they suggested a voluntary repossession (I never thought a company would suggest this) and that after auction they would allow us to set up a payment plan that we could afford for the remainder. Doing this would alleviate the budget issue (I’ve done my budget for the rest of the year – starting in May paydays are in red) but how do we know the lender is telling the truth? They said they don’t want to go to court to make us pay, that they’d rather handle it amicably. They refuse to do anything to help beforehand (but, let’s be honest, even putting one payment to the end would not fix it all). We’ve never been late to them and I hate to screw up the hard work on our credit to do this but I don’t know what else to do. At the end of the day it’s just a car and not worth sleepless nights worrying about it. But, on the other hand, what if they sue? (We are not trying to get out of this debt – it’s ours and we owe it and plan to pay it so we won’t suddenly disappear into the night after they take it) I’m most worried that they would garnish his wages (Michigan is a 25% state) or attach to our bank account and since we live paycheck to paycheck, losing this money would really mess everything up. However, we’d be fine with setting up a payment plan with them. To add insult to injury, the non-running car is paid off in December of this year but I don’t see any way to make it 8 more months. So, suggestions or something I’m not seeing? What do you think about turning the car over? The lender told us that while it would still hit the credit the same, that turning it over voluntarily and keeping in contact with them will make us look good and make them work with us. I can’t believe we’re in a place like this when we’ve been so careful with money and not been frivolous with it. I ask you, good people of Credit Boards, what do you think?

Interesting. Thanks for all the info, everybody.

I would love to know the answer to this. Years ago my Dad added my DH to his Home Depot card as an authorized user - with no ss#, no signature, etc. My Dad passed away a few years later unexpectedly and a couple of years after that we went to buy a house and found out that Home Depot was reporting on DH's credit report as a derogatory charge off. We tried and tried to get them to remove it but every time we called HD they said "we can't find anything on this account". This was way before I found CB so I had no idea how to contest it. It's since fallen off of his report but I always wondered how they could report. They didn't try to collect or anything but they sure were quick to report it derogatory. -Edited for spelling and clarification.

#71 here and it was DD this morning. My Mom is #35 and hers was also DD this morning. The IRS had said it would be DD today all week. Hope all you guys that haven't gotten yours get it soon!

DH is a 71 and no rebate yet however I used the "where's my rebate" thing on the IRS site just now and it had our amount to be DD on the 9th. So, good news there. My Mom is a 35 and she has the same info - DD on the 9th. Right up until yesterday we were getting the same error message. Maybe they finally got things straightened out? lol

Bump

I'm sorry that I am unable to provide answers to your questions, I just wanted to extend my condolences to you regarding your best friend.

Good afternoon CBers. I did a search on the board about this and I've been all over the BK forum lol. If I missed this elsewhere on the board (admittedly I cannot read every thread because I have a 1 year old), my apologies and please point me in the right direction. Okay, we've filed for Chapter 7 and are awaiting our 341A meeting in June and are expecting a discharge date sometime in August. As you can imagine, prior to filing our credit was very very shamefully low. We want to really use this as a true fresh start with our credit, I have learned so much just reading everything here. So many things that I didn't know! I am forever indebted to the knowledge that rests on these boards and am back for more. After the discharge, what is the first step toward raising the credit scores? Do we apply for Orchard/other bk friendly cards? Which ones are the best for a bk filer? We are now used to living on cash so our intention is to use the cards for everyday things like gas, groceries, diapers, animal food, etc. and then pay them in full every month since we already have gas, groceries, diapers, animal food, etc. built into the budget. We are surrendering our upside down high payment car in the bk and purchasing a 'beater' car with our stimulus money (whenever it arrives lol). Assuming the car stays in good running condition, should we keep it and not worry about a car payment or would a car payment help build up the credit? (If the payment is reasonable, we have no problem in making one). We are currently renting our home. We just signed a 2-year lease in March in an effort to work on rebuilding. We are able to purchase the house if we like it, we can extend the rental agreement in 2 years or we can move. Depending largely on the economy, we are considering moving further away/to another state. Is two years logically enough time to be away from the bk and raising the credit to get a decent non-ARM loan for a home? (Renting elsewhere might not be an option, we have a very large dog so apartments are out and at least around here, rental houses are out). What have been your experiences in this regard? We're lucky, we love our current home so if we needed to stay here longer it wouldn't be an issue. We are in an economically depressed area (which was that way before everyone else caught up lol) and thankfully DH does have a job here but I think nowadays you can't count on anything. I think that's it lol. I am the type of person who likes to plan things in advance and I'd like to have a plan in place for the rebuild. Thank you so much for reading! Happy Friday! Jenn

Thank you, I sincerely appreciate it! When we're discharged I will contact Chex about it. There is a credit union here - Security Federal - that would take us if our credit scores were over 600 but they aren't. I don't know if they don't pull Chex or if they don't care or what their criteria is re: Chex but they told us that we could have a savings now and after 6 months (unless our scores were higher before then) they would see about giving us a checking account.

That is what the bank told us after it had happened when we went in. When we closed the account - they said that wouldn't happen. Nothing was in writing, we were very naive with them. No, we haven't filed anything, I didn't figure we'd win anything - it was our account that we closed, the ACH debits were ours so I figured that was it. Naive again? The reporting bank is Chase.

Hi mca. As far as I know. I don't even know how to check any other systems. When I was going through my paperwork for the lawyer I really READ one of the letters from Chase and they said they were going to report us to Chex. When we tried to get a checking account - because life would be much easier with one - the banks told us we were in Chex. Thank you in advance for any help! I really appreciate it.

Hi mca, I couldn't find a bank (both on your list and through google) in Flint, Michigan that didn't take them. One credit union here didn't but our credit scores weren't high enough. Siiiiiiiiiiigh. I'm sorry you were declined, debtfull.