I Filed Chapter 13 Now I Can't Pay My Bills

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. So recently I filed Chapter 13. Actually, it's the beginning of this month, and it takes me approximately $215 out of each paycheck. I'm struggling to get the rest of my finances on track to be able to pay my bills on time at the beginning of the month and more in the middle of the month. Is it a logistics issue? Are you saying there's bills that are hitting, you know, before the paycheck hits, and so therefore you're going in the red? Yeah, kind of a little bit of that. So for example, I've got my rent at the beginning of the month. I've got utilities due in the middle of the month. I've got an attorney payment due right at the end of each month for a child custody case So when you pay it, when are you running out? Is it the bills that happen at the beginning, the bills that happen at the middle? Like what's happening? And have you verified that you have enough money for the month to cover everything for the month? It's just when it's happening? Yeah, it's basically just when it's happening. I'm trying to figure out how I can try and get ahead of everything so I can break down each paycheck to pay a portion of everything. Right. So how often do you get paid? How do you get paid? I get paid every weekly or every week on Thursdays. Every week on Thursdays. Okay. And then, so there's a feature in EveryDollar that's called Paycheck Planning, and it basically does exactly what you're saying. you can load in every expense that you have and when you're currently paying it and then you can start to figure out okay this is the one that's setting me over i need to move this i can no longer pay the utilities on the 13th i need to ask them if i can pay them on the 25th right and a lot of times you can you know call people up and just say can i move the due date on this as long as it's within the same month and they'll allow you to do that and then another part of it is some of the things that are variable that you can control, like your groceries. I don't know that you do this, but instead of loading everything up on the first, maybe you split up your grocery bill a little bit more so that you have the money there. Do you see what I'm saying? Just moving things around and tweaking it a little bit so that you can kind of figure out this puzzle. But when you lay that out in every dollar, you're going to be able to see exactly how much you're over and it'll help you go, oh gosh, I'm always $57 over. That looks suspiciously like my gas bill for that week. Right. And so those things will help you figure out what you need to do to solve that puzzle. Okay. Does that make sense? It also gets hard. Yeah. And it also gets hard though. I'm stuck paying different bills for my parents also. So my dad, he recently had an amputation and was unable to work. So I helped him pick up a lot of his stuff. And then my mom Also, she can't work hardly either, so I picked up her phone bill. Why can't she work? Why can't she work? She's disabled. Are they on disability? Do they have income coming in from that? Don't wait for the interest rate to be perfect before buying or refinancing a home. Talk to Churchill Mortgage. Smart buyers buy the home they can afford now and then refinance later if rates improve. Churchill helps you make decisions with confidence instead of guessing. And Churchill Mortgage has a webpage with special offers just for our audience. Go to ChurchillMortgage.com slash RamseyOffer. This is a paid advertisement. NMLS ID 1591. NMLSconsumeraccess.org. Equal housing lender. Very little. So they might get $1,400 each every month. And that basically covers their rent and utilities. Are you the only sibling? The only sibling capable of taking care of anything. Yeah, but I don't think you are. You're in bankruptcy. And that's why I am where I'm at. And that's what I'm saying. Because of your parents? We've got to break this chain. It's a little bit of everything that just snowballed at once. My dad was working and then he was diabetic and it turned into, he had an infection and it turned into amputation. That's terrible. So he's been unable to work for about a year and a half. Where is he living? Is he living in a home? Is he living in an apartment? How is he living? him and my mom rent a house okay uh i mean this is really tough but there's part of this that it's very hard for you to get in a true position of being able to help if you don't put up a boundary and say i got like i'm drowning here i'm in bankruptcy i'm literally the the boat tossed me off and i'm fighting for my life in the ocean and if i keep trying to rescue you guys we're all gonna drown right and so at some point it might be tough but it's like i need you guys to fend for yourselves or the other siblings or something so that i can just get myself back in the boat here and then i promise once i get every like i will come back for you like that's kind of what you need to do because you're in bankruptcy you don't have the money and if this is what's caused this then 100 you've got to go guys i cannot do all of this and and and there should be no shame in that it is very hard it's hard to handle one household let alone your parents household right and that's it is hard between everything i've picked up probably six or seven hundred dollars um in bills that i don't necessarily that aren't necessarily mine how much do you bring in every week it fluctuates so i do asphalt where i'm at and it kind of It depends on weather, but generally between $800 to $1,200 a week after tax. After tax. So you're bringing home about, let's call it around $60,000 or so? Yeah. Actually, last year, according to my income, it was actually about $70,000 because I do have a secondary job. Good. The asphalt is seasonal, but it allows me to swap back and forth every year. So if you're hustling, you could bring in $5,000 to $6,000 a month. And what's your rent? uh 1250 okay that's reasonable and so where's all the rest of the money going outside of the attorney fees and your chapter 13 payment to parents essentially um so the attorney payment is 350 every month uh cell phone bill is roughly 150 i pick up my mom's bill um that's another $150. You pick up her cell phone bill? Why are your cell phone bills so high? Why don't you get her like a Boost mobile phone? Why don't you get her off of what she has and get her like a Boost mobile and pay like $30 a month for that instead of $150? And then it turns into another debt payment of the cell phone because it's through Verizon and not paid off. Yeah, we don't need to be having financed cell phones when we can't even put food on the table. So we can get some dumb phones Yeah. Can we trade that phone and get whatever cash we can pay it off and then just get you a dumb phone? Like George said, these are all that. Yeah. Yeah. These are all the things I want you looking very closely at with a magnifying glass going. What can I do? So you pay the mom's cell phone. What? Tell us the other bills you're paying for them. Let's see if we can help you knock them out or get them very, very low. I do pay the car insurance for everybody. Your dad's not driving right now. right nobody does have the vehicle which it is financed and he's able to pay that payment right but let's let's stop for a second let's think about what you just said we're paying a payment with insurance on a car that he's not even driving so let's for the time being because my guess is not is he's probably not going to drive for a while let's get rid of that vehicle can we sell it can we get out of that which will get rid of that insurance as well on that vehicle It's too far negative to get rid of. I've looked into that. What's the underwater amount compared to what you could get private party and the loan? It's worth about $6,000 or $7,000, and he still owes $23,000 or $24,000. So there was negative equity rolled over? It wasn't negative equity rolled over. It was just the way the loan fell. Yeah, a bad loan. What about mom's car? He got behind on everything. What about mom's car? It is paid for cash, but it's their only vehicle. okay but what if what if she drove dad's car what if we sold mom's paid for cash car she took dad's car dad is not going back and forth to work so he's just not going to have a car for a while they can't afford two vehicles certainly not on payments they can't afford to live they certainly cannot afford two cars so let's get rid of mom's car what can you get for that maybe five thousand these are the decisions if you're going to be in bankruptcy and helping them with their life and their money these are the these are the types of decisions you're going to have to be able to make and say i can't do this if we're going to rescue ourselves we've got to make some deep cuts i'm making deep cuts you've got to make deep cuts if you're not willing to make the deep cuts i can't help and so that's what this looks like but um the strong can only help the weak and right now you're operating from a place of weakness and i don't want you see you calling back two years from now saying i'm back in bankruptcy again because mom and dad are anchors keeping me down. Everyone needs to figure this out for themselves. You're all adults and right now you need to clear the decks and get yourself a financial foundation. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.