Congratulations! You Lose!

Shortly after I wrote my last post about filing for bankruptcy, we got a letter from our lawyer. The first sentence said, "Congratulations! Your Chapter 13 bankruptcy payment plan has been confirmed! Yada, yada, yada, b*llsh*t, b*llsh*t, b*llsh*t. . . What in the hell are they congratulating us for! That has to be the most asinine  letter I have ever received. Congratulations, you now get to pay us an enormous amount of money for the next five years, live below the poverty level, and be less motivated than ever to improve you earnings--(because if you do, we will adjust your payment to an even higher level, CHA-CHING!!!!) Filing for bankruptcy can sometimes really give people relief. Sometimes people need a second chance. Sometimes people need a kick in the pants to get their act together and pay for what they want. For me, I get that we need to be "punished" for what "we" (I only was aware of some of the debt we had, the rest was hidden from me by my husband) did. Instead of trying to pay back what we owed using Consumer Credit Counseling, my husband insisted that we jump into the bankruptcy, thinking it would be a quick fix. That is him in a nutshell--everything has to be "right now." If he would have been willing to really work out a budget with CCC, we might have avoided this whole mess. It all seems too much for me, too humiliating, too stressful to see that you have absolutely no money for groceries, too scary if, God forbid, any of the six of us would have some sort of accident, or illness, we would not have any way to pay for it. Even more likely, if one of our cars had a big problem, we won't be able to get it fixed. Extra money is just not there, and there are no credit cards to fall back on. In addition to that, we cannot ask our families for help because my husband has ordered me not to tell anyone; add to that that we have to lie to our children when they want to do something extra, and we don't have the money. All of this is simply too much, and really something that I am ashamed to be going through. This should never have happened to intelligent, educated, hard-working, motivated people. If only my husband had told me the truth when I asked him if we needed to work on a budget years ago. If only, if only. . . Please heed my words, do anything you can to avoid bankruptcy. It will ruin your life!