discussion title:
Wow...time flies...discharged in Apr'05
I have to say that it has been over a year w/o credit cards....very nice. It has been an interesting year. We filed ch7 last february. Discharged in April. We have gotten a few lucky breaks this year. The year in short:
*April - decided to sell our beautiful suburban house. But I have never been real comfortabe living there. We sold it for quite a bit more than we pd 3 years prior. That was the surprise.
*July-Brought a new duplex in a rural town (population of 5000). Yes, we were approved for a mortgage immediately after our bk. Interest rate definately higher, but not out of control. We qualified with dh's income only.
*mid-july - I quit my job to SAH. Much nicer for the family. The mortgage is low enough/less expenses we do not need my income. Tight, but doable.
*Dh is in his last year of his MBA program. We were unable to come up with half of the $$ for school, and could not credit qualify for student loans. Since his MBA program is an executive program, we cannot use the normal staffords loans. But my dad cosigned for us on that, so that was okay.
*Aug - Dh decided to seriously look for a new job...his employer wbeas a company I do not like. Very hard for my dh as he has been with the company for 8 years. This was a huge step for him.
*Sept-Dh interview and accepted a job with an awesome company with excellent benefits. Started after New years. Not to mention it was an increase of 12K. Big sigh of relief. Now things shouldn't be 'tight'.
*We, too, have been bombarded with cc solicitations. I did apply to one that was from the same company as our mortgage holder. No annual fee, normal interest (16%). Did n't really think we would get it, but we did. With a 3500 limit. How crazy is that? The only reason we did the credit card thing was that dh occasionally will travel for his job. Much easier to rent a car with a credit card.
So overall, good. I had done home daycare for a few years before we moved, then I closed that and got a 'real' job right after the bk. My dh hated having the daycare kids in the house, and it was starting to put a strain on the marriage. After starting the real job, dh realized it was so much stressful for me, and he was also being split between work & being responsible for the kids. (dh had to take off work several days for the kids being sick during the 4 months I was WOH, as did I). I just wasnt working well for our family.
The kids have asthma and as long as you stay 'on top of it' everthing goes fine. Which the daycare staff can't do like a mom can. And even with my doing home daycare they did get sick often, but I didn't have to miss work to keep them at home - we were already there. I knew that dh would not last long with having to take off a day or a half-day at work for sick kids a couple times a month.
Dh's new job is a mid-level management job in a distribution center for a retail chain and the bk was not a probem. They did a full background and credit check prior to the start date of the job.
Good luck,
Sola
