Wherediditallgo’s ‘path to enlightenment’ bankruptcy diary

wherediditallgo

Tomorrow or Thursday at the latest. I'm just waiting for a delivery to arrive at home (supposed to be here by 12 noon), then I'm off to check the route out & get an idea of where to go when I get there. Every time I think about it I feel I'm 5 seconds away from "touching cloth", but I'm trying not to worry. The trouble is, I'm a Cancerian & sometimes it feels like worrying is a vocation.

philnicandamy

good luck with everything & keep us informed your diary has been an inspiration making me realize i'm not alone someone else has had the same fight...it'll all be fine, afterwards just enjoy the best nights sleep you'll ever have

P

wherediditallgo

I'm looking forward to that - I can't remember the last time I slept without either worrying when I went to bed, or worrying when I woke up.

uther_2

We went Br on Tuesday,Tuesday night I had the best nights sleep for ages!

wherediditallgo

27 March - went to the court early this afternoon to get an idea of the place. It wasn't as difficult a journey as I'd imagined, but I'm glad I did it today when I didn't have time pressures to think about as the traffic was awful. I'm going to be at the Royal Courts of Justice - it's a huge building in the Strand, really imposing, & if it wasn't for the fact that I've got to go there I'd prefer somewhere far less attention-grabbing. You've also got the tourists outside taking loads of pictures to negotiate. It's such a famous court that I just pray a divvy celeb doesn't decide to turn up that day for a hearing (George Michael et al, take note), as I can do without being on the national news.

I've done my SOA in draft, so it just needs typing up tonight ready for me to do the copies tomorrow. It might seem an odd thing to say, but when I looked at my SOA, I realised that I'm not frivolous with money, I just have a lot of genuine outgoings! I looked at my bank statements & realised there aren't any regular leisure things like gym memberships, restaurant bills, bills for designer clothes etc, so I'm not as bad with money as I thought. For ages I've assumed that my debts were mainly because I wasted a lot of money, but the SOA shows that I don't have that much to play with in the first place, so any extra/sudden expense does eat into the meagre amount I have left each month. That made me feel a bit better than I did before I wrote down all the figures. I've cancelled the magazine membership (I need it for my study, but I'm going to go halves with a friend doing the same course) & reduced the Sky, so if the OR looks at my bank statements they'll see that I'm as broke as I'm making out. In a perverse sort of way, that made me smile.

Red1708

wherediditallgo wrote: »

I've done my SOA in draft, so it just needs typing up tonight ready for me to do the copies tomorrow. It might seem an odd thing to say, but when I looked at my SOA, I realised that I'm not frivolous with money, I just have a lot of genuine outgoings! I looked at my bank statements & realised there aren't any regular leisure things like gym memberships, restaurant bills, bills for designer clothes etc, so I'm not as bad with money as I thought. For ages I've assumed that my debts were mainly because I wasted a lot of money, but the SOA shows that I don't have that much to play with in the first place, so any extra/sudden expense does eat into the meagre amount I have left each month.

I had similar feelings on Sunday, did my SOA in draft and there is nothing extravagant on it. I buy the majority of our clothes on eBay, have recently negotiated a new deal with Virgin (due to Martins tip) and I only ever go out about once every couple of months. Just hoping the OR sees it the same way.

Good luck for tomorrow

wherediditallgo

27 March (night) - felt decidedly miserable for a while tonight. I spent ages working out my figures for the Statement of Affairs form, then went to type everything in. Could the form have been any more difficult? :mad: Even with the guidance notes in front of me, there was still so much I didn't understand. I felt as though they were trying to trip me up or make the form so hard to complete that I'd give up - as if that's a choice: it's not like I'm suddenly going to go :doh:& remember the £2m stashed offshore, is it? I know it's only paper, but the form really upset me . There might be very good incentives for a company to go bankrupt, but I can't believe an individual gets to this kind of decision without a lot of soul-searching first. Yet it's as if the form's designed to make you ask yourself yet again if you really want to go ahead with it. I know the decision's the right one for me, but doing that form made me feel as though the creditors were having one last good turn of the knife in my back.

Thank goodness for this forum - I posted my queries, & got the answers within minutes. I only need to confirm a couple of addresses tomorrow, then I can finish the form & print it off, ready to take with me Thursday morning. :j But how anyone doing this on their own would have managed is totally beyond me.

wherediditallgo

29 March - it's after 1am, so I'm off to bed soon. The last 36 hours have been something else - at varying points, I've been in tears, printing like mad, calculating & recalculating, wondering why my figures don't come to the same total twice in a row. It's been horrible.

There's been some tension in the forum lately, & whether people agree or disagree with the reasons/people behind it, I can understand it. Everything to do with bankruptcy is stressful - from acknowledging the financial advice you've had to go bankrupt to getting the forms, to trying to complete them, to feeling like a fool because you don't understand something. There's the locating of account reference numbers, loan agreements etc to go through, trying to add up all the figures, trying to tell your story without sounding like a failure or extravagant fool or the village idiot. You've then got to print the thing off, all the time feeling like your financial life history & your financial future is tied up in this one document, & you keep checking & re-checking the info in case you've missed anything off or it's not clear. People who work with bankrupts may know lots about it on paper, but nothing beats personal experience for me, & unless you've gone through this, you really don't have a clue about how much it takes out of you & what it actually feels like in the lead-up to it & on the day itself. That's not to say whatever knowledge people who work in the field is automatically worthless, just that it has to be seen in the context of those actually going through it.

By the same token, I'll never be able to thank people enough for the help I've received here, not just with the forms but also the emotional support we all need when we've got problems. I could never have done the paperwork without help, & if it wasn't for the help I've got I probably would be still putting unopened envelopes in drawers or bags, as if me not being able to see them means they haven't really arrived.

My forms are all done now - double-sided & in triplicate. The money is sitting in my bag, as forgetting that would be awful. :eek: I can't do any more than I've done, so I just pray that things go well - I'll be at court in less than 9 hours! I've contacted the court to arrange for a volunteer to meet me there at 9.45am & accompany me around the court - even if I don't need them in the end, I'm so glad the service is offered. I'm off to bed now, as it's just after 1.30am & Thursday's one day I can't afford to be late out of the house. This time tomorrow it will all hopefully be over. Night all.

wherediditallgo

Can't fall asleep for love nor money, so I got up again & used my IT refund to order a Dell laptop from the Grabbit side of this site. I can justify the expense as (a) I got the refund because of faulty equipment supplied, & (b) I need to have a computer for my studies, as well as for when I work from home. £351 inc VAT & free delivery after I'd added on a couple of bits - that should lower the bank account a bit more in time for me to hit the cashpoint again tomorrow morning. Definitely going back to bed now.

wherediditallgo

29 March (night) – Well, there’s no going back now. I’ve been to court, & I’m now officially bankrupt. I got there for 9.30am (pretty much on schedule) & met up with the woman from the Personal Support Unit. She spent so much time with me today – took me where I needed to go & was so friendly. I really needed the emotional support – just having someone to talk to instead of being on your own trying to find where you needed to go made such a difference. She’s one of the volunteers – although I thanked her profusely when we parted, I must send her a card to say thank you, as it really meant a lot to me.

The good parts of the day –

• Getting round the cashpoints trying to get as much money out as possible – got most of it out, thank goodness.
• Not having to pay the court fee after all, which saved me £150. :j

• Managing to squeeze in time at the Co-op to open a cashminder account in between submitting my petition in the morning & meeting with the OR this afternoon.

• Not having any of my figures queried – she just went through the SOA with me, & said I’d get a copy in the post & my creditors would be contacted within 2 weeks.

• Getting that piece of paper that says I’m bankrupt.

The bad parts of the day –

• Knowing that, though there was no mention of a payments order today, the OR could still contact me at home & make one at any time – I read of someone whose court date went fine, but who was contacted by the OR 2 weeks later & who received an IPA a week after that. :eek: It’s good knowing that I won’t have to deal with creditor letters any more, but I won’t be feeling totally at peace with things for at least a month when I’m more sure of where I stand with the OR.

• Realising that I’ve got to be a lot harder on myself with money in future. It’s so easy to buy things with a debit card, & it's even easier with a credit card, because you're not seeing the money go from your account within a day or so. But unless you’re able to pay it off in full each month, you don’t see how much interest you’re paying & how much of a debt you’re racking up until you can’t pay it. Even then, you let the bill get bigger & bigger because you can’t manage it & don’t know how to. I would like to still be able to buy things online & paying my bills via the internet is so much easier too, but I’ll have to either set up direct debits for the bills & get a pre-paid credit card in future. Nothing would make me want to accrue debts again. I’m going to stop calling things “bills” & start calling them “debts” in future, because that will make me more conscious that they have to be paid off quickly.