Hello! Not much of a poster on here but here it goes! My wife, myself, and our three children currently live in Ohio. I’m salary and make a base of almost 92k/year plus almost 10k in bonuses. My wife is hourly and makes about 24k/year. We’ve got three kids, we own a home, and up until recently drove two newer vehicles (both with a lot of negative equity-wife actually just totaled hers last weekend). My wife has struggled with some health stuff and one of our daughters had a liver tumor a few years back that required surgeries, etc. Needless to say we raked up a lot of medical bills on top of our combined 80k in student loans. We also made some poor decisions along the way and have about 22k in credit card debt (a lot of which is behind in payments) and about 25k in loans. House and vehicles are current.

A few months ago I spoke with an attorney about filing and he said we’d probably be chapter 13 and about 2400/month but would keep cars and house (this was before my wife totaled hers). Since I spoke with the attorney, I got a job offer in our home state of Iowa for base pay 120k/year with up to 20k in bonuses. If we sold our house and rented there, my net sales of the house would almost pay off the cc’s/loans but we’d have to rent for a long time as my credit went from almost 750 to now 500. My current job offered me base of 104k/year to stay and 13% annual bonus. We are very torn on what to do. Obviously it’d be more income to take the new job and move, start fresh but if we stay we already own our home and could continue remodeling over time and just file chapter 13. How strict is the ‘budget’ on 13? Would we be able to become more responsible but still put extra money in savings or would every transaction be heavily scrutinized? So torn as we love being here but would also love the new job and fresh start!

Edit: Should also say that wife’s auto loan was close to 69k so that will be paid off by insurance/GAP so overall living will be more affordable without the payment, but not enough to get caught up on cc’s and would lower the monthly 13 payment since that was factored in.