We are not behind,yet. We have been paying 5 or six days past the due date. Just enough not get any late fees. To do this we have begun paying late on credit cards, which of course is now trashing our credit, will of course make it impossible to ever refi, even if the home value ever goes back up again. We have cut way back on food. Cut weekly allowance for house, after bills from $200(that had to cover food, gas for cars to get to work, clothing etc) down to $140. Now shop at resale as much as we can,hard to slash the heat bill here in the winter, but we do keep temp down to 66 or 67 and bundle up a lot so bill hopefulyy wont reach $300 in middle of winter. Dont know where that extra will come from since HOPE said we were about $100 in red. I can trim that away, but with not as much money coming in as a year ago will be very hard to make ends meet. I even asked the last person at
CW if we would have a better chance of getting relief if we just stopped paying(which I don't find to ethical) I was told that she couldn't exactly tell me what to do! So basically their employee was telling me that if I just quit paying I may qualify? That is ridiculous. Here we are trying to maintain good credit standing with everyone and they hint that I should stop paying my mortgage and take the chance they may help me, because as of now we don't qualify for help. So, if they still don't help me, I will then be in foreclosure.