[NEED ADVICE] I owe 50k to the IRS and 10k to the state, after filing this year it'll be ~120k all told, what can I do?

Alrighty. You have a harsh reality here, and your family will need to rally to fix this, or your wages will start being garnished and what are currently voluntary lifestyle changes may become necessities. Let's go down the list:

Rent: It might not be comfortable, but could you downgrade to a smaller house, or with a bit of a longer commute, for $2k/mo? Kids share rooms, less square footage, etc. A smaller home also reduces utilities significantly. If you can find a good candidate to take over your lease, your landlord may let you out of it. You can also tell your landlord they either let you out of it with a replacement tenant, or you simply won't be able to afford it going forwards due to garnishment, and then the transfer will be messy.

Car insurance: Have you shopped around? Do you have a terrible driving history? Even with an expensive new car, $300/mo seems quite high.

Investment: Obviously you can stop this.

Credit cards: Not much to be done here. Sounds like around $10k of debt, which isn't enough to justify BK. Do you have 0% interest? If not, apply for a Chase Slate card which offers 0% APR on balance transfers for 15 months, and no transfer fee.

Electric: Obscene. Make sure your family is turning off lights/TVs/devices when they leave rooms, replace oft-used bulbs with LEDs. Unplug everything and plug back in one at a time to make sure something isn't leaking power.

Car: Underwater is bad, but... do you have any savings? If you could clear the underwater, sell the car, and buy a used car for $5k, you'd be gaining positive cash flow of around $800/mo, which would make up for it pretty fast.

Internet/cable: Lowest bandwidth available, lowest cost, drop cable, get Netflix.

Water/trash/sewer: Odd that you have to pay for all of this if it's a rental. Typically these things are covered by the owner, but too late to negotiate now. Be smart with your water use and hopefully at least cut that in half.

Phones: You may need a smart phone for work, but that should be $100/mo at most. Anyone who doesn't need a smartphone for work gets a pay-as-you-go phone.

Parent's home: This is obviously an obligation that you won't be able to get around; understand that one. Tell your parents about your troubles and see if they can cover even another $250/mo of it with whatever fixed income they have.

Lasik: No way around that one, obviously.

Gas/food: Assuming your wife is the cook, ask her to start looking up meals which feature rice and beans. For example: Red lentil curry with basmati rice. Make stews that use cheaper cuts of meat.

Without a home equity line of credit it's unlikely you'd be able to get a large enough loan to cover such a large expense, especially a loan which had a term longer than what the IRS would offer you for repayment.

/r/personalfinance Thread