I am an immigrant and a single woman, and I came to this country 5 years ago. I arrived alone to this country and alone I have been since, I have no family here and I have been working hard in order to improve my living conditions year after year (I have never stopped working since I am here, even during the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide lockdown) with positive results, in my opinion. But last year (2023) my financial situation started to worsen, basically because of a gradual reduction of work hours at my workplace which is reflected in less and lesser earned money (taking into account that I only earned $16 per hour), and more and more difficulty to pay my bills and debts. I am not a person who like to hop from job to another job, and I wrongly thought and hoped that those decreased work hours would be restored in a near future, but it never happened. In fact, the situation got worse: those decreased work hours turned into more and more off-days up to two or three in a row during the week. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a job anywhere else and, in consequence, I got into deep debts with my credit cards. I would like to point out that I possess four credit cards, all of them at the limit: one for $2500, another two for $1500, and a last one for $1000 respectively, which unfortunately I am not in able to pay, so that unpayment just generate an increasing debt due to interests.
To cap it all, I took the decision of buying a brand new car in the first quarter of 2023 since my old car would make me to pay high bills for fixing with the mechanic, which in comparison were mostly similar to the monthly payment of a brand new car so I encouraged myself to take the risk, especially because I am an alone woman and it is mandatory to have a car in excellent conditions here in Illinois where is the place I live. The thing is I had to make a little bit high down payment in order to acquire the car, so I was forced to apply for a $6k loan at Oportun. I could acquire that brand new car, for sure, but Oportun charges me twice per month with high interests, which is a heavy financial load to me.
As if this was not enough, I must renew my work permit, which has a cost of $850 since this is a process undertaken by lawyers. To be honest, I am not sure if I can save that amount of money before March 2024, when it is the deadline time for accepting the applications for renewal of work permits.
Due to the fact that I have been receiving less and lesser money because of the decrease of work hours at my workplace, I have been forced to postpone personal and important dues as my health insurance payments between the months of last year accumulating $300, and two months of this year (I changed insurance for an amount of $160).
Thus, the total amount I would need to solve my debt problems and be able to be calmed and make other plans, would be equal to $11k.
I started a new job at the last quarter of 2023 where I used to earn more money ($18 hourly) and there were no off-days because of lack in production but, unfortunately, two of the most important machines in the production line crashed and, as a result, they took the decision of firing eight people and among those me, so I found myself in a labor crisis again.
Currently I have a new job, but I am still in debt because of all those inconveniences.
I would greatly appreciate your help to continue moving forward and continue building my future on a good basis, to cooperate, to contribute with my work in the production within the companies, of this great country.
Kind regards,
Paypal.me/istea4040