We are a family of 4 with two children under age 12. My husband and I work hard, but we have had a difficult few years. First, I lost a well paying job in 2016, shortly after my son was born. I was laid off while on maternity leave. I found work again, working 2-3 jobs at a time, just to earn 50% of my previous salary. Most years, I was earning less than $40,000. My husband is a teacher and earns a modest salary. There have been so many months we struggled to pay our mortgage, only to make a 50% payment, or a partial payment. I’ve gone nights without meals so I could feed my kids. There have been weeks where we cannot afford groceries, or we had to make the painful choice to buy groceries instead of paying the mortgage.
In the last 6 months, I found a solid job that pays enough, but we have accumulated so much debt over the last few years just trying to stay afloat. We took on short-term loans at high interest rates. We’ve saved some money just to spend it on emergencies like broken appliances, a car accident, and replacing a 40 year old furnace. We have tried repeatedly to work with our home lender and still seem to come up short. We are several months behind on our mortgage. Our home is in foreclosure. We are doing everything we can to catch up, but we desperately need to save our home. I firmly believe that the next 12 months could be better than the last few years, but we need to get caught up on our mortgage. We need at least 4-5 figures to get on decent footing, but at least $10,000 to show a good faith attempt to stay in our home. Any amount is helpful.