Hello, I’m not even sure where to start, I just know I want to change my current situation. I am a clinical pharmacy specialist at the VA Medical Center and love my job because I get to help veterans in some small way. I feel that it’s a very small act of gratitude for their sacrifices for us and I get paid to do it. I make a great salary and up until November of 2016 had no debt and a perfect credit score. I was partially homeschooling my children in a collaborative model private school, which I loved because I got to know my kiddos on a deeper level. My ex-husband and I separated in 10/2016 (almost 13 years of marriage) after trying everything I possibly could to make the marriage work. I know that I am not perfect and was willing to try everything to avoid breaking up our family and so that I would have no regrets. My ex-husband is successful in his career and in 2012 after I found out that he had cheated on me, he blamed me because he was too stressed because we both had a full time career and 3 small children and that if I was able to take care of everything at home, that it would make him less stressed. At that point, I gave my 2 weeks notice but stayed on intermittently at the VA so I could take stress off of him and started counseling. Time went by and he became verbally and emotionally abusive, and destructive with regards to personal property (throwing, punching things, etc), tore me down in every aspect of my life and all the while dealing with my daughter’s autism diagnosis. In 2013, he threw a spray bottle through the living room window and I told him to get out. He moved out into an apartment and he went to counseling to work on his aggression and after 6 months, it appeared that things had drastically improved and we moved back in together. He stopped going to counseling and after 6 months, he went back to the verbal and emotional abuse, then started the physical abuse. After an altercation involving my oldest son, I told him that I was done and started the process to divorce. We did try counseling together and individually, but in the end, the counselor told me that it would be “utter ruin” for me to stay in the marriage because of his personality disorder. It was messy and found out about more affairs, but once I finally divorced him, I felt a weight lifted. I was done trying to fix something that only I was trying to fix.
Without full time work history, it was hard to find someone who would rent to me even after I went back to my full time salary, but found someone who agreed as long as I gave 3 months of rent in advance. I had to withdraw alot of my retirement and use credit cards for the first time in years to start over. My ex remarried 1 year after we divorced and for the past 3 years has attempted to make my life hell. I had met an amazing (imperfect but perfect for me) man that I ended up getting engage to, but due to how my ex handled things with my kids, it made any other relationship extremely difficult. Now I’m just focusing on my kids and how the divorce and the discord caused by their dad is affecting them. It was too much for me to juggle all of it even though I love this man with all my heart, I had to let him go for now. I know if it’s meant to be, then we will find our way back to each other.
I feel that it is important to understand the back story to understand why I am asking for help. I am stuck in this house paying rent that is too high for me now that my ex fought to get child support taken away from me, saying that I make too much for him to give me child support. I have back owed taxes from 2017, because for the first couple of years while he was paying me child support, I let him use the kids as dependents on his tax return and ended up owing about $12,000 which I’m still paying on. Still have $100K in student loans (started with 175K) but during our marriage we focused on paying off his student loans then the other higher interest debts. I’ve had car issues and credit issues and now my credit score has plummeted from excellent to poor and I have the income to make monthly payments on a mortgage if I had one, but I can’t free up enough cash flow to save and I’m not able to borrow anymore from my retirement account.
I just want to get into a house with some land (which I would eventually use for my non-profit) and clean up my debts/credit score. I am a good person who always gives and helps and now I need the help for me and my kids to get back on track.
What I need to pay off all debts would be almost $200,000 (which takes care of student loans, IRS and credit cards) and then to buy a house around $500,000, whatever it would take for a large enough down payment to keep my payments at a reasonable amount.
Thank you for your consideration. It would mean the world to me and wouldn’t be wasted. 