Father, husband, rock and roll drummer and IT guy trying to keep the family and house afloat. My family is working as hard as we can to keep the bills paid and the lights on. We have been successful to a point but have managed to increase debts along the way that were just unavoidable (vehicle troubles, household utilities, rising food costs and medical expenses). We are drowning. It is not tragic yet but once those debts catch up completely, it will be too late. I am not someone who asks for help normally. I am usually the one who shows up to help others. I’m just out of resources and options.
I used to work two jobs (for more than 10 years), but I can not physically do that anymore. I had to have Chemotherapy and radiation therapy a little more than a year ago. I lost a lot of weight in a short amount of time (mostly muscle from my legs and torso) and I struggle to regain those muscles. I still am in pain a lot while the muscles that I developed over 20 years ago and lost try to grow back and a thyroid condition caused by the Chemotherapy. I just could not physically make it through a day where I had to work more than 8 or 10 hours.
I love my family. We are always together, and I really prefer that to working 65 to 70 hours a week. I still have two children in school. A musician, graphic artist and budding CAD engineer in high school and my Gymnast, singer, Artist, and future “The Great American Novel” writer in elementary.
I am fully employed and make decent money as an IT systems administrator but that only pays the mortgage and a couple of utilities. The utilities have tripled in the past few years, cost of food has tripled, we owe a lot of little amounts ($200 to $800) of money to several places because we tried living off our credit hoping that raises and yearly bonuses and tax refunds would come. It is those miscellaneous bills that are pulling us down. We have looked at home refinance options and we just do not qualify anymore; it is the same for bank loans. Our savings is gone and there is no retirement plan to borrow from anymore. There are also no relatives we can lean on until the bonuses come and the loans get repaid. Our outstanding debt including medical but minus the mortgage and car payment is only about $13,000.00 but that $13,000.00 is a very scary number when our checking account is in the negative.
That is our current situation, which I am sure is not much different than anyone else’s but it’s about to get worse. Thanks for the time you spent reading this and your consideration.
https://paypal.me/JeffreyFlohr?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US