My name is Melanie. I am a generally happy person, but pretty quiet, too.
I am 49, I teach English, and I live in Florida with my tiny Morkie (Maltese-Yorkie).
https://paypal.me/journeytobeautiful74?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US
I successfully raised three incredible kids who are now three fabulous young adults who love each other, their momma, and everyone else, too, lol. My middle says that when he is wealthy, he is going to buy his momma a house and a car, and I will never have to work again! This is wonderful news! :) I’m not sure how much the Coast Guard pays, but my guess is that I will have a bit of a wait until he can make good on that promise. ;)
In the meantime, momma has to make ends meet. Problem is, I can’t seem to find the ends to put them together. I moved two hours away from my family in order to be able to live on my teaching salary, but when my pay went up a thousand dollars a year, my tax bracket went up to nearly a quarter of my income (!!).
After having been married to a non-working, drug-addicted man for twenty years (and trying so, so hard to help him and make it work), I finally had to admit defeat, and we left – but not before my finances and credit were completely devastated. I don’t feel sorry for myself – I chose to stay because I felt it was the right thing to do. But hindsight is 20/20. The positives are that my kids are well-versed in compassion, empathy, and loving a person in spite of their flaws, and they want absolutely nothing to do with substances of any kind. The negatives are that they never got to see what a healthy marriage or father/child relationship look like, and that here I am at 49, starting over.
I work hard – I teach all day, and then I Door-dash in the evenings and on weekends. I spend nearly nothing, except for what is necessary, and I try to help my kids when I can, but usually I can’t – and it breaks my heart.
The most heart-breaking of all of it for me is the car. Let me explain:
When my oldest turned 17, he had saved up enough for a down-payment on his own car. Mine was paid-for, so I took out an auto loan for him in my name, and he made the payments, faithfully. Not long after that, I was rear-ended by a man going 60 mph (I was at a dead stop), and he totaled my car. Insurance, of course, did not give me nearly enough to replace the kind of vehicle I had (a mini-van), so I ended up with a $4k beater that lasted a couple of years and then went completely kaput. I ended up having to finance a vehicle, which I hated to do, but I had to be able to get to work. Problem was, they wouldn’t give me a loan for another car because I already had one for my son’s car, unless he co-signed with me, showing a need for two vehicles. By then, he was 19 and a year away from paying off his car; so we went ahead and did that. Meanwhile, the accident had caused a disk herniation that finally broke off, got tangled in my sciatic nerve, and landed me in surgery and a long recovery. This, of course, put me behind financially. I wrote lesson plans and graded papers from home, but since I wasn’t actually present, I wasn’t paid until I went back.
Fast-forward to this past year, and I have had issue after issue, including a hospital stay where I was diagnosed with seizures (??). Not having enough PTO accrued, my pay was docked for the hospital stay. Between that and barely making enough to live, I fell behind on car payments, and it has now hurt my oldest child’s credit. The fact that my loan is attached to him also kills his debt-to-income ratio, because he is a college student working at Starbucks. Right now, he has nearly $22k in debt on my behalf, after having responsibly paid off his own car.
I am up to my eyeballs in debt, with student loans I had to defer for years while I was raising kids and the sole household income, and every time I turn around, something else breaks or wears out and has to be replaced. I am nearly at my wits’ end and can’t see a way up and out, in spite of working nearly every hour of every day.
I want to go back and get my masters degree in clinical social work, which is actually what I am made for, but in spite of applying for tons of grants and scholarships, I haven’t gotten there yet. My heart is for the kids who have nobody – my favorite teaching job was in a teen boys’ high-security detention center, where I was able to reach kids that believed nobody cared anymore and give them hope and tools and opportunities and a belief that their lives could be different.
There is just so much I want to do – but I feel so stuck, and stalled at every turn because of financial strain I cannot get out from under.
I owe $19k in student debt.
I (and my son) owe $22k on an auto loan (which they refuse to refinance in my name only – believe me, I’ve asked.)
I owe $11k on a personal loan from my divorce.
I owe who-knows-how-much in medical bills – I haven’t even added all of that up yet.
Writing it all out and looking at it is making me ill…
Help would be like a breath of fresh air – just to be able to breath and see hope and not feel so heavy with this mountain of debt, and so responsible for my oldest son’s credit, because it is absolutely not his fault. That one kills me.
There is so much more… I am a writer, I blog (for family and friends), I love people, I believe everyone is precious and valuable, and I wish there was some way to show them and convince them of their worth. I want to see families treating each other right, husbands loving their wives well, wives affirming and adoring their husbands, couples working as a team to raise the next generation with confidence and dignity and compassion and empathy… I want to do so much. And I just feel stuck, with no end in sight to this day-in and day-out effort and grind of trying to catch up.
So that’s my story in a nutshell, and I would love and appreciate for someone to help in any way they can. Many thanks, and if anything, thank you for taking time to read. That alone makes you kind!
With love and warmest regards,
Melanie