Ok, here's some of the story behind our plummet into debt.
My wife and I have been married 11 years. We are both schoolteachers, and love teaching. About 5 years ago, we decided to see if we could start a family. We tried, and in a few short months were expecting our first child. However, at 6 weeks my wife started feeling intense abdominal pain, and after several trips to doctors, found out the pregnancy was ectopic. My wife needed immediate surgery and would have, according to the doctor, probably died in another few hours due to internal bleeding. So our first attempt at a child was not only failed, but ended in a traumatic trip to the ER and two weeks recovery.
On our second attempt, the Lord gave us a beautiful, healthy baby boy. He is amazing, learning new things every day. We love our time with him and can't wait each day to see what he will do next.
After our first child came another pregnancy, but that ended in miscarriage. Subsequent doctors visits have confirmed for several reasons, that another child is unlikely, and that our first was a minor miracle.
So we have only one child where there would have been three. This has taken a huge toll on us, mentally and emotionally. I do not list this as an excuse, but rather my own thoughts about our spending. I think when the world seems so hard and sad, it is often easier just to treat ourselves to something rather than making a hard decision about saving money. So we spent to help us get through the day with a little happiness.
Also, we decided, probably rather naively, to try to do our best with the child we have and not send him to daycare. Rather, my wife has stayed home with him now for three years. On the one hand, it has been the best for the child, since he is with his loving parents all the time, but it has been bad on our finances, having only one job.
So what did we do? We kept paying our bills and buying groceries and a few little things here and there. Nothing extravagant like big vacations or cars or whatever. little things. But at the end of the month it always added up to more than what I earned. Big problem, right?
Ah, not when every creditor in the universe sent us card offers, and the ones we had sent us those "convenience checks" that we could just write out and deposit, and Bam! money back in the bank account. So we would get cash advances or use the checks to balance the daily budget, and then move into the next month. They all sounded so easy, and so slick, and we admit we were taken in.
Yes, we did make the decision every month to take more credit. We have come to grips with that. It is our fault. And after a couple years of it, we looked at our statements and realized we were taking out more credit just to pay the payments on the other ones! Talk about revolving credit.
We have stopped taking out new credit for two months now. My wife has started a part-time job, since she has not found a full-time one yet. I started working a second job, too. But still the credit has gotten out of control.
We have missed payments and our credit is hurting.
We rarely see each other, and seeing each other has been for 11 years the greatest joy of our days.
We see no end, and are losing hope. Soon we will need to either file bankruptcy or undergo litigation.
WHAT WE WOULD LOVE TO DO:
We have liquidated everything we can to help pay off the bad debt. BUt it is nowhere near enough. Family members are trying to do the same, but it is slow. But debts keep going unpaid and we are getting desperate.
We would love to have help to help us pay off what we owe. But we do not think we should get a free ride. No, we are against that. We need to stand up and be accountable for what we have done. I tell my students that all the time.
And if we get help, any help, we PROMISE to give it back to the community. Charity. Church. Any place that helps people.
We want to get back to being a part of the help for our community. We are asking that if you help, we would work it back into our budget after paying off debt.
We can balance our budget with our mortgage, our cars, and our expenses on my one salary and still not need daycare for our son, and we pledge to do so. We can even include a monthly allowance for charity. But right now the interest is killing us, and we cannot keep up.
Since we have missed payments, our interest is now above 25% on all our accounts. Just yesterday we received notice that one of our accounts went from 8.9% to 29.99% last month because we were late. We had a hard time paying it to begin with, but now the payment went from $108 a month to $228 a month. Things are getting bad.
Please, if you feel at all stirred by this blog, please consider helping us out. We promise your help wont stop here.
For the future, I will keep posting on this blog with more of my own catharsis about the situation, updates on our attempt to get out of debt, and any successes or pitfalls along the way. Thanks for reading.
