Brand new to reddit. My daughter (25F) made me make this because she thinks y'all could help. Sorry if I'm not doing this right or if there's a better place for this.
Some background: My (63F) husband passed away 5 years ago. He always handled our finances so once he was gone, I had to start figuring it out myself. I quickly found out that we were in serious debt (maxed out credit cards, lots of late payments, etc). On top of that, most of our accounts were in my name so my credit score was shot.
I've been working to climb out of that hole for the past 5 years. Unfortunately, about a year ago I was laid off from my job and haven't been able to find another one yet. That also means I lost my health insurance which I haven't recovered (bad, I know).
In terms of income, I bring in about $1,800 a month from unemployment and residual income from my husband's job. I have about $1000 in the bank but no emergency fund. I do have a retirement account with around $35,000. I've gotten my credit score up to around 650 so far.
In terms of bills, I have about $100K left on my mortgage at 4% interest (about $750 monthly). Just paid off the car so that's exciting! Monthly bills (utilities, car insurance, warehouse, phone and cable) come out to be around $600. From credit cards, I owe about $5,500 at 22.9% and $2,500 at 21%.
So now my question is where do I go from here?? I could start pulling my social security but I don't know the implications of that (I guess I'd get around $1200 a month?). Then I could get on medicaid, I think? Not sure if that's a good option or not. I'm of course still looking for a job but at my age it has been tough. Should I try to consolidate my credit card debt?
What do you recommend reddit??
Submitted August 26, 2017 at 12:42PM by palm3tt0 http://ift.tt/2gdCvFA
