I’m in a situation that I’ve been busting butt to work out of for years, and can’t get far enough ahead to do it. I’ve raised my credit score from mid 400’s to 643/618/642(Fico 8) over four years, which at least opens doors for renting that I didn’t have before. I have a fully paid for 2002 car that runs well and will drive it til it falls apart. I have a phone on a friend’s plan and pay $45 a month for unlimited usage (meaning I don’t pay for home internet), the device is three years old but works fine and I will use it until I no longer can. I have $21k in student loan debt, 8k in other (medical) debt. I have one CC I opened this summer for rebuilding with a $400 limit and use it for gas, pay in full every month. I have several collections falling off my report in the next 2 years, but three new ones that went into collections this summer when I had no insurance and was temporarily displaced without a mailing address. I did try to contact the hospital for arrangements and they wrote off their portion, but apparently the physician and radiologist are contracted from a different hospital and there wasn’t a sliding scale or low income option. I tried to set up a payment plan, but I didn’t have work for a time and couldn’t give what they said I needed to to avoid collections. It was really frustrating and maybe I didn’t handle it right re: setting up a plan, but I was trying to work SOMETHING out. Now I have those on my report, which means seven more years of medical debt marring me after working really hard to pay down and repair on poverty level wages.
I’m halfway to a BS degree, but that’s basically the same as being uneducated for job prospects. I live in Indiana where cost of living is low but rising, and wages are famously awful. I’ve been wanting to completely my education for years, but a situation where my mother stole tuition money years ago landed me with a 6k debt to the university I attended, so I need to pay that off before I can enroll anywhere. Not having a degree means not landing any job that provides a decent salary - so most years I am >$20k. I’ve always had roommates, my grocery budget for my kid and I is about $150/month (I shop Aldi/clearance deals and eat a very low meat/no processed foods diet and meal plan). The nature of low paying work is that they also expect you to have completely open availability and often won’t schedule around a second job. I’ve managed to work two jobs often anyway, but I swear to god every time I have an emergency fund established, I have an emergency that drains it. This past Spring I had $3200 set back from my tax refund and a month frow resigning the lease I had with roommates, they filed for divorce and both moved home, and I had to get my own place which cost almost all of my savings in deposits/rent/utilities. Three months later, my transmission went out and I lost my job because there is no transit in my town, and I was trying to be responsible and walk the few miles and snag rides home, but I couldn’t get childcare to line up with that. Without a vehicle, finding another job was next to impossible because I couldn’t gauruntee my availability to any schedule with a kid to cart around and get to/from school. It was an awful mess, and in the end her father filed for emergency custody because he felt it unfairly burdened him to be solely responsible for transportation. It was a shitty power play, and I’d have likely been able to fight it but without income, I also quickly lost my apartment the week before our hearing, and the judge begrudgingly granted the temporary order based on the disparity in our financial security. So after 9.5 years of doing most of the childrearing alone and 8.5 of those without support, I also lost my daughter. I didn’t have an attorney, and legal aid said they didn’t have the resources for my case since it didn’t involve any neglect or abuse and they were oversaturated. It was a terrible summer.
I wound up selling everything I could to cover my fees for eviction to avoid a lawsuit and moved an hour away to stay with a friend in Indianapolis who had an extra room. Three weeks later, I got a lump child support check that I used to purchase my 15 year old car in full, and locked down two serving jobs. I’ve been trying to balance working that much with taking free classes from modernstates.org to earn free CLEP vouchers so I can test out of credits that will hopefully be used to complete my degree at some point. I’m also traveling back and forth as often as possible to see my daughter, but that is proving very difficult with the jobs and her school schedule and her father being rather, er, controlling. I’m at a crossroads now, and I need some financial advice very badly.
I need to retain and pay for an attorney, which will cost me quite a lot. I can afford it by keeping up the 70-80 hour weeks, but that leaves me hardly any time to spend with my kid, which weakens my argument in court when I file to have the emergency order modified. Furthermore, I wouldn’t be able to find this much work in my hometown - I am under qualified for most positions outside of service without a degree and even two restaurants would equal the earnings I make at one up here - which isn’t enough to survive on without roommates. I don’t have any friends left who aren’t married or who need roommates, so I’d be either going it alone (and the legal advice is that I should because daughters dad owns a house) or living with a stranger who I don’t know I could depend on OR trust around my child. It’s very catch 22. In Indy, there are vastly more employment options available, but it means I cannot amend the temporary orders of custody and will be living apart from my kid. She is the only family I have within 1200 miles and she is my KID. This has been hell, and I’m only chugging along with the hope there won’t be nine more years I don’t see her every day.
I don’t know what to do. I have looked at job training programs in the state and we don’t fucking have any. I have looked into apprenticing with the union jobs but the physical requirements disqualify me - I have two herniated lumbar discs that flare to the point I cannot bend at the waist on a biweekly basis. I’m working out to try to strengthen the muscles around them to keep it at bay because I am uninsured and can’t afford PT. I’m trying, though. I have worked many jobs from throwing packages seaonally at USPS to cleaning office toilets at night to factories, call centers and reception work. Everything pays less than $10/hr and is part time or the schedules fluctuate variably making it difficult to hold a second job. My county is one of the poorest in Indiana for this reason. Temp agencies gutted everything and it’s a service sector economy. I can’t find decent paying work because the people with degrees take up the non service jobs (and many of them work second jobs in restaurants anyway).
I’m stuck. I’m not one to give up and have made it work this far, kind of, but my hands feel tied now. I can either invest in paying off education debt to attend school and earn more debt (but eventually be able to get some kind of job that provides security) or I can invest in an attorney to get custody modified, but that means moving back to a place I’m not able to get by.
Section 8 is closed in my county and has been for over a year. There isn’t money. To top it off, the change in custody means I lost my eligibility for health coverage and with some health issues, I’m paying out of pocket now - thankfully I found a community clinic that works with my income level - but I also need ~3k in dental work for some painful issues I have been living with for years. I don’t qualify for care credit, so I have just been taking as good of care as possible of my teeth and eating ibuprofen when the pain is intolerable.
Topping it off, I have diagnosed Asperger’s. Functioning in society is not as difficult for me as many on the spectrum, but it is still very challenging in many kinds of work environments. I get by, but there aren’t resources for autistic adults. I’m already way ahead of the curve by having held down full time work my entire adult life - only about 20% of us get that far. I try to work around my limitations, but certain things I genuinely can’t do - sales, telemarketing and call centers are fields I have tried and failed miserably at. I don’t read social cues well enough for those things and can’t keep up with the sheer influx of information and environmental stimuli. Serving took years to become good at, and only because I was mentored by a manager for several years at my first job who helped me find my own way in that industry.
I feel trapped. Trapped by a subpar credit score that prevents me from lending opportunities to alleviate some of these situations, trapped by debt that prevents me from finishing my education, trapped by a local economy that has tanked mercilessly, and trapped by a disorder that limits my options even when I say “fuck that” and push those boundaries anyway. I don’t know how to get out. Working hard has always been my nature but being poor is expensive and I cannot seem to catch a break in the savings dept. I’ve been sued and garnished for medical debts several times now. At one point the balance was almost 50k. Tax refunds have gone to those judgments most years. I am not one to give up and I have explored many corners of possibility to work through this, but I’m starting to feel it’s impossible. The two jobs is grinding me to the point I have become mute outside of work and have begun having autistic shutdowns on the clock where I cannot focus or remember things or speak. It’s too much, but I am trying. At this point, I feel like escaping the sinkhole of debt is impossible and I have zero direction on where I should focus. How do I find a way to support myself in a town without work so I can be with my child? How do I pay for an attorney on top of that when the surviving part takes my entire income? Or pay off school debt? All while trying to at least preserve my not awful credit score in hopes of eventually having some flexibility with that in the future? I’ve read all of Dave Ramsey, I am active on creditkarma boards, I UNDERSTAND personal finance and do damned well with what I HAVE - it’s just not enough, ever, to even be secure let alone work my way out of anything.
I’m sorry this is so long - it’s been years of fighting uphill and getting knocked down and I don’t have family to ask for advice or support, so I figured I’d try here. Thank you.
Submitted December 13, 2017 at 12:10AM by Daelaria http://ift.tt/2AfSfwU
