TLDR because this turned out insanely long: My fiancé is suddenly disabled. We went from no debt to almost $20,000 in credit card really quickly. Need to not be in that much debt anymore.
About a year ago my fiancé was helping a friend and fell off a ladder which left him partially paralyzed. We used all our savings and a lot of our credit keeping things afloat. We've looked into our legal options and we got a small settlement from friend's homeowners insurance but not a lot. We have finally stopped the bleeding (so to speak) but we need a plan for digging ourselves out of debt. I work for a small, local funeral home as a funeral director. I love my job very much and it is very fulfilling, but my company and the industry in general isn't doing well and, as such, I don't make very much money. This was plenty before, but it isn't cutting it now. I am aggressively looking for another higher paying job. My fiancé was working as a chef in a restaurant so he most likely won't be able to return to work anytime soon. We aren't opposed to moving, but we bought a house 2 years ago and I think selling would not be he best financial choice for us. Plus we really really really really love our house. It was supposed to be our forever home. He was recently approved for disability. He lives with a lot of pain and that prevents him from doing pretty much anything. He has really good doctors and was recently approved for Medicare so we hope that he continues to heal enough to go back to work. He is in therapy and there are resources in our city that will help him train or prepare for a new quadriplegic-friendly job when he is well enough. He had really good health insurance when he had his accident, so we were only responsible for about $20,000 of medical bills, out of well over $1mil (my estimate based of the bills and those benefit summary things the insurance company sends after each appointment).
Income: I make $11 an hour plus commission and usually work approximately 45 hours per week. My commission fluctuates wildly between $50-$1000 per month, so I've tried to make our budget with as little commission as possible. The last 3 years I averaged about $28,000 per year, approximately $1,500 per month take home is what I can usually count on per month.
My fiancé makes $1,150 in disability payments and does some odd jobs when he feels up to it. We can count on approximately $400 a month from his odd jobs. He can only make up to $600 a month to stay on disability and Medicare.
Debt:
$9,900 remaining in a personal loan from Lending Club. This is all medical bills and some expenses we put on credit cards to survive. The monthly payment is $365.00 for about 25 more months.
$3,500 credit card balance at 19% interest. The minimum payment is $100. We had no credit card debt before the accident, so this is all medical bills and other related expenses.
$2800 at 0% interest (for 18 more months). The minimum payment is $80 per month.
$25,000 car loan at 0% interest. Minimum is $260 per month. Underwater most like or just barely breaking even if I'm lucky. Fiancé owns his truck outright and it's worth about $2,000.
$9,000 student loan. My parents took this loan out for my schooling. I'm not sure of the interest, but I am responsible for $50 a month per an agreement with my parents. I could drop this payment if I had to as my parents pay the minimum plus a little bit but I would like to continue paying if possible.a
I owe $4,000 to my parents because times got kinda desperate there for a while. They could care less if I ever pay them back but I would like to. They have been great to us during our hard time and I just feel like we owe them at least that.
Other expenses:
Mortgage: $630 per month (includes home insurance and property taxes). Interest rate is 3.3%. We have 28 years left of a 30 year FHA mortgage. Very little upkeep.
Car+Life Insurance: $160 per month. His life insurance is $30 a month (former smoker). Mine is only $12 a month. My line of work has made me extremely overly cautious about insurance. I've seen a lot of really tragic shit. I shopped around a lot for car insurances rates and this is about as good as it will get for us without going to one of those sketchy places. He has liability only and I have the full coverage.
Water/electric/trash: Approximately $180 per month. We are on level billing, so it doesn't fluctuate more than a couple bucks a month. Our house was gutted and completely renovated before we bought it, so all the appliances, windows, a/c blah blah blah are about 3 years old and energy star rated. We recently took advantage of a free energy efficiency program our electric company offered so we have already seen a savings of about $30 a month from just that.
Internet: Averaging about $75 a month due to data caps (fuck you Suddenlink). They are our only option for internet unless we did hotspots or something like that. We live in a rural are where cell reception is not the best so I don't know if anything else if feasible.
DirectTV: $85 per month. 10 months left under contract. We could drop it after 10 months if we had to, but it is my fiancés only source of entertainment because he is home alone almost all the time.
2 Cell phones and an iPad: $180 per month. Under contract until January. We own our devices outright so we plan on looking for cheaper options at the beginning of the year. I've done a little price shopping and I think we can cut it down to about $100 a month at that time. I've looked into the service providers that will buy you out of their contract but they have an extremely limited presence in our rural area.
HBOGo: $15 a month. We are TV fanatics. We are currently experimenting with a firestick + kodi app to see if we can drop this.
Gas: We average about $100 a month.
Food/Cleaning Supplies/Toiletries/OTC medicines and medical supplies: Averaging about $600 a month. Because of my fiancé's disability, we spend spend more on cleaning supplies and medical supplies than most. I'd say about $250 of the $600 is stuff relating to his medical issues. None of it is covered by insurance.
Prescription and dr. visit co-pays: $500 per month. He takes A LOT of medicine.
Dog food/preventative meds/annual checkups $70 per month. 2 dogs, 3 & 7 years old. Low maintenance puppers.
We spend maybe $100 on clothes/entertainment and that's estimating generously.
We've looked into food-stamps, but I don't qualify for anything and he qualified for like $12 a month. He is doing too good health-wise to qualify for any in-home assistance, so that takes up the majority of my free time. No friends or family nearby. Like I said earlier, we are not opposed to moving but I'm thinking it would probably be cheaper to not move since we just bought our house. We have been able to save about $100. We have about $1,000 worth of stuff around the house we could sell and not miss. I have maybe $1,000 in a 401k.
This turned out to be way longer than I originally intended but writing everything was kind of cathartic. Until I can find a higher paying job, I need some ideas to make money during my free time. I'm not really good at anything and especially not anything profitable.
We also need some help navigating any financial assistance programs that may be available that we don't know about. At this point we'll take what we can get.
I guess the biggest thing I need help with is adjusting to our new life. We had just about gotten ourselves set up to live a pretty comfortable life before it all fell apart. Pre-accident, we lived a cheap but active life. We grew a lot of food in our garden which also served as the bulk of our entertainment. Hiking and kayaking were our other hobbies and they were basically free. We are kind of stir crazy and out of ideas for low cost, low activity hobbies other than TV. We have no idea how to grocery shop and meal plan so we could use help there. We used to plan our meals based on the scraps the fiancé brought home from work.
We are in our late 20's and live in Arkansas if that helps. Thank you.
Submitted August 13, 2017 at 09:34PM by scithrowaway3000 http://ift.tt/2uEBY1L
