A little background on the situation. I'm 31M, and the sole income for my family of 5. My wife does not work, she's a stay at home mom for our 3 children. She wouldn't be able to work anyway, as then we'd need daycare and my hours swing so much, there's no way she could work around my schedule. There's also no way that I could work a second job, considering the crazy hours I already work.
I've been in the human services for about 7 years. I live in a pretty low population/low income area. My previous job paid $12.25/hour. I was at that job for about 6 years and on public assistance. That job didn't offer medical insurance or any benefits. So during that time I was receiving SNAP(foodstamps) and medical assistance. We had 0 copay for doctors and medications. Sure we were poor, but we were making it. I had a couple credit cards that I would use in case of emergency, or for large purchases and was always able to pay them off.
In January of this year, I got a job offer working in the same field. The offer was $18.96/hour, plus medical, dental, retirement, vacation, sick pay, long term and short term disability, the list goes on. I had to take the job. It was too good to be true. I went from no benefits, to full benefits. I went 24,000 gross/year to 38,000 gross/year. I thought I was going to have it made.
Well, in the past year, reality has really sunk in. Yes, I am grossing almost double what I was before, but my net pay is barely more. I have union dues, retirement(mandatory), and family medical/dental all deducted from my pay checks. I'm paying more in taxes because I make more money.
In the end, my paychecks are only about $150 more than they were at my old job. So I'm netting about $300 more a month. I lost $369 a month in food assistance. I lost my kid's free lunch at school. I lost our medical assistance. This month alone I've spent over $100 in copays for prescriptions and appointments. I'm actually more poor now, due to all the copays and having lost food support.
My son and wife both just got prescriptions for new glasses, under our old medical assistance, they were covered. I'm now being billed over $500 for their glasses, as my new insurance doesn't cover them.
This is getting too overwhelming. I can't afford these medical copays anymore. Oh, and remember the credit cards that I used to only use for emergencies? I'm now relying on them to buy basic necessities. I've been using my credit cards to buy food and gas, because after paying my bills, I don't have anything left. And now I'm at the point that my cards are maxed out. And I can't make the minimum payments anymore. I literally have less than $100 to last me 2 weeks. And I didn't even pay my credit cards this month.
Then I've been considering filing Chapter 7. I clearly can't pay my debts. But even if I filed Chapter 7, I'd erase my debts, but it still wouldn't change the fact that I can't afford to live. I don't have any luxurious spending to cut back on. We don't go on vacations, we don't go to fancy restaurants, none of that. I've even gone as far as cancelling our Netflix, even though that $10 a month isn't making a damn bit of difference.
Then I thought about, instead of filing bankruptcy, why don't I just quit my job. Go back to a crappy job with no benefits and low wage. Get back on public assistance. I was living better off then anyway. And if I'm on public assistance I can be exempted from wage garnishments from my creditors.
All in all, I'm pretty much screwed. I can stay the course, and end up bankrupt; or I can go back to a low paying job and get back on public assistance.
Submitted October 16, 2017 at 11:21PM by fartmitten http://ift.tt/2x16NPk
