Finally, in January 2010, there was some good (especially financial!) news. My husband, after 10 years at the fire department, had applied for a different job and got it! In his new job, he would be doing more media relations, there was room for advancement, it would give him more business experience, AND they had a reasonable health/prescription and dental plan for families. We could also put up to $2500 a year to put in a health/dental spending account. He would have a traditional 401k plan instead of a pension. He would be making better money than he had at the fire department. For the first time in 6 plus years, we would ALL be on the same health care plan. We felt so blessed, that in the middle of this recession, we were able to be finally on our feet again.
Fall of 2010 comes around and my sister and her family moves out of state. My oldest goes back to public school. Youngest goes to Kindergarten. Middle child is still being homeschooled. Some of my daycare students left for kindergarten, but I got a couple new children too. I did daycare for 4 children and homeschooled one. But since my husband's job provided more money, and better benefits, even though I was home and doing less daycare than I had in a few years, we were doing ok. Fine, in fact. We had paid off our car. I was hitting my stride with my self-reliant/self-reliant living. We only had one more year until we were out of credit card debt. We were paying all of our bills. We were living within our means. We even had some money in a savings account!
January 2011. My husband enjoys the duties of his new job, but he is starting to have some issues at work. It seems that what his boss believes the job to be and what my husband things it is don't match up. She mentions a few things in his yearly performance review. He begins looking for a different job, but he also starts to try and do the things that she expects out of the job. It is challenging, because the expectations are vague, but he does his best. He goes to work early and stays late. In addition, it appears that everyone else that he works with on all of his projects, is MORE than pleased with his work and he has a hard time really figuring out how to do his job so that his boss feels that he is doing the job that she wants him to do. He has another review in March and it still isn't a great review. My husband attempts to get more clarification, but much of it was still coming down to personal and very vague expectations from his boss. My husband continues to look for work, but also continues to try and complete his job duties in a way that his boss expects.
And on June 2, 2011, he was fired.
He spent a month or so trying to figure out what to do next. And then, a friend needed almost the whole interior of his house painted. He asked my husband if he had any painting experience? My husband said, Yes, I've done some over the years, some at home, some for other friends and family, etc. So he did that job. And then another friend asked about a few rooms in his house. And another friend asked for a few rooms. By this time, my husband knew that he found this time of work much more relaxing than anything he had ever done before, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to stop looking for a full-time "regular" job too.
Oh, that payment to the Credit Counseling Center? The $500 a month we were paying towards getting out of credit card debt? THANKFULLY, we made our last payment in June of 2011. I don't know what we would have done if a) we hadn't done it in the first place, and still had that mountain of credit card debt when this happened and b) if we had had to find a way to come up with that payment AND deal with how we were going to survive without his income.
OH, and because I'm the queen of dental problems, in March of 2011, I broke off one of my top front teeth. No big deal, right? It was one of the teeth with a crown, so just put the crown back on, right? Um, of course it couldn't be that easy. I broke it off at the gum, and so you couldn't just put the crown back on because there was nothing to put the crown back onto. I had 3 options this time a) extraction, partial denture, or an implant/abuttment/crown. I was strongly advised to go with the dental implant because of the location and my age. Had I known that he would actually get fired, I would have gone with extraction or partial denture, but I didn't. If I'd known that it was actually going to cost almost $5000 when it was all done, I would have gone with extraction or partial denture, but I didn't. I went with the implant.
I had the dental implant surgically attached in March 2011 and we were able to use most of the $2500 from our health savings account to cover the surgery. I had to wait a few months for my mouth to heal until we could put the crown on. I was given a temporary denture to wear until then, but it wasn't made to be worn for longer than a few months. We had been given an estimate by the dentist for what I THOUGHT was for the crown, and so we started saving for the crown in April of 2011. The job loss, of course, made it harder to save up any money, but we had saved the $1200 by September of 2011 to get it done.
Or so we thought. Apparently, the amount we saved was just for the abuttment, which is used to attach the crown to. The crown itself was another $1200. Since by September of 2011, we had no dental insurance at all, we had to pay full price for everything. (Normally, if you go through a dental insurance company, they will negotiate discounts, etc.) When they told me it would be another $1200 on top of the $1200 that we had worked so hard to save, I actually cried in the office. I had no idea how we would get another $1200 saved up. I had no job leads. My husband had done 3 paint jobs, but otherwise, hadn't made any other money. I was just making a little bit of money for daycare. At this point, I had the implant, but I couldn't wear the temporary denture much longer. I couldn't do a permanent denture without more surgery and more expense. I didn't know what to do. They offered to let me pay $100 a month and they'd do the abuttment and the crown at the same time. I took their offer, even though I had no idea how I would come up with that $100 every month. I didn't even know how we were going to get our mortgage paid every month.
My husband applied for, and by July 2011, began receiving unemployment benefits. Should he have done this? Well, he had been paying into the system all of these years, and never used it. He was approed for it. If he didn't take the money from unemployment, and if he wasn't able to get a full-time job soon, we would lose our house in a BIG hurry. If he hadn't taken it , my daycare money would MAYBE pay for food and MAYBE pay for gas for the cars and maybe a couple of utilities. (of course, with no house, we wouldn't need to pay for utilities!) So we opted to do take unemployment.
And then, the unemployment office recommended that he apply for food stamps. Surely, we didn't need that too? Surely, we could make it on our own. But this was before he got the paint jobs. This was before he had heard if he was even going to get unemployment. I was terrified that, after 3-4 weeks of living off our food we had stored at home, that we would run out of food. I was afraid to spend my daycare money on food because I didn't know what would happen if someone got sick or if a car broke down. So we decided to take it. And they approved us - $600 a month for food (with restrictions. Just food products. No paper products. No soap. No alcohol. No non-human food, etc.) It would just be for a few months. Just until we figured out what we were going to do.
In just a year and half, we had gone from paying all of our bills, having private health/dental coverage, and even having money in a savings account
to
living on Medicaid, unemployment, and food stamps.
Showing posts with label benefits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label benefits. Show all posts
Monday, July 23, 2012
Monday, July 9, 2012
Part 2: What is the answer for our family?
Things went on like this for a couple years. We didn't make a lot of progress on our debt, but some. We were still making two car payments but they were manageable. We had enough to provide necessities for our child. We decided to try and get pregnant again. The doctors recommended IVF. Our health insurance through the University would pay for all but $50, so we did it, and we conceived on the first try! And in late 2001, our second child, a girl, was born. And we started thinking that it was time to move into a larger place. A "starter" home, but something that didn't require a lot of repair because we didn't have the time, money, or skill to do that. And in 2002, we moved into a new construction home. It wasn't totally perfect - it had a small kitchen, it was basic builder features, etc. but it was a great first home.
Oh, also in 2002, I decided to go back to graduate school. I decided to get my masters in training and development & project management. It would make me more marketable. I was sure. My "old" student loans would go on hold, and the university would pay for half of my tuition, but we'd need more student loans to make up the difference. But it would fine. I was only taking a class each semester anyway at this point.
Our mortgage payment in the new house was more. Twice as much as the condo. But we were making more than we ever had too. Or course, we had the two kids now. And we had daycare now for two kids. But it would be o.k. And then, I decided, you know what, I never see these two kids of mine. And I asked my boss if I could go to part-time. He said Certainly. I would lose my benefits, including my tuition benefit, but my salary would be a VERY good part-time salary. So we decided to just go on my husband's health care plan. It would be o.k. But it wasn't. We would have been o.k. if we had only had to come up with the money for the mortgage, student loan payments, the two car payments, our credit card debt, our utilities, food, etc. since we were paying less for daycare. But have to ALSO come up with $650 a month for health and dental benefits through my husband's job was very difficult for us. (My oldest child has severe asthma. She was taking four different medications at this time, and she was hospitalized at least twice a year from the time she was born until she was 6.) But we were managing.
And then it got worse.
The University decided to lay off over 400 part-time employees (essentially any part-time staff that was on a yearly contract) in September 2003. Now, I went from good part-time money to no money. We tried to survive like that, but after a couple months, we had to cash out my retirement fund to live off of, but that was only going to last so long, since I'd lost over 50% by cashing it out. I'd started teaching preschool in the mornings out of my home to my oldest and just a couple other kids in January 2003. So I decided to expand it in the fall of 2003 and soon had 12 kids coming in the mornings for preschool. But I was making MUCH less than when I was working part-time. And I also discovered that I was pregnant with our third child in January 2004.
I didn't know how we were going to function. Paying our bills was going to be hard enough. But we were getting to the point of not being able to pay our health insurance premiums. And we were struggling to get food. And then, someone told me about the Illinois AllKids program (Medicaid). It would cover me during my pregnancy (my son was due in September of 2004) and it would cover the kids. We would have decent health coverage, especially the children, and excellent prescription coverage. We would qualify for WIC. It would be such a blessing, but should we do it? My husband had a job. I had a bachelors, and was working towards my masters. I had had good paying jobs in the past. I had had good, affordable, health and dental benefits in the past. My parents had always provided for me when I was a child and hadn't used any government assistance programs.
Ultimately, we decided to do it, for these and one other BIG reason. Our first tax/escrow payment came due (since you pay in arrears and they hadn't yet figured up what our tax/escrow would be for June 2002 to 2003, it wasn't until June 2004 that we got our first payment due.) and it was for MUCH MUCH more than we ever dreamed. And I'm sure that they explained it all to us when we originally signed papers in June 2002, but we were unprepared to suddenly come up with the $4500 bill that they wanted paid (payment due in 10 days or less, of course.) I spoke with the bank (in a semi-destraught voice, I'm sure) and they said that they could spread it out over 12 months. This still wasn't managable for us. So our banker recommended that we take a second mortgage to cover it. It would be an 80/20. The 20 would be at a fairly high interest rate (8%), but it would be fine. In a few years, we would be in a better place and we would put it back together in a traditional mortgage. Or when we sold the house in a year or two. It would be fine. So we decided to get a second mortgage.
And it was added to the already long list of bills - first mortgage, utilities, student loan payments for my husband, credit card payments (which of course, we could only afford the minimum; and we occassionally got cash advances which only compounded the problem.), food, etc. Maybe if we didn't have to also come up with almost $700 for health/dental/prescription coverage, we could survive. My husband was, and had been covered since I got laid off, through his employers plan for health and dental benefits, and it was free. And Medicaid would cover the rest of us. Surely, in a few months, by the time my son was born, we would be in a better place.
And then it got worse.
Oh, also in 2002, I decided to go back to graduate school. I decided to get my masters in training and development & project management. It would make me more marketable. I was sure. My "old" student loans would go on hold, and the university would pay for half of my tuition, but we'd need more student loans to make up the difference. But it would fine. I was only taking a class each semester anyway at this point.
Our mortgage payment in the new house was more. Twice as much as the condo. But we were making more than we ever had too. Or course, we had the two kids now. And we had daycare now for two kids. But it would be o.k. And then, I decided, you know what, I never see these two kids of mine. And I asked my boss if I could go to part-time. He said Certainly. I would lose my benefits, including my tuition benefit, but my salary would be a VERY good part-time salary. So we decided to just go on my husband's health care plan. It would be o.k. But it wasn't. We would have been o.k. if we had only had to come up with the money for the mortgage, student loan payments, the two car payments, our credit card debt, our utilities, food, etc. since we were paying less for daycare. But have to ALSO come up with $650 a month for health and dental benefits through my husband's job was very difficult for us. (My oldest child has severe asthma. She was taking four different medications at this time, and she was hospitalized at least twice a year from the time she was born until she was 6.) But we were managing.
And then it got worse.
The University decided to lay off over 400 part-time employees (essentially any part-time staff that was on a yearly contract) in September 2003. Now, I went from good part-time money to no money. We tried to survive like that, but after a couple months, we had to cash out my retirement fund to live off of, but that was only going to last so long, since I'd lost over 50% by cashing it out. I'd started teaching preschool in the mornings out of my home to my oldest and just a couple other kids in January 2003. So I decided to expand it in the fall of 2003 and soon had 12 kids coming in the mornings for preschool. But I was making MUCH less than when I was working part-time. And I also discovered that I was pregnant with our third child in January 2004.
I didn't know how we were going to function. Paying our bills was going to be hard enough. But we were getting to the point of not being able to pay our health insurance premiums. And we were struggling to get food. And then, someone told me about the Illinois AllKids program (Medicaid). It would cover me during my pregnancy (my son was due in September of 2004) and it would cover the kids. We would have decent health coverage, especially the children, and excellent prescription coverage. We would qualify for WIC. It would be such a blessing, but should we do it? My husband had a job. I had a bachelors, and was working towards my masters. I had had good paying jobs in the past. I had had good, affordable, health and dental benefits in the past. My parents had always provided for me when I was a child and hadn't used any government assistance programs.
Ultimately, we decided to do it, for these and one other BIG reason. Our first tax/escrow payment came due (since you pay in arrears and they hadn't yet figured up what our tax/escrow would be for June 2002 to 2003, it wasn't until June 2004 that we got our first payment due.) and it was for MUCH MUCH more than we ever dreamed. And I'm sure that they explained it all to us when we originally signed papers in June 2002, but we were unprepared to suddenly come up with the $4500 bill that they wanted paid (payment due in 10 days or less, of course.) I spoke with the bank (in a semi-destraught voice, I'm sure) and they said that they could spread it out over 12 months. This still wasn't managable for us. So our banker recommended that we take a second mortgage to cover it. It would be an 80/20. The 20 would be at a fairly high interest rate (8%), but it would be fine. In a few years, we would be in a better place and we would put it back together in a traditional mortgage. Or when we sold the house in a year or two. It would be fine. So we decided to get a second mortgage.
And it was added to the already long list of bills - first mortgage, utilities, student loan payments for my husband, credit card payments (which of course, we could only afford the minimum; and we occassionally got cash advances which only compounded the problem.), food, etc. Maybe if we didn't have to also come up with almost $700 for health/dental/prescription coverage, we could survive. My husband was, and had been covered since I got laid off, through his employers plan for health and dental benefits, and it was free. And Medicaid would cover the rest of us. Surely, in a few months, by the time my son was born, we would be in a better place.
And then it got worse.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Part 1: What is the answer for our family?
I am a forty-five year old woman. I am married. I have three kids - a daughter who is 12, a daughter who is 10, and a son who is 7. We have two cars that are paid off. We have no credit card debt. We have faithfully paid our mortgage for the last 12 years, 2 years on our condo, and 10 years on our home. We are currently not underwater in our home, and could sell our house at market value and still make a small profit. My husband is self-employed as a painter, and I work as a freelance/contract technical writer and trainer. Living the American dream, right? Well, not exactly. For most of my adult life, at least since I got married, I have probably been either middle class or lower middle class.
OK, let's back up a little bit.
We got married in 1995. I got married when I was 29, and I had just finished a year of graduate school in English - Writing. My husband was, ahem, a few years younger than I was (23, so not 18 or anything LOL) and he had also just finished his first year of graduate school. We had both used federal student loans to pay for the bulk of our graduate school expenses.
I quit going to school and went to work full-time, but the pay was just barely over minimum wage. My husband had a graduate assistantship with a stipend, but between the two of us, we were making under $20,000 a year. I had benefits through my job, and my husband had health insurance through school. We each had some credit card debt, but not much. I'd say between the two of us, it was under $2000, but when you are only making $15,000 total, it was still a challenge to pay the credit card debt and our other expenses (rent, utilities, my student loans, and a car payment.) My husband graduated with a masters degree in English - Literature.
After a year, so in 1996, I took a job as a technical writer in downtown Chicago. It was my first "real" salaried job. I wasn't making GREAT money, $30,000 a year, but compared to the last year, it felt like a million. My husband also got a job as a technical writer. He made less, but not a lot less. Maybe $26,000? So anyway, we had more than doubled our income. We both had full benefits through our companies. Things should have been great, right? Well, for reasons that I still don't understand, it wasn't. Part of it was housing was much more expensive, and so was gas, and I also took the train into downtown. Insurance was more. Everything was more. We started using our credit cards more to help pay for things when we didn't have the money. And after another two years, we left Chicago to move back to central Illinois. Things would be cheaper there. We could get ahead.
In 1998, I got a job in Springfield as a technical writer, making the same as I was in Chicago, with full benefits. My husband had decided that he didn't want to do technical writing anymore. He wanted to go back to broadcasting (he got his bachelor's in broadcast communications.). He got a job at a local radio station with full benefits. After a few months, he was promoted to news director. But even so, the pay was pretty awful. Right around 20,000. And his schedule was awful too. I was working 8-5 and he was working 3 am to 11 am or something like that. We never saw each other . And I almost never cooked because it would only be for one. We bought lots of convenience/fast food. We bought a second car. Housing was less, insurance was less, but now we had a second car payment. We had decided to get a second car because he was living in a different city and working a different schedule. We made very little progress on our debt. And the money I was putting in my retirement fund (a 401k) was losing money every month. And we had discovered that we had infertility issues and I was going to the doctor frequently.
And then in early 1999, I got a job as a trainer at the University in Normal, IL and my husband got a job as a news reporter at a radio station in town. My pay was just a little more than my last job, and my husband's was about the same. I was newly pregnant with our first. We decided to buy instead of rent and we bought a 2 bedroom condo. This was one of the only times in our married life where things seemed to be going ok financially. We had decided to just cash out the money from my 401k from my last job because it was losing so much money. It wasn't much anyway - after penalties, it was less than $2000, and we used it to get some furniture for our new place. Our mortgage was much less than we had been paying in rent. My husband still had an irregular schedule, but we did see each other more often than we had before. We had myself and my husband (and in September of 1999, our baby) on my health insurance. Our premiums were very reasonable. I had a retirement fund through the state. My husband had benefits. We were paying regularly on our student loans. And then a week before our daughter was born, my husband got fired.
Thankfully, he was able to get a job quickly. He got a job as the Public Safety/Media Relations manager at the Fire Department for the city we lived in. He would work a traditional work day for the first time in a few years. He was making about the same money I was now. I still had my good benefits. My husband had good benefits through his work- with a caveat. It was a self-managed plan for health and dental benefits. Which meant that my husband didn't have to pay anything for his benefits, but if he added any dependents(1 or 50, it didn't matter), we would have to pay for the entire premium, which was over $500, and that didn't count what you would pay for prescriptions. But no matter, we were using health and dental benefits anyway through my job anyway, and they were great, and only cost us about $200 a month for the entire family.
OK, let's back up a little bit.
We got married in 1995. I got married when I was 29, and I had just finished a year of graduate school in English - Writing. My husband was, ahem, a few years younger than I was (23, so not 18 or anything LOL) and he had also just finished his first year of graduate school. We had both used federal student loans to pay for the bulk of our graduate school expenses.
I quit going to school and went to work full-time, but the pay was just barely over minimum wage. My husband had a graduate assistantship with a stipend, but between the two of us, we were making under $20,000 a year. I had benefits through my job, and my husband had health insurance through school. We each had some credit card debt, but not much. I'd say between the two of us, it was under $2000, but when you are only making $15,000 total, it was still a challenge to pay the credit card debt and our other expenses (rent, utilities, my student loans, and a car payment.) My husband graduated with a masters degree in English - Literature.
After a year, so in 1996, I took a job as a technical writer in downtown Chicago. It was my first "real" salaried job. I wasn't making GREAT money, $30,000 a year, but compared to the last year, it felt like a million. My husband also got a job as a technical writer. He made less, but not a lot less. Maybe $26,000? So anyway, we had more than doubled our income. We both had full benefits through our companies. Things should have been great, right? Well, for reasons that I still don't understand, it wasn't. Part of it was housing was much more expensive, and so was gas, and I also took the train into downtown. Insurance was more. Everything was more. We started using our credit cards more to help pay for things when we didn't have the money. And after another two years, we left Chicago to move back to central Illinois. Things would be cheaper there. We could get ahead.
In 1998, I got a job in Springfield as a technical writer, making the same as I was in Chicago, with full benefits. My husband had decided that he didn't want to do technical writing anymore. He wanted to go back to broadcasting (he got his bachelor's in broadcast communications.). He got a job at a local radio station with full benefits. After a few months, he was promoted to news director. But even so, the pay was pretty awful. Right around 20,000. And his schedule was awful too. I was working 8-5 and he was working 3 am to 11 am or something like that. We never saw each other . And I almost never cooked because it would only be for one. We bought lots of convenience/fast food. We bought a second car. Housing was less, insurance was less, but now we had a second car payment. We had decided to get a second car because he was living in a different city and working a different schedule. We made very little progress on our debt. And the money I was putting in my retirement fund (a 401k) was losing money every month. And we had discovered that we had infertility issues and I was going to the doctor frequently.
And then in early 1999, I got a job as a trainer at the University in Normal, IL and my husband got a job as a news reporter at a radio station in town. My pay was just a little more than my last job, and my husband's was about the same. I was newly pregnant with our first. We decided to buy instead of rent and we bought a 2 bedroom condo. This was one of the only times in our married life where things seemed to be going ok financially. We had decided to just cash out the money from my 401k from my last job because it was losing so much money. It wasn't much anyway - after penalties, it was less than $2000, and we used it to get some furniture for our new place. Our mortgage was much less than we had been paying in rent. My husband still had an irregular schedule, but we did see each other more often than we had before. We had myself and my husband (and in September of 1999, our baby) on my health insurance. Our premiums were very reasonable. I had a retirement fund through the state. My husband had benefits. We were paying regularly on our student loans. And then a week before our daughter was born, my husband got fired.
Thankfully, he was able to get a job quickly. He got a job as the Public Safety/Media Relations manager at the Fire Department for the city we lived in. He would work a traditional work day for the first time in a few years. He was making about the same money I was now. I still had my good benefits. My husband had good benefits through his work- with a caveat. It was a self-managed plan for health and dental benefits. Which meant that my husband didn't have to pay anything for his benefits, but if he added any dependents(1 or 50, it didn't matter), we would have to pay for the entire premium, which was over $500, and that didn't count what you would pay for prescriptions. But no matter, we were using health and dental benefits anyway through my job anyway, and they were great, and only cost us about $200 a month for the entire family.
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