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.
Showing posts with label jobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jobs. Show all posts
Monday, July 9, 2012
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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