Well, by telling this long tale in parts and over weeks/months, it is easy to get a bit lost. So this post will review some of the high points of the story so far. The next post will review a couple other high points. And then I will get back to finishing this tale. Who knows what I'll talk about after that. But it probably won't be about money, etc. I guess you'll just need to stick around to see what else I have to say :)
Anyway let's review . . .
Credit Card Debt
We got married in 1995. Didn't have much credit card debt when we married. Gradually added to it over the years. We used it unwisely at times, that is certain, but not because we were charging electronics or furniture or the a new Spring wardrobe or anything. It was cash advances because we didn't have enough money to pay the bills. Or it was paying for a medical bill. Or a dental bill. Or it was to a buy a birthday gift for a friend. But we shouldn't have done it anyway. And once you get in deep, and the interest rate is through the roof, it just makes things even worse. We stopped using credit for a whole year and just paid on all of our accounts for a whole year. And then we decided to go through a credit counseling service. They negotiated our interest rates down from wherever it was before to something under 10 %. Some were even negotiate down to an interest rate of 2%. But the balance itself remained the same. However, as part of them being able to negotiate a lower rate, we had to close every single credit card account. Our credit score was shot by that point anyway, and this offered the best shot of ever being able to get rid of our debt. It would make it so that our credit score would still be poor when we were done, just because we would have no existing credit. We couldn't apply for any cards until we were done paying them off either or we would be unable to continue paying with the lower interest rates. We decided that despite all of this, we wanted to get out of debt. We would do all of that so that we pay back the over $20,000 that we had in credit card debt. And so we spent the next four years paying every single month towards those cards. And we paid it off. As of June 2011, we have no credit card debt. As of August 2012, we haven't yet applied for any credit either and we are still living without credit. Which is mostly fine. But without credit, we can't refinance our home. We can't get a new mortgage.
Mortgage
And let's talk about that mortgage. When we moved into our first place - a two bedroom condo - the mortgage payment was low. We were both working. It was fine. Our mortgage payment was about less than 10% of our annual income. It was fine. And we had a baby. And another baby. And we decided that we needed to move into a bigger home. It was 2002. It was before sub prime mortgages. The bank looked at our debt/income rate and determined that we could afford this home. It was a modest home. We moved in. The mortgage was almost double what we paid at the condo. But we were making it. We would continue to make more money and things would get better. It WAS just our first home, so it didn't matter that it wasn't perfect for us. We would move by 2005 anyway, right? And then I lost my job. And I couldn't get another one. And then I was pregnant again with our 3rd child. And THEN, in September 2004, they told us that we owed almost $5000 in escrow. So we did what the bank suggested - an 80/20. The 80 would be at 4%, but the 20 would be at a high interest rate (think almost double digits) It would be o.k. The bank said that we could refinance it back to one loan in 2 years. When we were in a better place. But by 2006, I still hadn't found a full time job. We hadn't started paying down our credit cards. And our mortgage payments were almost triple now what they had been at the condo. So we started to think about selling. After 6 months, we met with a realtor (this would have been mid 2007), and she said that the housing market was taking a downturn. Maybe we should wait a bit. You know, see if things turned around. Yea, still waiting on that one. But we pay our mortgage. Every month. We have every.single.month that we have lived in this house. Every single month for the last 10 years. We have very little to show for it - we have MAYBE $5,000 in equity after we paid closing costs and realtor fees, etc. And that is after we put about $2,000 in the house to make improvements so that we could sell it. Did we make a mistake buying this house? I don't know. It seemed like the right decision in 2002. Should we have tried to sell in 2007? I don't know. Probably, but anytime after that, if we would have tried to sell anytime between 2008 and 2011, we certainly would have lost money on the sale. Assuming that we would have been able to sell at all during that time. Home sales in our city have only very recently started to pick up again. Before that from 2008 through mid 2012, it wasn't uncommon to see a house be up for sale for 9-12 months. So did we make a mistake? Probably, but not because we bought a house well beyond our budget at the top of the housing bubble either. And now, because of our credit issue, we can't even do anything to try and make our mortgage more manageable. We have been dutifully paying for 10 years, but without credit history, we can't even refinance. Much less try and buy a different house.
Health Insurance
OK, let's talk health insurance now. When we got married, I had insurance through my job, and my husband had insurance through the university while he was finishing grad school. Then we both got jobs and had insurance through our jobs. And then eventually, I got my job at the university and I got great health insurance for families, which was good since I was pregnant with our first at the time. By the time I had the baby, my husband had started working for the Fire Department. He got great insurance for free (for himself) through work and so myself and the baby were on my plan. And then I had another baby who went on my plan. When our kids were 3 and 1, I went to part-time and lost my benefits.
Part Time/Job Loss
Going part-time at this point was probably one of my biggest financial mistakes. I lost my benefits, which were very good and had very reasonable premiums, and although my husband could add us to his plan, it would cost us almost $600 a month. I also went to part-time in January 2003, just 6 months after we had moved into our home, and so we hadn't really planned on having the $600 a month expense on top of our big jump in mortgage payments. Going part-time also left me vulnerable to being laid off. I knew that the university was undergoing budget cuts. I knew that I lost certain protections by going to part-time. I knew that my severance, if I was let go, would go from almost a year, to two weeks. But I was naive. Even though I'd seen positions eliminated, I really didn't think that "I" would be let go. And that wasn't what happened. It wasn't that personal. The University decided to take 475 people that were part-time on yearly contracts (that before the budget cuts, had just been almost automatically renewed barring any huge incompetencies, etc.) and lay all of them off. It was unprecedented in the history of the university. And I live in a fairly large community, but I also live in a city that has one very, very large company that is the main employer. And then there is the university. 75% of the people in the community are employed, directly or indirectly, by that large company, the University another 10%. The large employer doesn't hire trainers or writers from the outside. And beyond the university, there aren't many local companies that hire technical writers or trainers. Believe me, 9 years after my lay-off and numerous attempts at getting work in my field in the area, there aren't many.
Oh yea, I was talking about Health Insurance
But back to health insurance. So we went on my husband's insurance when I went part-time. And paid the $600 a month. And then I lost my job 9 months after I went part-time. And we continued to pay the $600 a month, but it was getting VERY difficult to do. In May 2004, someone suggested that we apply for AllKids (the Medicaid program for pregnant women and/or children in Illinois). We applied and we were approved. My kids got well-checks for free. My children's medication was free. Should we have gone on Medicaid? Probably not. But it was getting fairly desperate. I was unsure how much longer we could go with paying for all of our bills (we were still drowning in credit card debt then and I had no job or any prospects at the time) When I went full-time in the Fall of 2004, I was able to get student insurance and so I did. I would put the kids on my health plan, just as soon as I got a full-time job. Surely, I'd be able to get a job after I finished my degree. Well, I graduated in May 2006 and was able to keep my student insurance for the summer, but then, I was unable to keep it. Hopefully, I'd get a job by fall. I didn't. The kids stayed on Medicaid, but I just went without because we couldn't afford the $600 premium for insurance through my husband's work. I started to make a little bit more money, and I was able to pay for an individual policy for awhile, but the deductible was extremely high, and I did it just to cover me in case something catastrophic happened. And since I was making more money, we went from paying nothing for the kids to have AllKids to paying $80 a month for the kids to have AllKids. Not much, but between the $300 I was paying for myself, and the $80 for them, it was a struggle. Eventually, I couldn't afford the individual insurance and went without again. Especially since it wasn't like I was making THAT much. I was doing daycare - not working as a writer or a trainer. So much of the increase in my income was now going towards health premiums. And then, my husband got a different job. And he had good, reasonable health premiums for the family. And I was doing more daycare and making more money. We signed up. And it was great. Right up until he got fired, 18 months later. And so then, our whole family was eligible for Medicaid. I wanted to say no. I probably should have said no. But when one spouse is unemployed and the other spouse is underemployed with no prospects of getting a job that provided any benefits, well, it sounds a good idea. So all told - my children have been on Medicaid for 6 years. They currently are still on Medicaid, but we are hoping to change that soon by acquiring a family policy on our own. About a year of 6 years, I was paying monthly premiums. I've been on Medicaid for a few months during 2004 and then from July 2011 to July 2012 . My husband was on it from July 2011 to July 2012. Was it a mistake to go on Medicaid? Especially since my children have ended up being on it for so long. Or should I have just had my children go without health insurance because we couldn't have afforded it? It probably was a mistake, but on the other hand, what if one of my children had needed surgery or something during this time? We were already struggling to make ends meet. For much of this time, we were drowning in credit card debt and a large mortgage payment. I couldn't get a job, and so I couldn't get insurance through a job. We couldn't afford my husband's insurance. And we couldn't afford an independent policy for the rest of us either. How would we have afforded surgery that cost us $30K or $40K out of pocket if we hadn't had the children on Medicaid when we barely had enough to pay our bills? So don't have the surgery? Pay for the surgery for the rest of our lives? Or take the Medicaid that we qualified for? For us, for better or worse, we went with Medicaid.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
Part 4: What is the answer for our family?
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Part 3: What is the answer for our family?
My son was born in September of 2004, and then was hospitalized in October 2004 for 2.5 weeks with a severe case of RSV. I wouldn't be able to re-open my preschool until at least January 2005. The doctor also didn't want my son to go to daycare, if at all possible, until he was a year to lower his exposure. So I concentrated on graduating with my masters. I took a full load in the fall of 2004 (yep, I was 8 months pregnant when the sememester started, and only took a week off when he was born. And only a few days when he was hospitalized; thankfully I had mostly evening classes, so I could spend my days there and my husband could spend his evenings there) and a full load in Spring 2005. I no longer had any tuition help since I was laid off, so we had to find a way to pay for school, and now I was taking a full load. To cover my school expenses, we increased the amount of student loans that we took out for that school year. But it would be o.k. I'd get a job that next fall. We would start paying back on the loans right away.
Oh, did I mention that I had to have extensive dental work done in the fall of 2004? 6 of my top front teeth would either need to be pulled or I'd need to have root canals and crowns to replace them. I knew that it would be much cheaper to just have them pulled, but as a (then) 38 year old woman, I wasn't quite ready to go without front teeth. Dentures weren't really a possibility. If I wanted to be able to have front teeth, I'd need to have 6 root canals and crowns on my front teeth (oh, I also had two lower molars that needed to be done at the same time. Molars, but the ones you can see when you smile, of course. Not far back molars.) We couldn't afford health insurance through my husband's plan, but we could afford and get dental insurance through his plan. But unfortunately, there was a cap of $2000 per calendar year/per person on dental work. (Very typical for dental insurance to have a similar cap.) The bill for this work - $9000. If we put it on a four year payment plan, $12,500. So we signed up for the payment plan.
That spring (2005), my graduate director asked me to stay in school for another year, so I could do a graduate assistantship in project management in the fall 2005/spring 2006. I'd get a decent stipend, I'd only have to work afternoons, and I'd get some good work experience. I'd get student health insurance. So I did it.
Things were going o.k. I kept teaching preschool in the mornings, I had the assistantship in the afternoons. My oldest was in Kindergarten, my middle was in pre-K, and my youngest, who was now a year, just had to go to daycare in the afternoons. I had health insurance through school. The kids were on Medicaid, but we were no longer using WIC. My husband was on his own plan. So things weren't great, but they weren't awful. We'd got a new to us mini-van in the fall of 2005 (it was 2005 model, but it was slightly used) and got rid of our other car and went down to one car. I graduated with my masters in the fall of 2006, and planned on getting another job.
Of course, I was pregnant again by this point too. I had found out I was pregnant in June 2006. It was unplanned. I was almost 40. We were struggling. And this was going to impact, at least somewhat, on a getting a job. But I figured I'd cross that bridge when I got to it. And then in September, I miscarried. I applied for lots of jobs that fall and winter. I got no full-time offers. I took a part-time evening job (that had NOTHING to do with training or project management, and paid just over minimum wage, but they were the only ones to offer anything) in October 2006. So now I was teaching preschool in the morning and working in the evenings. I had no health and dental benefits and just hoped for the best. The kids stayed on Medicaid. My husband stayed on his plan.
The next fall (of 2007), I stopped the part-time evening work because it was so hard on my family, and it was for very little money. (Don't forget too, we still only had one car!) But, in addition to teaching preschool, I started watching one of the preschoolers all day, and this made up for the pay that I lost in the evening job.
And also in the fall of 2007, we finally decided that we HAD to do something about our credit card debt situation. By this point, it was completely out of control. We had close to $20,000 in credit card debt by this point, and we had only been managing to pay the minimum for years now. At this rate, we wouldn't pay it off in our lifetime. We had considered selling our house and renting, but a) we would need to get a 2, or more likely, 3 bedroom apartment, and of course, by now, the housing market had crashed. We would likely lose money in a house sale. We were cramped in the house, especially the kitchen, we didn't have money to make any updates, but we WERE making our mortgage payment every month. So we met with some from our local not for profit Credit Counseling Center, and made a 4 year payment plan to pay off our credit card debt. It would require us to pay them $500 a month and they would negotiate lower interest rates and the CCC office would pay the credit cards directly. It would require us to close our accounts and not open any more credit lines until we were completely out of credit card debt. It was scary to do all that, but I couldn't face thinking about never getting out of debt either. So we did it. We had a plan, at least, now. We would be out of credit card debt by June 2011. We also (re)committed to saving up for any future purchases that were larger than $100. And purchases that were more than $25 had to be discussed with the other spouse and put in the budget before you could purchase it.
In November 2007, I found I was pregnant with our son, Chistopher. It was a pregnancy full of complications, and by February, I had to stop doing preschool and daycare, with the plan to start up again when I got to a better place with the pregnancy. (Thankfully, my sister took over for me with the daycare child.) Sadly, our son was stillborn in late March 2008. I started doing daycare again by May, and started preschool again that fall. Also, over the summer, I added a second daycare child, and a third in the fall. By this point, I made too much to qualify for the Medicaid, and I was now making enough to pay for my own health insurance though a private company. For now, the children would continue to be covered through Medicaid. My husband would stay on his plan.
But of course, getting private, individual health insurance wasn't easy. Or cheap. Because I had used fertility treatments in the past (even though, by this point, I was using an IUD to prevent any further pregnancies), I did not qualify for a plan that had a low deductible & low payment. But I was finally able to get individual health insurance. Such as it was, anyway. I had a $4,000 deductible. I paid almost $300 a month for just an individual policy. If I got sick, it wasn't like we had money to cover a large (up to $4000) out of pocket expense. Just paying the premium was hard enough. So basically, I paid the premiums every month, but couldn't afford to actually go to the doctor or the hospital. I just carried it unless something catastrophic happened.
I'd been frugal all along, but starting in 2007, I started trying to be more self-reliant too. I started gardening, canning, sewing, making cheese, etc. Anything to help us have to spend less money and be more self-sufficient, at least any way we could.
Also, since I graduated in Spring 2006, I had still been looking for full-time work in Technical Writing and/or Training. I sent out numerous resumes. I registered with Monster and other on-line job sites. I networked. I'd go on interviews occassionally, but often, I'd hear nothing. And I never, ever got a full-time job offer. We knew that I would probably be able to get a job if we moved, but we couldn't afford to move. My student loans were (acutally still are) in either deferrment or forbearance. So I didn't have that expense, but it isn't like it was magically going to go away. I was so frustrated that I had even taken the loans. That I'd even gone back to school at all. Of course, I never dreamed that it was going to be so difficult to get a job. And of course, by 2008, the recession had begun in full-force.
2008 was a very hard year - I was on bedrest for much of the first 3 months of 2008 due to my pregnancy and unable to work, then we lost our son at the end of March. I did have 3 daycare children by the end of 2008, but it mostly just meant that I was working more than 40 hours a day for not very good money. I mean, I was grateful. I was making money. There were others who couldn't seem to get a job at all. But it certainly hadn't been in the plan for me to be working full time doing daycare.
By January of 2009, - between our credit card payment, food, utilities, and mortgage - we could no longer afford to pay for my private health insurance. When it got down to choosing between our house and food or paying for health insurance with such a high deductible that I couldn't afford to actually use it, we chose our house and food. So I stopped paying my health care premimums and we just hoped for the best. I had no other options. We made too much for me to qualify for the state program. The kids were STILL on Medicaid, but we had moved up to a higher level and we paid $80 a month for the kids to be covered. My husband was still on his plan.
It wasn't all bad. Somewhere this year, we FINALLY managed to pay off the $12K dental bill from 2004. By the fall of 2009, I was doing mostly daycare. I had only one preschool only child. I had 5 daycare children, and the children coming for daycare were primarily preschool age, and so I would teach them in the morning, and then they would stay on through the afternoon.
In the fall of 2009, we were also homeschooling - actually in our second year. My oldest was in 4th grade, and my middle was in 2nd, (youngest was 4). We were homeschooling for multiple reasons, and we did plan on the children going back to public school at some point, but for now, I also needed to be available during the day for homeschooling. My sister was homeschooling her children too, and she would come over to my house, and we worked out a schedule for homeschooling and teaching preschool/daycare for all of the children. It was hectic, to say the least.
I also paid my sister for helping me, and so while I was techically making more than I ever had because I was providing daycare for 5 children, I also had to pay my sister. So we really weren't that much further ahead. But we did manage to pay off the van in 2009, and that helped some. We also were given a car for free in 2009 (long story, but it was a 2002 sedan with low miles.)
So by now, it was almost 2010. I had no health insurance, but I did have dental insurance through my husband's plan. We were paying $80 a month for the three children to have health insurance through Medicaid, and they had dental insurance through my husband's plan. My husband had insurance through his work (he had to pay no premiums for just him to be covered; it was when he added anyone that it got VERY expensive) and so he had health and dental insurance. He had a pension plan through his work. I still had nothing for retirement - I'd cashed out any retiremement funds I had years ago, and we had never made enough for us be able to start adding to an IRA or something. Since I'd been laid off in 2004, I'd never had a full-time job with benefits. But we were making lots of progress on our credit card debt. We'd paid off that dental bill. We'd paid off the van and had a second car (that we got for free) for the first time in a long time. We were paying our mortgage(s). We paid our utilities. We had enough to buy food. As long as we were really frugal with our money, we were doing o.k.
Oh, did I mention that I had to have extensive dental work done in the fall of 2004? 6 of my top front teeth would either need to be pulled or I'd need to have root canals and crowns to replace them. I knew that it would be much cheaper to just have them pulled, but as a (then) 38 year old woman, I wasn't quite ready to go without front teeth. Dentures weren't really a possibility. If I wanted to be able to have front teeth, I'd need to have 6 root canals and crowns on my front teeth (oh, I also had two lower molars that needed to be done at the same time. Molars, but the ones you can see when you smile, of course. Not far back molars.) We couldn't afford health insurance through my husband's plan, but we could afford and get dental insurance through his plan. But unfortunately, there was a cap of $2000 per calendar year/per person on dental work. (Very typical for dental insurance to have a similar cap.) The bill for this work - $9000. If we put it on a four year payment plan, $12,500. So we signed up for the payment plan.
That spring (2005), my graduate director asked me to stay in school for another year, so I could do a graduate assistantship in project management in the fall 2005/spring 2006. I'd get a decent stipend, I'd only have to work afternoons, and I'd get some good work experience. I'd get student health insurance. So I did it.
Things were going o.k. I kept teaching preschool in the mornings, I had the assistantship in the afternoons. My oldest was in Kindergarten, my middle was in pre-K, and my youngest, who was now a year, just had to go to daycare in the afternoons. I had health insurance through school. The kids were on Medicaid, but we were no longer using WIC. My husband was on his own plan. So things weren't great, but they weren't awful. We'd got a new to us mini-van in the fall of 2005 (it was 2005 model, but it was slightly used) and got rid of our other car and went down to one car. I graduated with my masters in the fall of 2006, and planned on getting another job.
Of course, I was pregnant again by this point too. I had found out I was pregnant in June 2006. It was unplanned. I was almost 40. We were struggling. And this was going to impact, at least somewhat, on a getting a job. But I figured I'd cross that bridge when I got to it. And then in September, I miscarried. I applied for lots of jobs that fall and winter. I got no full-time offers. I took a part-time evening job (that had NOTHING to do with training or project management, and paid just over minimum wage, but they were the only ones to offer anything) in October 2006. So now I was teaching preschool in the morning and working in the evenings. I had no health and dental benefits and just hoped for the best. The kids stayed on Medicaid. My husband stayed on his plan.
The next fall (of 2007), I stopped the part-time evening work because it was so hard on my family, and it was for very little money. (Don't forget too, we still only had one car!) But, in addition to teaching preschool, I started watching one of the preschoolers all day, and this made up for the pay that I lost in the evening job.
And also in the fall of 2007, we finally decided that we HAD to do something about our credit card debt situation. By this point, it was completely out of control. We had close to $20,000 in credit card debt by this point, and we had only been managing to pay the minimum for years now. At this rate, we wouldn't pay it off in our lifetime. We had considered selling our house and renting, but a) we would need to get a 2, or more likely, 3 bedroom apartment, and of course, by now, the housing market had crashed. We would likely lose money in a house sale. We were cramped in the house, especially the kitchen, we didn't have money to make any updates, but we WERE making our mortgage payment every month. So we met with some from our local not for profit Credit Counseling Center, and made a 4 year payment plan to pay off our credit card debt. It would require us to pay them $500 a month and they would negotiate lower interest rates and the CCC office would pay the credit cards directly. It would require us to close our accounts and not open any more credit lines until we were completely out of credit card debt. It was scary to do all that, but I couldn't face thinking about never getting out of debt either. So we did it. We had a plan, at least, now. We would be out of credit card debt by June 2011. We also (re)committed to saving up for any future purchases that were larger than $100. And purchases that were more than $25 had to be discussed with the other spouse and put in the budget before you could purchase it.
In November 2007, I found I was pregnant with our son, Chistopher. It was a pregnancy full of complications, and by February, I had to stop doing preschool and daycare, with the plan to start up again when I got to a better place with the pregnancy. (Thankfully, my sister took over for me with the daycare child.) Sadly, our son was stillborn in late March 2008. I started doing daycare again by May, and started preschool again that fall. Also, over the summer, I added a second daycare child, and a third in the fall. By this point, I made too much to qualify for the Medicaid, and I was now making enough to pay for my own health insurance though a private company. For now, the children would continue to be covered through Medicaid. My husband would stay on his plan.
But of course, getting private, individual health insurance wasn't easy. Or cheap. Because I had used fertility treatments in the past (even though, by this point, I was using an IUD to prevent any further pregnancies), I did not qualify for a plan that had a low deductible & low payment. But I was finally able to get individual health insurance. Such as it was, anyway. I had a $4,000 deductible. I paid almost $300 a month for just an individual policy. If I got sick, it wasn't like we had money to cover a large (up to $4000) out of pocket expense. Just paying the premium was hard enough. So basically, I paid the premiums every month, but couldn't afford to actually go to the doctor or the hospital. I just carried it unless something catastrophic happened.
I'd been frugal all along, but starting in 2007, I started trying to be more self-reliant too. I started gardening, canning, sewing, making cheese, etc. Anything to help us have to spend less money and be more self-sufficient, at least any way we could.
Also, since I graduated in Spring 2006, I had still been looking for full-time work in Technical Writing and/or Training. I sent out numerous resumes. I registered with Monster and other on-line job sites. I networked. I'd go on interviews occassionally, but often, I'd hear nothing. And I never, ever got a full-time job offer. We knew that I would probably be able to get a job if we moved, but we couldn't afford to move. My student loans were (acutally still are) in either deferrment or forbearance. So I didn't have that expense, but it isn't like it was magically going to go away. I was so frustrated that I had even taken the loans. That I'd even gone back to school at all. Of course, I never dreamed that it was going to be so difficult to get a job. And of course, by 2008, the recession had begun in full-force.
2008 was a very hard year - I was on bedrest for much of the first 3 months of 2008 due to my pregnancy and unable to work, then we lost our son at the end of March. I did have 3 daycare children by the end of 2008, but it mostly just meant that I was working more than 40 hours a day for not very good money. I mean, I was grateful. I was making money. There were others who couldn't seem to get a job at all. But it certainly hadn't been in the plan for me to be working full time doing daycare.
By January of 2009, - between our credit card payment, food, utilities, and mortgage - we could no longer afford to pay for my private health insurance. When it got down to choosing between our house and food or paying for health insurance with such a high deductible that I couldn't afford to actually use it, we chose our house and food. So I stopped paying my health care premimums and we just hoped for the best. I had no other options. We made too much for me to qualify for the state program. The kids were STILL on Medicaid, but we had moved up to a higher level and we paid $80 a month for the kids to be covered. My husband was still on his plan.
It wasn't all bad. Somewhere this year, we FINALLY managed to pay off the $12K dental bill from 2004. By the fall of 2009, I was doing mostly daycare. I had only one preschool only child. I had 5 daycare children, and the children coming for daycare were primarily preschool age, and so I would teach them in the morning, and then they would stay on through the afternoon.
In the fall of 2009, we were also homeschooling - actually in our second year. My oldest was in 4th grade, and my middle was in 2nd, (youngest was 4). We were homeschooling for multiple reasons, and we did plan on the children going back to public school at some point, but for now, I also needed to be available during the day for homeschooling. My sister was homeschooling her children too, and she would come over to my house, and we worked out a schedule for homeschooling and teaching preschool/daycare for all of the children. It was hectic, to say the least.
I also paid my sister for helping me, and so while I was techically making more than I ever had because I was providing daycare for 5 children, I also had to pay my sister. So we really weren't that much further ahead. But we did manage to pay off the van in 2009, and that helped some. We also were given a car for free in 2009 (long story, but it was a 2002 sedan with low miles.)
So by now, it was almost 2010. I had no health insurance, but I did have dental insurance through my husband's plan. We were paying $80 a month for the three children to have health insurance through Medicaid, and they had dental insurance through my husband's plan. My husband had insurance through his work (he had to pay no premiums for just him to be covered; it was when he added anyone that it got VERY expensive) and so he had health and dental insurance. He had a pension plan through his work. I still had nothing for retirement - I'd cashed out any retiremement funds I had years ago, and we had never made enough for us be able to start adding to an IRA or something. Since I'd been laid off in 2004, I'd never had a full-time job with benefits. But we were making lots of progress on our credit card debt. We'd paid off that dental bill. We'd paid off the van and had a second car (that we got for free) for the first time in a long time. We were paying our mortgage(s). We paid our utilities. We had enough to buy food. As long as we were really frugal with our money, we were doing o.k.
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.
What I'll be talking about here and why that title?
Well, let's deal with the title first. I've had another blog for almost 4 years called Simply Living and Simply Loving (http://simplelandl.blogspot.com). This blog is mostly for talking about my family and our journey to living a more self-sufficient/self-reliant life. I also have another blog that will give lists and tutorials and all sorts of stuff about living a simple life while still living in the city - if I ever get the time to maintain it properly (http://www.simplylivinginthecity.com)
Over the years, I've had things that I wanted to talk about, and occassionally did, over at Simply Living and Simply Loving blog that really didn't pertain much to our journey of living a simple life. And so I thought I'd create a blog where I could talk about things that weren't "simple." I won't be talking about canning over here. Or soap making. Or our trips to the Nature Center.
What will I be talking about? I'm not sure. I know what I'll be talking about for the next month or so, but who is to say what I'll talk about after that.
You may not agree with what I say. You may not agree with the choices that I make. And that is OK. And I won't be offended if you decide that this blog isn't for you.
But like I said, I just felt like I had some things that I needed to get out. I'm a writer. And so I write.
And if you want, you are welcome to read along. For now, I won't be allowing comments on this blog. I may in the future. I don't know. But the point of this blog isn't for you to agree with me or disagree with me or to give me advice. It is to maybe see things from a different perspective. To put a more "real" look at the statistics out there. But if you'd like to e-mail me, please feel free to do that. I check my e-mail often, and I'll try to answer you in a timely manner.
Over the years, I've had things that I wanted to talk about, and occassionally did, over at Simply Living and Simply Loving blog that really didn't pertain much to our journey of living a simple life. And so I thought I'd create a blog where I could talk about things that weren't "simple." I won't be talking about canning over here. Or soap making. Or our trips to the Nature Center.
What will I be talking about? I'm not sure. I know what I'll be talking about for the next month or so, but who is to say what I'll talk about after that.
You may not agree with what I say. You may not agree with the choices that I make. And that is OK. And I won't be offended if you decide that this blog isn't for you.
But like I said, I just felt like I had some things that I needed to get out. I'm a writer. And so I write.
And if you want, you are welcome to read along. For now, I won't be allowing comments on this blog. I may in the future. I don't know. But the point of this blog isn't for you to agree with me or disagree with me or to give me advice. It is to maybe see things from a different perspective. To put a more "real" look at the statistics out there. But if you'd like to e-mail me, please feel free to do that. I check my e-mail often, and I'll try to answer you in a timely manner.
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