I feel so beat down
I really feel at my breaking point. Here's the situation:
In March of 2007 I quit a full-time, decent-paying job to attend a full-time LVN program. I was pregnant at the time and knew I would be exiting the program after the first 3 months to await the birth of my son. I intended on returning to the program shortly after his birth. At the time, my fiance was working as a server at a bar/restaurant. I took out around $35,000 to cover our expenses for the year that I would be in the LVN program.
When I quit my job, I lost my healthcare but I chose to continue seeing my OBGYN for the remainder of the pregnancy so I had to self-pay the rest of the cost of the office visits and delivery. I pre-paid the $3,000 or so cost in anticipation of a vaginal delivery. I ended up with a c-section which tacked on another good chunk of money that I'm still not done paying.
Aaron got promoted to bartender around April or early May of 2007, and around that time his car was giving him a lot of problems and we really felt he needed a different vehicle. We anticipated a good pay increase with his promotion and we put about $4,000 down on a new truck.
We also put about $3,000 toward my engagement ring which left us about $25,000 to live on until my anticipated graduation in 2008. I seriously misjudged our monthly expenses (by about $1,000 per month) and forgot to add in the extra 3 months that I was out of the LVN program (making it 15 months without work vs. 12) when I figured the rough amount I thought we would need.
When it came time for me to return to the program, circumstances surrounding the return coupled with the rough end to my pregnancy led me to decided not to return. Instead I got a part-time job at Starbucks and set my sights on transferring to a university about 2 hours from our current town (my sister was already there and promised to help with childcare) and try to get into their nursing program. Around this time, the loan money I had taken to live on during the time I was to be in the LVN program ran out. We began to get behind on our bills.
I transferred in January and stayed with my sister the first month. We officially moved at the end of our lease in mid-February. I had quit my job at Starbucks when I started school in January, and we decided that Aaron would stay with his parents and continue bartending while he looked for a job in our new town on his days off. I used my remainder check (the loan money left after the tuition was paid) to get us current on our bills. I took out an additional $5,000 and put it in a high interest savings account to use strictly for paying rent.
During this spring semester, I have not worked. Aaron has been our sole source of income, but the amount he brings home fluctuates and is very unpredictable. We are behind again on our bills. This time we are very behind. We got a substantial tax return back and I have used this money to put $1,000 into savings and pay off some of our bills. However, our finances have become so bleak that our car insurance is in danger of cancellation, we are two months behind on his truck payment, a month behind on cell phone, a month behind on electricity, etc. Thank goodness the rent is at least taken care of. I have ranked bills in order of importance, but the juggling is getting harder and harder to do.
We have been living separately this whole time. Aaron just found a job this week in our new place, but it is as a server instead of a bartender so I expect a pay cut. I'm hoping the pay cut will be compensated by the amount of money he'll save by not driving all over town (his parents live quite a ways from his job) and back and forth from Dallas to Tyler (on his days off).
We have been living week to week for so long and our bank account balance often goes negative. Those $35 fees can really set you back when you're already struggling. Just this week we went negative again and were charged two fees. Two things cleared the night we went negative. We had enough funds to cover the first debit, but the second made us go into the red. But, lo and behold, we were charged overdrafts for both debits. So I called the bank. They've changed their policy to include any pending charges when calculating your balance. So a $2.00 charge that was pending reduced our balance enough to not cover the first debit, either, even though the $2.00 charge did not clear until two days later, when additional money had posted to the account. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and it really feels like a kick when you're down. I realize that technically that $2 was spent even if it hadn't cleared, so technically the bank is in the right, but it is really hard to keep track of two people's spending when both are using cards and debits don't always show up immediately on online banking. It really feels like the bank is using sneaky, although legal, means to get as many fees out of us as they can.
Anyhow. We are in a dire financial situation. I don't see many options. I really want to finish school, but I'm so tempted to quit (again) and get a full-time job. I know I could get a decent office job easily. I would look into a part-time job but it seems like almost anything I would make with a part-time job would be eaten up by daycare costs.
Thanks for reading my story. Any suggestions are welcome. It feels a little better just to share.
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