Need advice or help.
My name is Sarah and I live in Central Illinois. I have a wonderful husband and a 15 year old stepson and a 2 year old son. We have really been experiencing some financial difficulties and are praying for someone to help us out in our time of need.
My husband is a jeweler - he sits at a jewelry bench all day and creates beautiful pieces of jewelry - his work is absolutely amazing. He was with the same company for 15 years and unfortunately, the management mispent company funds and the company ended up going bankrupt and closing. At the same time, I was in a wonderful position - fresh out of college, and making fairly good money at this position. Unfortunately, the position I took was a newly created position and when the cutbacks began - it was last hired, first let go.
I was let go when I was seven months pregnant. This was a planned pregnancy, at the time we both had good jobs, started a savings, and felt financially and emotionally ready to have a child. When we both got laid off - we had to come up with the funds to pay for COBRA insurance monthly (which was over $1000) in order for my pregnancy to remain covered.
Thus, our bills got behind, things got turned over to collection and my student loans went into default. Our family could offer no help or support. I went back to work 4 weeks after I had my baby and put my son in daycare. Unfortunately, my son couldn't handle daycare. He was premie (so we had those hospital bills) and constantly got sick. With no family around - we had to try to split days and alternate days both of us could stay home with our son when he got sick - which was about every week.
Because I was missing so much work to take care of my sick son - I was let go. I have the hospital calling 50 times a day wanting their money (the bill is over $20,000), creditors calling - you know the drill. We approached a lawyer about bankruptcy - but then we risk losing our home which would be absolutely to this family. We have tried so hard over the years to do right in our lives, to be honest, and kind and work hard and have just hit a roadblock so big we don't know what to to.
We are praying and looking for a miracle right now. The credit market is not lending money, our family can't provide a loan and we just don't know what to do.
My email address is sarahjohnson@millikin.edu (my old college email)
Thank you and God Bless
Sarah
