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So God Damned Many Problems (Girl, Bankruptcy, Job, Cancer)
Help Alt
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I have a lot of problems right now.
I'm 27. I'm around $10000 in credit card debt that hasn't had had a payment on it since mid June. I'm living with my parents in the middle of nowhere in Illinois. I don't currently have a job, but have been constantly searching, which is really difficult considering my car is about to implode. My mother recently found out she has cancer, and is going through the process to find out what her options are. And my now long distance girlfriend is more than likely not right for me, but I can't bring myself to end things with her because she does make me feel better about things. Also, all my friends have either moved away from the area or want nothing to do with me.
In other words, I'm completely stuck in a situation that I have no way to get out of, I'm not comfortable in, and is putting a hold on everything I want to do. So lets delve into all of this...
My Debt.
Three years ago I moved to a different state without a job. I ended up having to use credit cards to buy food while looking. Through a series of unfortunate events, bad planning, car troubles, and the economy crashing I've never quite recovered from it. I decided to go back to school 2 year ago, and moved to go back. I had an alright retail job while going to school, and was able to pay my bills up to the point where my social/financial situation imploded.
Right now I'm thinking my only real option is bankruptcy. I know it'll make things really difficult in the long run, but at this rate I'll never be able to pay off my debt and get on the path to being on my own.
School.
I have around 6 months left in school, going for animation. I went to the school for animation. I feel I have a lot of potential, but I've never really pulled through on it. My eventual goal, once I get out of this overall situation, is to not go back to AI for my bachelors, but instead keep working on my stuff, and possibly go to Animation Mentor (an online school) if I can save up enough money for it out of pocket.
The Job Hunt.
Right now my car probably has 2-3 months left on it before it stops working completely. Because of this, I have to find a job that will allow me to put together the 5-6 thousand dollars that I'll use to buy a new car rather quickly. I'm going to have around $1000 from my tax return next year (because of school), and my parents are willing to borrow on a life insurance policy they have on me to give me 2-3000 sometime next year.
Most of the places around here pay minimum wage (which is 8.25 for IL) and give a minimal amount of hours (around 12-20). I've been going out and applying at everywhere I feel comfortable putting "reliable transportation" on the application. But that's only a handful of places. As it stands, the only two areas with any sort of employment are around 30 miles away each. The rest of the area consists of gas stations and grocery stores which I've already applied at.
The girlfriend.
My girlfriend is in some ways perfect for me, but in other ways not so much. Part of the reason I've found myself friendless is I've let my relationship with my friends atrophy over the last year while dating her. Mainly because she's ridiculously needy, and up until recently didn't want to hang out with my friends. When I lived around her she occupied most of my free time... and it's not so good. We don't share the same interests, or at least in the same way. We have nothing to talk about, and trying to do it long distance has kinda punctuated that.
She likes gossip and celebrity drama and talking about people... I like talking about ideas and philosophy, talking about how things are made.
Either way, I don't know what to do about it. I just don't think I could make it through all this without her, but I know in the long run this probably isn't going to last.
The Parents.
My parents are in a rather bad situation. My dad suffers from chronic migraines, and my mom's kidney cancer has come back after 10 years of being in remission (she had one of her kidneys removed), but on her pancreas and in her esophagus. They're in debt up to their ears, but are finally in the process of filing for bankruptcy. I've been spending a lot of the last month and a half trying to make their house livable for them again, seeing how depression and old age has left the house a mess.
TLDR; My whole life is fucked up right now, and I don't see anyway in the short term to make it better. And as time goes on, more and more just keeps getting piled on.
I'm 27. I'm around $10000 in credit card debt that hasn't had had a payment on it since mid June. I'm living with my parents in the middle of nowhere in Illinois. I don't currently have a job, but have been constantly searching, which is really difficult considering my car is about to implode. My mother recently found out she has cancer, and is going through the process to find out what her options are. And my now long distance girlfriend is more than likely not right for me, but I can't bring myself to end things with her because she does make me feel better about things. Also, all my friends have either moved away from the area or want nothing to do with me.
In other words, I'm completely stuck in a situation that I have no way to get out of, I'm not comfortable in, and is putting a hold on everything I want to do. So lets delve into all of this...
My Debt.
Three years ago I moved to a different state without a job. I ended up having to use credit cards to buy food while looking. Through a series of unfortunate events, bad planning, car troubles, and the economy crashing I've never quite recovered from it. I decided to go back to school 2 year ago, and moved to go back. I had an alright retail job while going to school, and was able to pay my bills up to the point where my social/financial situation imploded.
Right now I'm thinking my only real option is bankruptcy. I know it'll make things really difficult in the long run, but at this rate I'll never be able to pay off my debt and get on the path to being on my own.
School.
I have around 6 months left in school, going for animation. I went to the school for animation. I feel I have a lot of potential, but I've never really pulled through on it. My eventual goal, once I get out of this overall situation, is to not go back to AI for my bachelors, but instead keep working on my stuff, and possibly go to Animation Mentor (an online school) if I can save up enough money for it out of pocket.
The Job Hunt.
Right now my car probably has 2-3 months left on it before it stops working completely. Because of this, I have to find a job that will allow me to put together the 5-6 thousand dollars that I'll use to buy a new car rather quickly. I'm going to have around $1000 from my tax return next year (because of school), and my parents are willing to borrow on a life insurance policy they have on me to give me 2-3000 sometime next year.
Most of the places around here pay minimum wage (which is 8.25 for IL) and give a minimal amount of hours (around 12-20). I've been going out and applying at everywhere I feel comfortable putting "reliable transportation" on the application. But that's only a handful of places. As it stands, the only two areas with any sort of employment are around 30 miles away each. The rest of the area consists of gas stations and grocery stores which I've already applied at.
The girlfriend.
My girlfriend is in some ways perfect for me, but in other ways not so much. Part of the reason I've found myself friendless is I've let my relationship with my friends atrophy over the last year while dating her. Mainly because she's ridiculously needy, and up until recently didn't want to hang out with my friends. When I lived around her she occupied most of my free time... and it's not so good. We don't share the same interests, or at least in the same way. We have nothing to talk about, and trying to do it long distance has kinda punctuated that.
She likes gossip and celebrity drama and talking about people... I like talking about ideas and philosophy, talking about how things are made.
Either way, I don't know what to do about it. I just don't think I could make it through all this without her, but I know in the long run this probably isn't going to last.
The Parents.
My parents are in a rather bad situation. My dad suffers from chronic migraines, and my mom's kidney cancer has come back after 10 years of being in remission (she had one of her kidneys removed), but on her pancreas and in her esophagus. They're in debt up to their ears, but are finally in the process of filing for bankruptcy. I've been spending a lot of the last month and a half trying to make their house livable for them again, seeing how depression and old age has left the house a mess.
TLDR; My whole life is fucked up right now, and I don't see anyway in the short term to make it better. And as time goes on, more and more just keeps getting piled on.
Help Alt on
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The girlfriend thing reads like you plan on breaking up with her as soon as you don't need her anymore, which is.. lousy.
If your parents are in so much trouble themselves, will they be able to borrow against life insurance in that time? I'm not sure I'd plan on that.
I'm really not sure what my plan is with my girlfriend. To some extent I think I'm holding a grudge against her. We were suppose to move in together when my lease was up in June. However, she quit her job in April, and that led to a ton of things happening which made me leave school, my job, and move back in with my parents. On the other hand, I also think it might just be the combined stress of everything making me pull away from her. We were doing fine when we could see eachother often, and there's glimmers of that still, but only being able to see eachother every 3-4 weeks is killing us.
I'm not sure on the life insurance. If I can find a damned job, it won't really matter if I get that money or not, I can save up. The real problem is just staying positive with all of this. I use to be really depressed, and I'm so lonely and paralyzed because of all of this... I'm just afraid I'm going to backslide into bad habits and give up. It's happened before, but I'm really trying to fight it this time by staying active.
I don't really know anything about declaring bankruptcy, only that you should really, really make sure you know what you're doing. It won't make all those student loans go away, and that's the bulk of your debt, but it will make it very difficult to buy a car or move out without a whole freaking lot of cash in hand. If moving out on your own is your goal, this may not be a great move for you.
I was living in an apartment with 2 other guys. Things got tense because one of the guys had his girlfriend living there without paying rent. Me and the other guy decided to start exploring other options for when the lease would be renewed. All the while, my girlfriend was insisting we should get a place. I was hesitant about the whole thing, but eventually, after much convincing, I decided to go along with it. I told my roommates they should be looking for a replacement, and me and my girlfriend found a place we could afford off our budgets. In April, she quit her job, insisting she'd find another one before move time came. She was working at a doctor's office, and had a really hard time with the business manager and the distance. I started to get nervous, and tried to see if staying where I was was an option. It wasn't, they had already found a replacement, and refused to tell him no deal. I tried looking for someplace on my own, but I couldn't find anywhere within my budget (which was very tight). She was kinda slow with even looking for a job, and only found one once worse had come to worse and I had to move or become homeless. I'm rather bitter about this, but honestly I haven't told her how I feel about it because it's an awful lot to put onto her... and it has seriously effected how much I trust her. It's quickly gone from me looking for engagement rings to this.
And maybe she can help think of a way to fix it. I'm assuming employment prospects are better where she is... maybe you could try to line up a job in the area and if you're both still willing you could get a place together once you're employed. Anything even remotely resembling that kind of plan will require you to put your resentment aside, though, and if you don't feel like you have enough in common in the first place then it's probably not worth it.
I think part of the problem stems from the dramatic turn towards this. I went from being completely content with my life/my relationship to having the vast majority of that stripped away. It's been a shock to the system. I really feel I've lost my sense of self through all of this. I went from a major metropolitan area to a town with less than 2000 people in it in under 3 months. I have no idea how to deal with all of this pressure.
What exactly is wrong with your car? We have some skilled auto-mechanics (apparently) on this site...I am not one of them, but I'm sure somebody would be happy to give you a better idea of what it is or what to do.
Your focus at this point needs to be improving your financial situation and helping out your family, to the extent possible. I don't really see how you can fit what appears to be a pretty toxic relationship into that mix. Being single for some period of time while you clear up your other issues is probably a good approach.
Rigorous Scholarship
Going bankrupt over $10,000 is silly for two reasons
- You're completely fucking yourself for the next 7-10 years.
- It'll cost you at least $2,000 to file and hire an attorney (you really don't want to do that pro se.)
On top of that, add the time you'll need to help out your parents in dealing with their various issues. A long-distance relationship on top of that just doesn't seem workable.
The good news is that you're not really all that much in debt. $10,000 (some of which are student loans, that can often be deferred if you're having financial woes) is not really a huge amount. But, for the immediate future, you're going to have to focus on getting rid of this debt and shoring up your financial position. Which will mean making some cutbacks in other aspects of your life (like relationships) that would distract you from this goal.
Rigorous Scholarship
Deferring those for as long as it takes to get the $10K paid off would be extremely helpful. Getting a job that doesn't pay minimum wage would go a long way in general, and finishing school would help to do that, but doesn't seem too likely right now.
Start looking at high turnover places like restaurants. Waiting tables can make you decent money. Try to get overnight stocker at a store. Walmart or Target would likely hire for that, and because it is overnight it will pay better.
Pretty much all of your time should be going towards getting a job.
Student loans don't get discharged in bankruptcy so declaring for 10k of debt is silly, will cost you a bunch, and won't really get rid of your debt, just reduce it.
but they're listening to every word I say
Here's why I'm even considering bankruptcy. I haven't payed on my credit card debt is around 2 and a half months. I haven't had any way to. The original plan was to get a job or two down here once I moved, and pay pay pay on my CC debt, trying to get it payed off within a year. However, the job market down here is impossible. I've applied at every place I'm qualified to work within a 30 mile radius. I still haven't gotten any bites. I've called the vast majority of places weekly, still not getting anything. This includes retail, reception, restaurant, call center, and even lawn company positions. Any sort of position. I went through this a few years ago in this area, and it's the whole reason I moved away from here in the first place. The only real option I see is at the hospital my mother works at. They have a receptionist position open that would be 42 hours a week, 12 hour shifts, and around $10 an hour. I applied for it a month before moving, but being a small town hospital, they haven't made any moves on the position yet. My mother is planning on going in, tears in her eyes, to ask the head of the hospital to find me a job... because that's the way things work around here. Hopefully I'll eventually get it or something will finally open up somewhere else.
And this is all really being caused by my car. It's a 2000 Mercury Mystique with around 189000 miles on it. I've recently replaced both of the front drive shafts, the suspension in the front, the front breaks, the front ball joints, and a ton of other small things. This is why I have CC debt. My car has slowly been dying over the last 2 years, and every time it gets unsafe to drive I have to charge the repairs for lack of having any savings. Right now the transmission is going (slipping a lot), the back suspension is going, the blower motor is shot, the passenger drive-shaft has gone again, and the car just scares the crap out of me driving. It's going to cost at least as much as a new used car to keep this thing running (which around here is around $3000-5000), but in order to save up any money I have to drive the damned thing.
I was talking with my parents about this, telling them how worried I am with my CCs. They asked me how much it would cost to get them back on track right now, to the point where they're paid to date, and it would cost well over $1500 by this point. A bankruptcy in Illinois cost around $1200-$1500, at least according to their bankruptcy attorney. They've offered to pay for the costs of an attorney once they file and have some liquidity again. I have no assets. The vast majority of my debt is in my car, which isn't even worth $2000.
I live about an hour away from Springfield IL and Alton IL, both of which would be rather easy to find jobs in (well paying jobs even). But I can't trust my car to reliably get me there on a day to day basis. I have to get a different car if living around here is going to be possible at all. And with the CC debt, which bills are around $400 a month when payed on time, I'll end up losing my car before I can get enough money saved up to get a different one or fix this one. I think (if I'm lucky) my car has around 6 months left day to day driving before it goes. Right now I'm using my parent's van to look for jobs while my parents sleep (my mom is a night nurse, and my dad is on disability).
But that's why I'm considering the bankruptcy. I know it's going to mess up my credit for a long time, but my credit already is pretty messed up. I don't want credit anymore. I don't want to even have the option to use a credit card anymore. If I could get that 42 hour a week job soon I could possibly do this the right way. But with things the way they are right now, it's not going to be that long before all my wages where ever I work are garnished.
Call the credit card company and try to work something out with them. But your priority here should be the job. If your mom can help you get that receptionist position, that would likely be ideal.
I don't think bankruptcy is the solution here. It would only discharge a small portion of your debt and the long-term consequences wouldn't be worth that trade-off.
Rigorous Scholarship
If we could still lime things, the above would be quite green.
Also as much as banks are complete dickbags, they are also large beaureaucratic machines where each cog has strange metrics. In my limited experience, it's better for their collections department to work with you and bring you current than it is for them to say "FUCK YOU, PAY YOUR $TEXAS MINIMUM LATE PAYMENT, SCUMBAG!"
And seriously, you do not want to declare bankruptcy over such a shit amount. You may not think it's a big deal now, but your opinion could change in 5 - 7 years.
And the 35k you owe in student loans will not go anywhere if you file for bankruptcy so its really not even close to worth it. You just have to pick up a shit job or two and pay down your loan. You're living at home, dude. If I was living at home and didn't have to pay a mortgage, I'd be debt free in a year.
In a less abrasive way, I agree fully with this.
There are lots of solutions that are entirely workable here. You don't have a car? Someone in your town travels to the larger cities regularly. Find an acquaintance and offer to pay to carpool. Or take a bus. Or take the extra time and bike. Or just do it with the car you have, ignore it maybe breaking, and short term save up enough so that when it inevitably explodes you can repair it again.
Your debt, social situation, and work situation concerns all seem pretty correlated from reading your posts. None of these things are insurmountable, you just have to find a way rather than finding a way to say it can't be done. Your mother shouldn't be begging for the job, you should be. In a small town, show up somewhere that looks like it could use help and offer a week's worth of free labor. If they like you, they hire you, if not, they lose nothing. Most small businesses love this, and if you bust your ass you will likely be hired.
When life starts going bad, it's easy to be trapped in a negative spiral. It seems like you are heading in that directions. Find a way to move forward and things will work out assuming you throw enough effort into them.
I agree. If I can find a minimum wage job that'll give me full hours I'd take it in a second.
Once again, I agree. If I can find those shit jobs in range of my car I'll be golden.
No buses around here. No acquaintances around here either. I'd love to try, but I don't think I can bike the 60 miles it would take to get to the places where I am guaranteed a job, or even the 30 miles to the places I've been looking. I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but besides getting a job in town (I've applied at all 4 businesses in town, none are hiring, all are fully staffed) my car is going to be a major issue. I'm in no way saying bankruptcy is the way I'm going to go. If I can get a job that can cover everything I'll do it that way. If I can't, I don't see how I have any other choice.
First week I was back I went to the hospital, tried to talk to the head of the reception department, they wouldn't let me back. There aren't any small shops in the towns now, they're all shut. Just a couple of gas stations and one grocery store. And I've been trying them, talking to the people who work there, making it clear I'll take anything. The problem is people in this area know how bad the job market is here, the businesses aren't expanding, there's no money coming into the towns to expand. So people are holding on tightly to their jobs, businesses aren't hiring....
Ugh, why the hell did I move here. Every where else I've ever lived I've been able to find work within a week or two of moving there. Here... it's always like this.
I want to be out of here with a reliable car, without my CC debt within 2 years at the most. If I can do that, I can live reasonably well in any major city in the US. Or go back to school. That's my goal. If I can work several jobs to do so, that's what I want to do. It's actually getting those jobs that's the problem, and getting them close enough together where I'm not spending all my income on gas.
It sounds like your location now is an economic dead end, which given your debt means you can't afford to stay there, so you're going to be forced to leave at some point.
This is exactly what I want to do. If I could I'd go back up to Wisconsin and just start myself up again there. I've asked around to my friends up there, but no one is willing to take me in for any amount of times primarily because of my debt. Same with my friends who moved to California within the past few years. Family is pretty much concentrated here, and in small towns in PA. I keep hoping that someone I know somewhere will offer to help me out, but I think most of my friends have given up on me. Because of the debt, they just don't think there's any way they'd come out ahead on that sort of deal.
Less "here is what I can't do" and more "what possible solutions are there?"
Now, there's some stuff with my mother's cancer I'd like to ask some advice on. My mother had kidney cancer 10 years ago. One of her kidneys was removed, and since then everything to our knowledge has been fine. She's gone in yearly for checkups and CT scans, and nothing has ever come back until this year. This year, however, the CT scan came back with nodules on her pancreas. The report mentioned something about the nodules having grown 50% since last year. However, on the report from last year, there was absolutely no mention of any nodules on her pancreas.
Which, to us, means someone really messed up. Since then she's had a full PETscan done, and she has kidney cancer on her pancreas, in her lungs, on her other kidney, and in her windpipe. The doctors are hopeful that they'll be able to treat the cancer with medicine, then remove it through surgery. However, they're going to have to remove her pancreas, which is going to make her a full blown diabetic.
We've also been looking through old medical records since finding all of this out, and as far back as 2003 there have been mentions of abnormalities on her pancreas, suggesting a CT scan of the area, but this year is the first she's ever heard anything of it. This is really upsetting to my parents. They're, well, they're angry. If this was something that existed that far back, that means it's had eight years to grow and spread. Even one year is enough time to cause major damage. And they're thinking about suing. I've told them that if that's the way they want to go, they should gather up all of her medical records, and go talk to a malpractice lawyer now, to see if they have a case here. They don't want to do anything like that until her treatment is done for all of this. Is this the right way to go? Or should they be talking to a lawyer now? This, to us, seems like a very big screw up which might cost my mother several years off of her life, a huge amount of quality of life, and, well... it just shouldn't have happened. Or it could be we're putting our anger and frustration at the whole situation onto something that was unavoidable and we don't even have a case here (or are in the moral right). I don't know.
Personally I wouldn't be pulling out the lawsuit card just yet. It's obviously going to be very hard on your family going through something like this, again, and seriously, you've got my sympathy. But without some real evidence to back up malpractice (which attorneys aren't just going to have, regardless of whether or not they tell you that you have a case) I wouldn't add that stress onto the pile.
Just my .02 though.