My finances (or lack thereof) have reached critical mass, I am flat out broke, unable even to make minimum payments at this point. The economic downturn has gouged this little lady for all she's worth, and that ain't much. Had to take a cut in pay to keep my job and cannot get health insurance due to cancer diagnosis in 2004.
I feel really, really bad about this. I feel guilty and downtrodden and am getting the impression this isn't something most people like to talk about, but I need all the good, sound advice I can muster mister.
First, cancer diagnosis in 2004. Had insurance through COBRA and made it through diagnosis, treatment and follow-up care until 2006. Shortly after I was told I was finally in remission Blue Cross of CA dropped me. Gee thanks Blue Cross, never missed a payment, never called to gripe, nice service.
The economic downturn was starting up slowly but surely around this time. At first I noticed my pay rate began to drop. I work in medical transcription and work from home, which worked out really well for me especially during radiation, had I gone through all this at my previous job I am certain my employer would have given me a hard time or even found a way to fire me, not a nice place to work.
I was forced to use all of my savings to cover my follow up care throughout 2007 and 2008, which wasn't much but it was my buffer for emergencies. Then I started the dreaded death spiral of using credit cards to cover expenses, then I thought I was being too cool and would get a card with a 0 or low introductory APR and pay down as much as I could and then apply for another and so on and so forth. Thanks to the economy I don't even get offers in the mail anymore, nobody is lending or giving out credit cards anymore. So the APR's started to rise, and just in the past 6 months the minimum payments began to double and even triple. Calls were made to the credit card companies to reduce the rates or give me a smaller temporary minimum payment for 3 to 6 months, just so I could play catch up, no dice.
Increased medical issues forced me to max out several of the cards and the others reduced my limits. So essentially stuck with 0 dollars for prescriptions, doc visits and yearly necessary testing.
Bankruptcy seems like the only way out. My employer has been hinting at a reduction in workload in the coming months and a part time holiday job I used to rely on is not there this year. I know, I know, cue the tiny violins. I guess I just need some validation, a pep talk perhaps, and maybe some sound legal advice.
I just watched Al Franken on CSPAN eviscerate some chick from some institute on the number of bankruptcies in other countries, which got me to thinking - any Kossacks out there from France, Germany, Switzerland looking to get married? I am totally cool with learning another language, hell I'll even give the metric system a shot (KPH)!
Thanks for reading my rant!