[oh-crap]

Looking for advice.

I am on the verge of a total mental breakdown. Sorry this is very long.

Here is my story….

In 1994 I was 24 years old and a single father of one. I bought a house and was living by myself with my son visiting me every other weekend, life was good. Later in 1997 I made some bad decisions with my money and got myself into trouble with my mortgage. In order to save my house I filed chapter 13 BK. I had little debt but had to file to keep my house. Although things were tight I managed to pay this ch 13 in full in 2003. In early 1998 my girlfriend of 5 years moved in with me, life was still pretty good. In mid 1998 my son was having all kinds of troubles in school, 80 tardies and 24 absences in the first grade. Come to find out his mother had a drug problem so I took him from her and won custody so now we had 3 people living in my house. My house is a pre-fab home on a 1.1 acre lot with only 2 bedrooms, we had enough room and things were good. In 1999 my (then) girlfriend and I got married and decided we would start trying to have a child together. It took us till 2002 to get pregnant. Our child was born in October of 2002. We put a bassinet in our bedroom and things were starting to feel a little cramped with 4 of us living here but it was livable. In late 2003 we learned that we were expecting another child. At this point we decided that our house was not large enough anymore and we better do something about it. In early 2004 we thought we would fix up the house a little and sale it to buy a larger one for our larger family. After 3 months of working my but off to get the house ready to sale we put it on the market. We put the house on the market in April of 2004. Shortly after doing this my wife was having troubles with the pregnancy and was put on bed rest till the baby was born in July. She was in and out of the hospital during the bed rest period so we were racking up a lot of medical bills. My employer doesn't offer any health insurance and due to a few minor pre existing conditions I was having troubles finding us a good affordable policy of my own. After paying off the BK in 2003 we thought we were on a path of finally getting ahead financially… my wife was working until we had the child in 2002, so we are a single income family.
On with the story.
We gave birth to our 3rd (2nd together) child in July of 2004. After the child was born my wife was getting sick, she was losing a lot of weight and seemed very depressed. Our doctor was treating her for depression and nothing seemed to help. During this period I was taking care of the newborn for the most part… she was sleeping a lot and taking care of the 18 month old. I was not getting much sleep and was having troubles getting up for work; I started arriving later and later each day. My wife would call me at work and beg me to come home. I felt I was on thin ice at work and I know my performance was way down. In August we took her into emergency due to complications breathing. She was diagnosed with cancer on that visit. She was hospitalized for 8 weeks. During this we had to lean on family a lot to help take care of the kids. Her 5th week I the hospital we got an offer on our house and soon had a contract to sale. With all the events we had not found another house to buy so we opted to rent in the area we wanted to buy. With my wife still in the hospital I found us a house to rent and started to move us (50 miles). This was going to be good because it put us 30 miles closer to the hospital where she would be getting her chemo and radiation treatments. After moving into our newly rented home my wife was released from the hospital and came home. We were ready to close on our house we had the contract on when 2 days before closing the deal fell through and the buyer backed out. It left us with 2 house payments; in the course of 3 months we had 2 other contracts go bad on us. We found out that the banks will not loan on a pre-fab (or mobile home as they call it) older than a 1976, ours is a 1974. It is on a foundation and has been in the same place since 1974. After our 6 month lease was up on our rental we decided we had no choice but to move back into the old 2 bedroom home and just make the best of it. We wanted to build a larger home on the property and have the pre-fab moved away. Soon after moving back into the old home we found out we were pregnant again… This one was not planned at all and was a big surprise to us and her doctors.
SO we are days away from having our 4th child. Our bedroom has a bed for my wife and I, a bed for my now 3 year old and a crib for my now 18 month old. Now we have a bassinet waiting for the new one to come. As kids do they always get sick and require doctor visits and medications not to mention the many medications my wife depends on, I am paying a lot of money in medical bills and do not qualify for Medicaid or any other assistance. My credit is now suffering worse than it was before so now I cannot get a construction loan to build the larger house we need so badly. We have about 30K in equity but cannot seem to get to it due to the house being so old and my poor credit. I am not sleeping much at night due to the kids in the same room plus worrying about making ends meet. I feel like I am still on thin ice at work because I cannot focus. I just don't know what to do. I feel things would get better if we could get into a larger home. We live in the country and love where we live (we learned this while we were living in the rental in the city for 6 months) and cannot imagine living any where else. What can I do here?

[summersun29]

I was going to say hello, Oh Crap, but realized that didn't sound to appropriate so I will just start by saying hello- in need of advice. Im so sorry to hear about your situation, and found myself saying "oh gosh, this poor guy" throughout reading your post. Depending on your financial situation and whether you are in debt, you may want to seek professional financial advice, even if its just speaking with your bank if you trust them. Buying a house is a very large expense but it does seem like you could use one. I think you should write in to Extreme Makeover-Home Edition... have you seen that show, if you haven't its about a group of people that gather hundreds of helpers to help out someone in need of a new home, and with your situation you sound like a perfect fit. As for the medical bills, a site you might want to check out is http://www.medicaldebtresources.com. As for the number of children you have, and the limited space, you probably want to make sure your wife goes on a preventative so you don't have to worry about having another unexpected child. You definitely have your hands full and I wish there was other ways I could help out, but unfortunately all I can offer is my advice. Keep me posted on your story. I hope your wife's treatments and medications help her to become healthy again. Best of luck to you and your family.

[oh-crap]

Thank you for your reply.
Yes the debt is getting worse... It seems the more I try to work the worse things get. But all I can do is try. I will check out the website you mentioned, thanks. We had family members put us in for Extreme Makeover last summer... That was a very difficult thing to go through, talking about our situation on camera and the interview process, nothing has come of this yet. But we have to learn to swallow our pride. Through the years I have always been able to fix any situations that arrise... I feel that I cannot fix this one and we are on a sinking ship. It seems that there are no programs that help the middle class until we slip to ruin. Oh and you mentioned birth control... That is the first thing on our list for Januaray 06, I am going in to get fixed. We were going to do this after the last child but got side tracked with the cancer.
On an up-note. On the 27th (Tuesday) we had our little girl. All is well.

Thanks Again,
Oh-Crap

[summersun29]

Well congratulations with your little girl, what a blessed holiday season, I hope she is healthy and brings your family nothing but love. Financially, have you considered calling someone for help, a counselor or such? And Ill keep my fingers crossed that extreme makeover home edition comes and finds you.