Last Month was Rough – No water, electricity, phone

by Hope

I had fully intended to return to writing regularly here last month, but the hits just kept coming. And I could not focus to save my life. (Not to mention, the sense of shame and loss are pretty overwhelming at times.)

Last month (August) is the month that I…

• Almost had my water and electricity turned off because I couldn’t pay the bills
• Did have our phones turned off because I couldn’t pay the bill
• Got a cancellation notice from our auto insurance because I couldn’t pay the bill
• Got a “if you don’t catch up now we will go to collections” notice from my mortgage company

I will stop there. You can see the trend.

Keeping things afloat on just at $2,000 per month is not going well. Even at our darkest, it has never been this dark. (I am SO GRATEFUL that the kids are grown and mostly gone. That does take a great deal of pressure off.)

I had to break down and ask for help. I didn’t see a way around it at all.

Thankfully, I am hoping, that I will only have to pay back 1/2 of the debt I incurred. The other half may be a prepayment for a new website my brother has been asking me to do for a couple of years. He might be ready and the money I borrowed from him would cover most of that project.

And I am by no means, out of the woods, I have really just bought myself a month of peace. I will be back in the same boat if I don’t get some more income in the next 6-ish weeks.

So I owe you a new debt update. It is gnarly to say the least (I kind of like that word for some reason). And I’ve put it off because I am so ashamed that I am back in this place AGAIN.

That will be forthcoming. I’m just thickening my skin a bit for the onslaught of criticism, even though it is deserved on some fronts.

But the good news is:

1. I have already let my dad know that I will not be traveling at all for the holidays. (We typically go to Texas every Thanksgiving.)
2. I have had a recent up-tick in contract work. I’m not going to say it’s promising yet, but it is something.
3. And I just have to worry about me now. That’s a big difference than the last time things were almost this bad and I had 4 school age children I was single-handedly supporting.

Hope is a digital marketing manager and foster/adoptive single mom to five kids. She has run her own consulting company for over 15 years and took a leap of faith returning to the corporate world in 2021 to a job and team she loves! Hope began sharing her journey with the BAD community in the Spring of 2015 and feels like she has finally mastered the balance between family first and wise financial decisions.