This journey began for us back in 2006.   We'd worked hard to build a good credit history, were never late on payments and always paid more than minium. We own our own home ( and are within three years of paying it off)  and we've been fortunate we've always been able to buy our older, used cars outright so we owe nothing on them. We were both gainfully employed and we believed we were finally climbing from the ranks of working class to middle class. Our dream of doing better than just surviving was coming true.

And then my husband's factory began sending half their work to Mexico and India.  And the people at the local factory began losing hours and raises were fewer and further between. They assured all the employees that it was just a slump and asked them to hang with them.  As there wasn't any other game in town that paid as well as the factory was, we didn't feel like we had much choice. So we wiped out our meager savings waiting for things to get better.

They didn't.

Gas prices went up, the boys (pictured above) weren't eating any less. Cars broke down, a hot water heater failed, medical bills came, groceries went up, the boys needed clothes. We began to do the unthinkable; we started using our credit cards heavily.

Fast forward to the summer of 07. We were up to our eyeballs in debt and the factory laid off their employees for up to  a week at a time and often only working them thirty hours some weeks.  I'd made every credit card payment, resorting to an amazing juggling act that would have wowed even the US government to keep bill paid and everybody happy.  I had more balls in the air than I did the coordination to keep them there and in June I had to confess to my husband that I couldn't do it anymore.  I had to stop paying creditors in order to just keep us fed.  I called them and warned them it was coming and was met with (what I guess is understandable) indifference. No one would even offer us a hardship program until we were past ninety-days. Some didn't even offer that.

In August my husband found another job that meant a lot more money in the long run, but the first six months were subsistence only which meant we fell even further behind.  His schedule is erratic and he drives over an hour back and forth to work.

I quit work and we sold the second car.  In a very strange way, my lack of income is a blessing. I'm able to pinch a lot of pennies I couldn't while working. I garden, shop the thrift stores, only drive when I have to, and am able to make sure the boys have an ever present parent. However, I'll probably go back to substitute teaching this fall as it's local and gives me the option working around my husband's schedule.

We're in credit counseling--making payments faithfully through an agency, but with the increase in gas prices and groceries and a couple of seriously greedy creditors, we're struggling to make the payments and I'm truly afraid that if we can't do this, we'll be thinking about the unthinkable and filing bankruptcy which means possibly losing our very modest little home.  I gotta tell you, this one keeps me awake  nights.     

I am frustrated, frightened, and angry. It's no one's fault but ours that we owe what we owe, but the current state of the economy is swallowing us and those like us whole. Meanwhile both the state and federal governments are so caught up in pointing fingers, bickering, and lining their own pockets, that they're useless to us.  The credit  and banking industry needs to be policed and controlled,  the big oil companies need to be forced into some kind of action (posting record proftits in this current climate  was probably not their wisest move),  we are in desperate need of healthcare reform.

No one wants to use the words Depression, but they'd better dust it off and roll it around in their mouths until it rolls off their tongues. 'Cause folks, we're well past a recession.