There was a time in my life with Moose, back towards the end of my pregnancy with Max, where we went through a period of financial desperation. I've spoken about that time period on here from time to time. I actually wrote about it as it was happening on here, as well. When I think back to those times, the stress we were under seems to magically disappear and in some ways, I see it as an almost magical time. A time where we pulled together and did what needed to be done in order to survive. A time where we bought each other a pair of socks for christmas at the Freddy's buy one get one free after-thanksgiving sock sale and where we lived on the cheapest coffee we could find, and never went out to dinner.
In short, I think I was romanticizing it in my mind.
I think I was doing exactly what happens to women after they give birth. They magically forget the pain they were in so that they can someday undertake the process, once more. It's the way in which the species manages to continue to propogate itself.
I am here to say, though, that there is truly nothing romantic about being poor. There's nothing magical about not being able to afford to get your hair cut, about worrying whether you've set aside enough money to make it to the next paycheck and still pay for milk and diapers and whatever else your children are going to need. There is nothing exciting and inspiring about being so far in the hole that all of your hard-earned credit begins to seize up on you, no matter how great a customer you've been in the past, no matter how long you have been a customer and no matter whether you are carrying a balance or not. Those fuckers will close an account on you, even if you owe them nothing, simply because you've been late too many times on a credit account with an entirely different company.
Believe me, it can happen. I just lost a completely unused $14,000 dollar limit credit card because there was a mixup when we moved and we missed a couple car payments, which we promptly rectified by robbing Peter to pay Paul, because....yanno... we are poor right now. Never mind that we had actually been months and months ahead on car payments before I forgot to change my address with them in November and we stopped getting statements.
It was a simple, though stupid and careless mistake.
On top of the loss of that big credit card, the remaining credit cards promptly dropped my limits to exactly what I owe. So.... yes, I have no available credit and we have plowed through whatever meager savings we had managed to cobble together despite all of Max's healthcare bills. We are constantly late on every single bill and by the time payday rolls around for me, I am lucky if there is a dollar in the bank.
I have cut just about everything I can possibly cut. We don't have cable/TV. I've cut our cell phone back as far as I possibly can, considering my husband uses it constantly for work. I make calls to people who are not also verizon customers from work or I have added them to a friends and family list so that I don't use any of those precious minutes. We don't have a landline. We buy nothing for ourselves. Ever. I spend less than 10 dollars a day on food and staples for a family of four. We have a plumbing issue going on in the house that we can't afford to fix and that we don't want to bother our landlord (and friend) with because we are close to two months in the hole rent-wise (that was the robbing peter to pay paul bit...)
We are getting ready to drop a baby and while my husband is at least employed, his employer can't seem to manage to get a paycheck out on time to him. As it stands right now, they owe him for 162 hours worth of work plus a second quarter bonus. This should not be difficult, should it? I mean... your employees work, fucking pay them on time for fuck's sake.
I am a walking ball of stress.
I worry constantly about money.
We need every last bit of that money owed just in order to get even. It won't put us ahead in any way, but I think it will actually bail us out of the yawning, gaping, deep, black hole we find ourselves in right now.
If only he would actually get paid... I can't believe he actually works in the labor movement, trying to help employees get what they deserve from their employers and yet his own employer treats him worse than I have ever seen anyone treated, ever in a professional position. Where's the justice in that, I ask you?
T
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