This is going to be long but, I'm just starting to feel better about my situation. Okay so in May Shane lost his job. That was the scariest experience for a 25 year old who just moved to Ohio without family to lean on. We decided right then we need to figure a way out of this mess. This is what we did. We figured out the have to pay bills and the total was 1584. That just really sucked. We only had about 3k (that was savings, Shane's last pay, and his vacation pay).
I called my mil and she just said come back home. So we thought about that and decided okay. Then I called my sister to see if I could get a job. She said yeah. So we went to the landlord and said Shane was let go and what do we need to do to get out of the lease. They told us it would cost us 2025 to get out. We just couldn't afford that at all. So we came back with the answer of okay do you want some money or no money? Shane wanted to just pack and leave, but I didn't want that to go on our credit so we offered to pay half of that. And they said okay. Then we packed all our belongings and moved back to ga. The total cost to move back home was 1600 (uhual, gas, breaking lease).
So that took half our money. We drove through the night and arrived about 430am. We went to mil home to stay till we figured things out. That next morning I had a job interview with my sis at 1030. I got the job and started working 2 days later. Next Shane and I sat down to figure out our mess. Our new total have to pay was 695 including gas and food. which is about 65% less then ohio. My total take home income was going to be about 800 (part time work), which clearly isn't enough to move out. So while Shane was doing side jobs and looking for a job I was only saving out 300 a month to move out.
He never found a job, but instead decided to go to college. The mgi bill would pay for his tuition and living expenses for the zip code that the school was at. That totaled up to be 1064. So he started school in October. That would now make our total take home 1500 (hours cut b/c of business or it would have been more). That was about the amount we were making before ohio, which was around december of last year.
That is where we are it took us about 5-6 months to get back on track. We learned alot through this. It's been 6 months since we bought anything besides food and then that was need only. I'm learning how to deal with no money. I learned how to say no to my son about toys, how to say no because it's not in our budget. I learned how to support my husband with him getting down in the dumps about me just working. I now really love my mil. She is giving us a place to stay so we can get ahead and not lose hope. I also learned to stay on a tight budget. There we a couple of times when I freaked out and thought we wouldn't make it. I didn't put us in more debt though. I could only pay 10.00 more in the cc besides the interest but atleast it was something. I didn't not pay the car payment. And some how I was able to save 3.59 in savings (I know not that much but it's a start). We also have a half a jar saved for chuckie cheese.
I feel really poor right now but I appreciate the important things like food, a way to work, and shelter.
jess
