Hi! I joined scholars 2 months ago because I felt stuck in all areas of my life. I have done a lot of good work but still am struggling with the consistency I feel I will need to get the most out of this program. I have a 1 year old and a 6 year old and a husband who works long hours and not reliable child care. I have had trouble finding time to do the work regularly and when I do get into a groove something changes with the kids schedule and I am thrown off. That’s not my question though, but it may relate?
One area of my life I have been unable to get unblocked is financial. I have been a stay at home mom for the past 6 years (not by choice my daughter had medical issues as a baby and she was considered too big of a liability to attend childcare so I had to unexpectedly quit my job). We have made it work although we have had to rely on credit to bridge the gaps, particularly during the two moves from PA to VA and back to PA again. We also have had the added stress of two of our closest family members dying from cancer in the last year (this is why we moved back to PA to try and be in the middle of these two family members). Prior to our daughter being born we had paid off all our non school loan/mortgage debt and saved 6 months worth of expenses. We used that savings to live off of and pay her medical bills during this time and accrued more commercial debt than we had before. Also during this time we unexpectedly got pregnant with my son and I developed a life threatening conditional that led to a prolonged hospital stay and unexpected medical expenses from that. On top of our commercial debt we have over 100K in student loans between us from our bachelors and masters degrees. What kills me most is that I didn’t even get to finish my degree. I got extremely sick with Lyme disease and had to drop out of school so 45K of my portion I don’t have anything to show for it.
Anyway, all of that as background to say I am stuck. I can’t get myself to even look at the finances. We have enough to pay our bills every month but I just can’t seem to find the time to do the bills (thankfully most come automatically but I for sure don’t have a handle on what is coming in and out). The kicker is that we have the skills to make this work (we have gone through Dave Ramsey’s course financial peace university which is how we paid off the debt last time). It causes stress in our marriage because the debt makes my husband feel like he is a bad provider and we haven’t been able to save for retirement since my daughter was born. I am not sure what my specific question even is at this point. I am stuck in a rut of sticking my head in the sand.