A little help for the Fergus Flemings

I’m creating this fundraiser for our little family, sometimes known as The Fergus Flemings, because we are in the middle of a financial crisis. We desperately wanted to fix it ourselves, but we’re faced with the fact that we cannot.

Over a year and a half ago now, we made some changes professionally that were necessary and healing. Most of you know that was when Ry went back to working full time after being stay-at-home-dad and PCA for Teddy, and I was able to quit my teaching job to work remotely on editing and then tutoring. Things didn’t pan out for my jobs as well as we hoped, but Ry continues to succeed and surpass expectations at work, and I took up the mantle as PCA. This should be enough. We wish it was enough. We know it’s not and have plans to do more.

But right now, we are underwater. Not literally. But we are stuck, upside-down, downtrodden, trying to make it every day for our boys. They are clothed and fed and clean and warm, but they deserve more. They deserve parents with a bit less stress who have energy because they aren’t worried that the next bill will be the last straw.

How did we get here? Besides the everyday stuff everyone is experiencing, such as raised prices of basically everything, it’s a bad combo of things that took us by surprise. For a long time, we were able to use our Subaru for everything, because Ry was able to get picked up for work so I could use it to take Teddy to therapy appointments at the hospital three times a week and to drive him and Francis to school (Francis has to be driven because the appointments coincided with our bus pick-up time). However, last fall it became clear that we needed a second vehicle; when Ry needed to start driving out of town every day for work, Teddy missed almost three weeks of therapy appointments. We finally bought my Escape in late fall.

We had our first payment for the Escape in December, right before Christmas. We were still doing ok, but then my job had a three-week break due to projected lack of demand for our tutoring services. I currently only get scheduled four hours a week, but even missing those paychecks when the middle of January came around was tough, because then we had our next car payment scheduled, not to mention the increase in insurance. We ended up behind on various bills, and we were fully expecting to continue our decade-long practice of using our tax refund for a small windfall, either for necessities or for fun.

But you see, because Ry is doing so well at work, and because I have various side gigs and coached Speech last season, we had a surprise when I filed our taxes. We’re not getting a refund. (Ok, we got a very small one, but we still have to pay in to Minnesota.) We make more money than we did a year and a half ago, but that means almost all of our assistance–specifically Teddy’s SSI and a meaningful tax refund–disappeared.

We probably should have predicted this. We know better for next year, for sure. And we both have plans to supplement our current income even more so we can continue to pay for the necessary second vehicle. Whatever I bring to the table needs to be remote/from home because of Teddy’s disability; I can’t just go get a job at Walmart. I trust I’ll find something that pays better than my current job, but it takes time. We have an immediate need to get out from underwater before we can even think about carrying out those plans. It’s difficult to work harder when you’re feeling this low.

Literally any amount we raise will help. But I’ve chosen this specific goal here to help us catch up and stay ahead for the rest of the month. Any money raised will be placed into a bank account used to pay bills. Any “extra” money beyond bills will help us breathe.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Steph & Ryland

Francis & Teddy