My family is in financial crisis! Medical surgeries have forced me to miss weeks of work, leaving all our accounts overdrawn and every bill overdue by at least 2 months, and some by 3 months. We were barely getting by before this, behind on every bill, getting Walmart gift cards from Afterpay to buy groceries, etc.

We have been trying to file for bankruptcy for months, but we haven’t been able to pay the lawyers and get our car payments caught up so that we don’t lose the cars when we file. We both work and have to drive our kids to and from school, so we need both cars. We lost our home of 8 years about 11 months ago. We couldn’t afford to do the repairs and pay the mortgage. As a result, we were forced to move into my mother’s recently vacated house.

If all of that wasn’t enough, my paycheck just started being garnished, taking 25% of my take-home pay. The 2 surgeries that have had me off work for almost 2 months was the final straw. If we can’t get money immediately, utilities will start being turned off and at least one of our 2 cars will be repossessed. This will cause one of us to lose our job, and we don’t know how we would get our kids to/from school. Their school is in the small town that we lived in that is now over 20 minutes away.

We qualify for bankruptcy but can’t afford the $2,500 filing fees and bills that are beyond overdue. Your donation covers legal costs, groceries, and utilities to keep our nose just above water while we try to get this bankruptcy filed. Every dollar counts—you don’t know what your donations would mean to us.

We are a family of 6, but the 2 oldest are over 18 and out on their own. So, it is just me (Joe), my wife Amber, our son Joe Jr., and our daughter Josie.