Hi, we're Becky and Cass, a queer married couple living in Illinois. We've been homeowners now for about seven years to an old 1900's home and live here with three parrots (1 conure and 2 budgies, one of whom was rescued after being found outside), four snakes, and two geckos.

We both started new jobs in 2023 and 2022 respectively after a rough pandemic where Cass' prior employer's company was dissolved. At the time, we made due and were able to keep the house due to deferment through our mortgage company because of the pandemic. In early 2023 after Becky settled into her new job we were doing well, with much of our debt paid off and a plan to get the remainder paid. Becky took a disbursement from her old job's 401k to do so, and we earmarked savings to account for what we knew was going to be a rough tax year ahead due to the distribution.

However, in October of this year we had to use the last remaining of our savings to replace the circulator pump for our house's boiler/radiator heating system and get trees trimmed that we weren't able to do before, which set us back close to $5,000.00. We'd also accrued credit card debt over the course of the year due to small emergencies/fixes, but were still staying above water month-to-month. We thought we'd be good to go for the winter at this point to at least get by well enough, though at this point we had zero savings left.

In December, in the week just before Christmas, our heat went out. A faulty electronic panel in the boiler had caused the new pump to overload and break. The pump itself was covered, but the fault also caused the fan and flue damper to go out and the panel itself also needed to be replaced. Boilers are not cheap to repair, but the cost to replace them is more than we could afford, and our trouble during 2020-2022 meant our credit wasn't good enough to qualify for any payment plans. I purchased a few bird-safe space heaters on a credit card to the tune of $140.00 to keep the animals safe as our house went down to almost 50 degrees. A $900.00 heating repair bill and three days later, everything was fixed.

Then in January just before the polar vortex that dropped wind chill down to -30+, our heat went out again. Another $400.00 later for an emergency call and they replaced the thermocouple. The previous repair had already caused us to expect to go negative to pay our monthly mortgage of $1280.00, so I reached out to our mortgage company for assistance. They gave us only until the end of the month, but there just isn't enough money coming in. We paid for one month, went negative almost the full amount of the mortgage, and are sinking.

We're currently behind a full month on our mortgage. Credit card bills have gone unpaid and over limit and at this point from December to Feb, we've accrued over half a grand in overdraft fees with more coming.

To make things even worse, Cass' job despite us claiming no deductions on her W-4 barely had deducted any federal taxes. This combined with the taxes owed for my 401k distribution means we owe close to $5,000.00 in taxes.

We're asking for at least enough to get back on our feet with bills, which involves paying the past due month on our mortgage of $1280 + late fees plus extra to get our credit card payments taken care of. Our plan right now is to go on a payment plan with the IRS to pay this year's federal taxes owed, but anything earned over our goal will go towards paying those debts down.

Anything is appreciated.