Hi, it’s me Rick, and I am reaching out for help. And this is where I tell my story.

January of 2023: my mother passes from Parkinson’s related causes. She was able to leave me a very little bit of money. I am not good at money , I freely admit that. So the first I did was ask Edward Jones if they could help me in managing it, they said the amount was too small. I made inquiries through my church, same reply from the firms I talked to “we don’t handle amounts that small.” I did a pretty good job for 8 months in handling that money.

September of 2023: on a beautiful Friday morning , I woke up and walked out to my car and it wasn’t there, a small pile of glass. My Mother in her Grace had gotten me great car insurance. I called the police and my insurance and the insurance company said “we got you covered for a rental, we work with X company.” I called them and they had no cars for 2 to 3 weeks. I called the insurance back and they said call around, we will work with whatever you find. Topeka is a small town and there were no cars available for several weeks. I panicked , called an uber and bought a car that I could not afford .

the car is still underwater financially . I have looked into voluntary repossession, but that still leaves you with a lot to pay, I am stuck with it .

Suddenly started spending money foolishly, in great pain I watched 5 digits become 4 digits, then 3 then 2 and finally a close of the savings account I had opened at a credit union.

I began to get high interest pay day loans to pay rent, car and the automatic withdraws consumed my paychecks. I was smart to see the problem and seek out answers. The most manageable one seemed to be a debt consolidation company. They taught me I could revoke ACH and they would work with the loan companies to reach good settlements. I pay $130 a paycheck to them and the money builds up. They quickly paid a couple of them at a greatly reduced amount, and on a different timeline that I could have ever arranged. They also offer legal representation if someone sues you.

How it works is they totaled up my debts (~14k) and negotiate with the credit lending companies. If once they are done , money is left over, I get control of a savings account to do what I want. They took a $1200 debt and negotiated it down to a much smaller amount. It works if you keep after them. We will talk about medical bills in a second, I think if get through that everything will be ok …

There was a nagging medical bill and this was led me to a weekend stay in a mental hospital. Place a book mark and we will get back to this point.

Medical Bills :

My Hospital bills go like this, they send a pay arrangement and if you don’t agree to it in 5 minutes, they send it to a collection agency ,( Revenue Enterprises). This goes back several years, I was paying them a set amount for 6 months and the. They tried to collect the whole thing but settled on another thing for 6 months . And finally sent some of the debt to an attorney. I was feeling outwhelmed by this point in the spring of this year 2025.

The arrangement with the attorney didn’t work out and I found a summons taped to my door. The first one went for an anesthesia bill and too little to covered by the debt consolation (Gitmeid). I got a Letter saying my wages would be garnished, it was and the month of June was tough.

All of the summons taped to my door , the car and car insurance under threat all led to a stay in a mental hospital for a weekend. I had just turned a milestone age and Mother day was earlier in the week . The week before I went I started looking into resources online just trying to see if there is any help I could get because I feel like I was starting to crack up. I was feeling a ton of stress and anxiety , nothing was going right .

At 6:30 in the morning, I made a decision to drive to Valeo and check myself in. Walking right up to the door and saying “ I need help” .

The suggestion was made that my insurance was good enough to go to a mental hospital . I had a previously scheduled appointment with my therapist and I said I will do what she says. I think about halfway through that appointment. She didn’t think I should go to the mental hospital, but by the end of that hour, she said, I think you should go. I with a few people know what was going on and by that evening I was there. I stayed for two or three days and was released, hoping for positives from outpatient services, which I will talk about at the end of my story.

I got a second notice taped to my door. This was an amount Gitmeid would work with, the legal representation kicked in and they would represent me in court. To this point, it’s included nothing but continuances. An offer has also been made to pay $2698 , you would a month to gather the money and pay to Gitmeid who would handle the settlement. It’s too much on my own, maybe if stretch out the time line it could still be rough, but doable . They won’t budge.

Revenue Enterprises has other medical bills of mine that they could send to the collection agency at any time. We will edit in the actual amount but

What I need, in order of need :

1. pay off Revenue Enterprises, no more bills and monthly calls .As of September 2 that amount is $4130.80. At any time, they could hand this over to collection and another law suit.

2. anything beyond that goes would go to Gitmeid to work on the bills. The amount the use goes down as more settlements are made.

3. I need to end the cycle of the loans. If only the bank would give me a loan , but they won’t it’s my fault.

dreaming:

5. is $1,500 possible ? A rain day fund would be a dream .

Finally

My church is helping with some things and aren’t with others . some bills as needed and the help me get out of the hole and get current on a lot of bills. I am grateful for what they do, burden by what they don’t

When I made a Facebook post that I had spent time in a mental hospital, several people reached out to me. They’ve all been important in their ways in terms of somebody to listen to me , finding friends to go to movies occasionally with me. An emergency “don’t worry about paying me back “ friend helping to get my car insurance current . Friends checking in on me , coffee occasionally. There’s been a lot of help…. You always hate to reach out to people in terms of money yet here I am.

The outpatient services involved sending me a lot of handouts about services, someone did the work that I was too scatterbrained to do. Also learning a lot of mental illness is just hopefully temporarily losing critical thinking skills. I think I can come back. I see signs that it could. But they were doing the research for me and saying hey here you can go do this.

I am committed that if I reach a dark spot again, I will return to the mental hospital. My work was supportive, new level of friendship stepped up for me. I am shy by nature and it’s hard for me ask for me.

I’m hopeful that setting include goals will help we can figure this out when I get out of this situation and have some amount of mental health restored.