Starting life over at 43 has not been easy. After getting a divorce a year ago, I moved back to my hometown of Whittier California to be closer to my family. Unfortunately, getting my footing down here has been harder than expected. For 3 months I was unemployed and living off of my credit cards. Thankfully for the past 6 months I am now working full time for construction company and slowly bouncing back. Even with my 40 hour a week job, money is tight with very little wiggle room for anything outside of bills, rent and food. As I look for better paying jobs I am basically told the same thing, that my years of experience working in education in Washington doesn't mean a whole lot in California unless I get recertified. This means taking some night courses in order to be a credible candidate. I am just looking for some help covering cost of going back to school so that I can get better a paying job and make a real go of this next chapter instead of just scraping by.