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Blueberrybook
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Default Aug 17, 2018 at 05:16 PM
  #1
My husband teaches high school. He is paid enough that we do not qualify for financial aid, but we cannot afford the bills. I had a perforated ulcer on Valentine's Day, and our insurance is horrible and has a $7500 deductible. We negotiated with the medical places I owe money to. However, my mental health issues are bad. Every time I try to work, I nearly end up in a psych hospital with depression, anxiety & panic, so I don't bring in income. My retiring pdoc of 10 years told me after my last failed job attempt that she feels my condition is disabling enough that I should not attempt working outside the home if I want to be there for my daughter. My daughter is 10, and her pediatrician believes she has sensory processing disorder, and we can't get occupational therapy for that which she badly needs, especially in dealing with noise. Every time I try for aid, I am denied. Texas seems to be an especially harsh and hard state to get any sort of aid or advocacy. We cannot make the mortgage on my husband's salary. When we bought our house, he had a good job at NASA but as the government kept cutting funding for NASA, he was downsized and downsized and downsized out. He worked for 2 startup companies that failed. He has a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from a Nobel Prize winner (Rick Smalley, deceased) and can't find work. No one told him when he got his Ph.D. at Rice University that he should major in chemical engineering as that is what the chemical plants around Houston want. Instead, his degree is in Physical Chemistry. He said it would have been a small alteration of classes to get a degree in chemical engineering, but he thought having a Ph.D. from a Nobel Prize winner would be enough. It wasn't. He has no first author publications, and that is everything in getting a university job.

I'm on a ton of medication. We can't pay our bills. I can't work. We have nowhere to turn.

I go to the pdoc and am told that in the interest of my mental health it's best not to work. I paid $80 to hear that (because of my husband's high insurance deductible, we must pay $7500 out off pocket, full cost for everything before the insurance pays and then when they pay $2500 of the $7500 deductible must be under your name, each family member has to reach $2500 before the insurance will pay for them. And I leave with a boatload of prescriptions. Not to mention, my husband is on thyroid & cholesterol medication. My daughter inherited my poor vision, and glasses for each of us cost $500 or more.

We don't live a fancy life. Our house was built in 1964, is around 1400 sq ft. We drive old vehicles, a 1995 model and a 2007 model (needing constant car repairs). We have big bills any time the air conditioning breaks. It sounds as if our refrigerator wants to go out next. We get heaped with nothing but bad news, and I feel like I put us in this situation with my stupid mental health problems. If I could just hold a job without nearly having to go IP every time. Ugh!

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Bipolar 1, PTSD, anorexia, panic disorder, ADHD

Seroquel, Cymbalta, , propanolol, buspirone, Trazodone, gabapentin, omeperazole

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
--Robert Frost
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Default Aug 17, 2018 at 07:09 PM
  #2
Have you thought about relocating somewhere where your husband can utilize his degree? He could get a better paying job possibly in another state.

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Blueberrybook
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Default Aug 17, 2018 at 08:21 PM
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He has tried and tried and tried to find other work. No luck. I am talking for a period of years. He was basically told in June this summer, don't worry, his dream job of university teaching as a visiting professor (with the possibility of it becoming permanent) would be his this fall, and then the entire department re-organized, the job never materialized. Things like that keep happening to him again and again and again. I don't understand it. He is so smart, I'd go so far as to say brilliant even though he is not ruthless, pushy, charismatic, bombastic. He is getting very depressed about everything. One day he came home this week, and said, "I think I'm done. I'm just done." and crying;he couldn't even hide it from our daughter (who was naturally upset at seeing him so low). That is the first time I've seen him so low since I've known him (2002) other than the time he needed back surgery in 2009 and was in so much pain he couldn't even pick up our daughter. There is not a point in relocating if he doesn't have a job waiting there for him.

My family is here and no one has the financial means to help us. His father & sister live in California (LA area). His mom died at the end of last December, and he & his sister had a feud over who should move in with his dad and take care of him, and his sister basically won the battle because she'd been living there the last month while his mom was on hospice. But his sister & her husband have a house with a 2nd mortgage on it (it had been paid off), completely empty, not selling, not renting, just have there stuff there and are leaving it there, spend money all the time going on pricy vacations, out to hunt opal or to Vegas. They spent a fortune giving chiropractic treatments to a horse his sister bought even though the vet said the best thing to do was to put the horse down, and the horse ended up dying anyway. His sister has mental health issues but has been able to hold down a job. I nearly end up in the psych hospital every time I tried.

Sure, he may still have friends from childhood living out in California, but the cost of living is sky-high there. We can't afford to move there.

__________________
Bipolar 1, PTSD, anorexia, panic disorder, ADHD

Seroquel, Cymbalta, , propanolol, buspirone, Trazodone, gabapentin, omeperazole

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
--Robert Frost

Last edited by Blueberrybook; Aug 17, 2018 at 08:35 PM..
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Default Sep 17, 2018 at 09:44 AM
  #4
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blueberrybook View Post
He has tried and tried and tried to find other work. No luck. I am talking for a period of years. He was basically told in June this summer, don't worry, his dream job of university teaching as a visiting professor (with the possibility of it becoming permanent) would be his this fall, and then the entire department re-organized, the job never materialized. Things like that keep happening to him again and again and again. I don't understand it. He is so smart, I'd go so far as to say brilliant even though he is not ruthless, pushy, charismatic, bombastic. He is getting very depressed about everything. One day he came home this week, and said, "I think I'm done. I'm just done." and crying;he couldn't even hide it from our daughter (who was naturally upset at seeing him so low). That is the first time I've seen him so low since I've known him (2002) other than the time he needed back surgery in 2009 and was in so much pain he couldn't even pick up our daughter. There is not a point in relocating if he doesn't have a job waiting there for him.

My family is here and no one has the financial means to help us. His father & sister live in California (LA area). His mom died at the end of last December, and he & his sister had a feud over who should move in with his dad and take care of him, and his sister basically won the battle because she'd been living there the last month while his mom was on hospice. But his sister & her husband have a house with a 2nd mortgage on it (it had been paid off), completely empty, not selling, not renting, just have there stuff there and are leaving it there, spend money all the time going on pricy vacations, out to hunt
opal or to Vegas. They spent a fortune giving chiropractic treatments to a horse his sister bought even though the vet said the best thing to do was to put the horse down, and the horse ended up dying anyway. His sister has mental health issues but has been able to hold down a job. I nearly end up in the psych hospital every time I tried.
Sure, he may still have friends from childhood living out in California, but the cost of living is sky-high there. We can't afford to move there.
—get your temporary, then have your ap in for long term disability. The feds usually but not always deny the first time.That will give you some breathing space. Do you have an extra room in your house? It would take you some time to get your mind around this, but you can get a roommate on roommates.com. I did that to finance my grad school. Of course it would be better if your sister let you live in the empty house. Can you do some barter deal w her like mucking out horse stalls or something cleaner? There’s a lot of work on a farm.
Everything will be ok. I know it sounds like ******** now, pun intended, but you two are very smart and not everyone is. He will have the summer off to strategize more, get a summer job that may give him new ideas about a possible career change. He has to be on LinkedIn. You were a teacher, right, you know how hard it is (my h was an algebra teacher, I did elem and school libs w at risk kids). Wear the cheerleader hat even tho you r struggling yourself. Frankly I think u will be teaching again .IF UWANT THAT.
Now please, don’t fret if I got some details wrong or sister really won’t budge. You know that my main message is that that I know you two can do this. I know you can. It sucks right now, but w your brains and organizational skills, you can do this. It may be a long road, so hunker down and continue to defeat those problems one at a time. “IRemember..”, a member on this board posted a great list for dealing w mixed episodes. I think it was yesterday, Sunday, when he added that to an existing thread. You may have seen the thread by SkullandCrossbones on here. He has a doctorate but is sub teaching hs. S&C has some challenges that yr husband does not, but if hubby could find a forum of his own it might help him get thru this. I myself am really struggling with either making a really hard career change or hacking down the barriers while overqualified to do a work at home thing for less money. Can’t even decide so I lose my focus. Some family issues keep distracting me, hence the mixed episodes. Love you guys, all you guys. Such great info on this board!
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Default Oct 30, 2018 at 12:09 PM
  #5
Could you benefit from *extreme* financial planning?

I'm not talking about the kind that typical fin-planners or software set you up with (eg. balance your checkbooks, pay your cards off at the end of the month, etc.) - y'know, the common-sense stuff that doesn't really apply.

I'm talking about penny-pinching, lifehack-style tricks to keep things afloat while you work on your long-term situation.
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