Recession Repossession

I was raised in an upper middle class family.  I worked all my life and supported myself until I got married in my late thirties.  I raised my husband’s kids and lived within our means.  No, we weren’t extravagant spenders.  I shopped at discount stores, never at high priced department stores.  We rarely went out to eat, or did much of anything costly.  It was my husband’s good will and generosity that got us in to a bit of trouble, but that stopped two years ago, when his business started to slow down. The recession started to really hit us about a year ago.

After all was said and done… we are now broke, creditors are calling off the hook, my house has been in and out of the beginnings of foreclosure, we lost our health insurance, my step son’s car was repossessed and we’re living a nightmare…

This wasn’t supposed to happen.  We lived frugally for the most part.  We are just regular people.

My husband is self employed; paid by commissions.  If he doesn’t close a deal, he doesn’t get paid.  If his clients don’t have business, or have cut backs in business, my husband doesn’t get paid.  He has been in his business for over 30 years and he’s good at it.  When he first got into it, he was making pretty good money.  This was, of course, before he had any real responsibilities.  His ex got the benefits of that.  She got the “stuff;” the vacations, the maids and nannies, the jewelry etc… the babies.   As soon as we married thirteen years ago, the kids were then my responsibility, rarely hers.  So, I became a stay at home step-mom. 

It’s been six months since my husband has closed a deal.  I have been sending out resumes, trying to go back to work, but it seems either my age, or the fact that I’ve been out of the job market for a while, no one is interested in me.  I design product on an Internet website and make a bit of money from that; enough to feed my family every month, but that’s pretty much all it covers.  I shop at the Dollar Store and the 99 cent store for groceries.  I buy generic everything; even tampons and live mostly on pasta and hot dogs, these days.  Every dollar counts.  I remember going to these stores when I could still afford Target and Wal-Mart, buying a bunch of cheap stuff I don’t need thinking, ”Oh, it’s only a dollar, etc.”  Now, every dollar counts.  I could buy a bunch of bananas, or a carton of eggs; food to feed my family with that dollar.  Not another spatula or plastic bowl I don’t need.