h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Richenda,

Hope you don't mind me dropping by. I am from the h2g2 survivors group. Also on limited disability payments. I also live in Scotland which is not much use to you either.

On a practical level...

As far as the utilities bills go, over here if you can come to some kind of minimal payment arrangement, rather than attempt to pay off a huge bill, then they are often satisfied that you are at least making regular payments. the alternative is they cut you off, take you to debt collectors and then court with all chance of getting money out of you as the courts will assess your financial situation and probably end up asking you to pay less than you would offer to pay originally.

If you can get someone to liase on your behalf - social worker or debt management advisor, then they are more likely to come to some arrangement that suits everybody.

I was unable to cope with anything and had a lovely man from the council advisory unit do a home visit (I have agorophobia) and sorted everything out for me, wrote the letters, hurried up the benefits, arranged payment plans for my debts etc. Couldn't have managed without him.
Keep photocopies of any letters you send to them as they will deny everything.

On a non-practical level...

I have my scenario 8 too. My darling cats are the only reason I keep going sometimes. They somehow seem to know when I need a bit of a purr and a cuddle. Sometimes there is nothing you can do to cope other than curling up with a pet and waiting to get some strength back.

I don't know much of your history/problems but it does sound as if you have so much to deal with.

One thing I have learnt is that there are caring and kind people on here, that will do their best to try and do what they can for you. Even if it is just to offer a listening ear and a virtual hug. And to let you know that even when you feel so terribly lonely, you are not alone.

Mort

Catholic and Jewish Charities are very activice around Chicago.
You by no means need to be a member of either religion to get one time help. They also have help with food and utilities.

How about any of your friends from the Faire activities?

Churchs may be able to give you possible roomate names too. I do not know how you feel about a pregnant young person but many need a short term place and charities help pay for their rent. These are long shots but possible.

My friend heere works for VOA - Volunteers of America (here) they have some extra services for people on SSI Nation wide. Most utilities will give you some room if you only call as Mort says. It is hard to call at these times but often well worth it.

I would not post on ask either
Do you know anybody in the NE researchers club here?

You have some promising looking advice here, Richenda. I can't add to it, although I can give you a virtual . I can remember what it was like dreading to wake up in the morning because of the way I was being treated by other people. I suspect that Danny leaving has eased the emotional pressure cooker, even though you have practical worries. Is there any help your family can give?

We had been on a payment plan with electric and was 2 days late with February payment so everything becomes due and payable by March 3...a grand total of $957! The gas company want approx. $560 (close enough) and I haven't even looked at the phone bill. I know we owe close to $1000 in long distance which is why we can't call anyone far. At least the local was a different carrier so we currently have local and can sign onto internet.

Family members have made it clear that there is no more help available.

More later...I need to leave for work in 10 minutes. sigh

THANKS FOR EVERYONE'S HELP.

Richenda, I might be able to lend a hand. Please send me an email at the address listed on my personal space (home) AND at the reply address at the email I've sent you (work).

NBY

I have contacted Jewish Family Services and they have a 4 - 6 month wait for an appointment. Put myself on the waiting list.

I have contacted Catholic Charities and have not heard back from them

NBY - I received your email. I will contact you tonight. Too hard to do from work.

THANKS ALL!



oh and they brought B's BiPap and it couldn't be adjusted slow enough . They are going to bring another machine to try tomorrow.

updates as they become available

well..I spoke with Catholic Charities and they turned us down flat...we make too much
Sigh

well...they did offer to send out a social worker to help us budget. I laughed and hung up.

*sigh*

Richenda,

I woke up thinking about you, and at the risk of teaching you to suck eggs, it occurred to me to ask if you've been in touch with the people you owe money to and explained the situation and made an offer of how you might be able to pay the money in stages. Your first priority will be shelter, so paying the rent/mortgage will be your first priority. There's a helpful link somewhere I'll go find.

http://www.fool.co.uk/debt/debt.htm?ref=leftnav should be a good start. Go through all the bits and see which you can make use of.

Zarquon,

It's been my duty to deal with our creditors so I'll respond here.

First of all, I personally know three different ways to suck eggs and I'm always happy to learn a new way.

Our creditors call regularly (some of them, daily). They would all be happy, if not ecstatic, to settle for a payment plan that keeps our money coming to them. They would gladly 'sacrifice' their owed interest, if we would pay them /something/ each month. If push came to shove, they would be happy to settle for three cents on the dollar.

Despite the behavior of some of them, they all understand that they were gambling when they advanced us credit. They really don't care why we can't pay because all they care about is recovering whatever they can on a bad gamble.

Our problem is simple and they all understand. We don't have any money to pay them. None at all. I've told them this and they believe me. They have even tried their best to advise me on how to find some way out. But, it still comes down to our not having any money and not having any reasonable prospect of getting more for some time to come.

Candy's pay covers our mortgage payment, our car payment, and enough food that we really aren't suffering there. My monthly disability check covers medicine and some of our utilities. If we had one roommate we could comfortably pay all utilities and eat a bit better. We still wouldn't have enough to pay anything to our creditors.

We're not irresponsible. We're just suddenly living on $50,000 less than we had been and our debts got out of hand while we struggled to recover from various medical expenses and the realization that things weren't going to get better because I wasn't going to.

The creditors understand this. They all have notes in their files that explain this. Still, the people who call are paid to call and now, mostly, simply ask if the situation has changed. The few that don't, I try to remain civil with and I usually manage to hang up politely.

We could declare banruptcy and clear all our debts. There are two options there. One forces the debtors to accept whatever worth we have in our property and allows us to pay them off that value over a five year period. They would get nearly full value and we would get to keep the house. Unfortunately, we can't afford to make the payments. The other option would force us to sell the house, pay the creditors the same money immediately and we would get either the legal minimum or whatever was left. However, given the current market value of our house, there is no need to declare bankruptcy since we could sell the house, pay our debts, and end up at essentially the same place financially as if we had gone through the bankruptcy proceedings.

The only problem then would be that we wouldn't have a house, couldn't afford to pay rent, and we couldn't provide a home for our pets. The last is not a trivial problem, particularly in a big city where renters call a big dog anything up to 50 pounds and have no provision for what must be thought to be 'giant' dogs like our small collies. Lord knows what the category is for the really large dogs.

So, right now, we get along, feeling like we are hanging by our finger tips when, in fact, we are quite comfortable except for the financial pressure of know that we owe much more than we can pay and fearing that the slightest change in our rather restrictive routine might be utterly disastrous.

It is clear, from talking to the various relief agencies, that while we feel overwhelmed, we are still doing far too well to expect help from them. I, for instance, must consider that I am expected to be able to sustain and shelter myself for the $1001 per month and the aid of food stamps that I might be entitled to if my wife didn't make so 'vast' a sum. And, to be fair, we could probably manage on those monies if we didn't already owe far more than that and if we could somehow find shelter for next to nothing or share housing costs with some roommates such that we could manage to pay our mortgage.

I know there are people with medical problems living on far less but I have to think that they have far more reason to live even though they are far more miserable than either of us. Such folk have my puzzled respect.

"To be or not to be? Whether 'tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them."

Nobler? Well, I suppose that honor is the basis of for our love of our pets and our sense of failure at not being able to pay our debts: keeping our word, facing our responsibilites.

I suspect that Richenda is unwilling to again find herself so reduced in 'nobility' that she must consider ending her life. I suspect that I am partially responsible for having given her that sort of sense of personal honor or, at least, having allowed her to find that kind of strength in herself.

I, on the other hand, don't feel that I have the need to take such a step. I don't feel that I have the right to take such a step. I don't feel that being a 'failure' or having 'lost control' is so remarkable an event as to justify suicide. I have told her that this is, to me, simply another time when I have found myself with the waste pipe rapidly filling my personal fish bowl.

I simply am too simple to lose hope and too unworthy of anything but brief moments of happiness such as we have had together.

Given those moments of pleasure, I am somewhat ashamed that I haven't a romantic bond that would require me to sit down in that sun baked oven with the person I love. I am not worthy.

But, more importantly, I am not done. There are still things that I must do. I only wish I knew what they were.

Everyone,

Thank you all for your kind thoughts and suggestions. We do consider and value them.

Barton

Barton,

It seems you've already covered the ground and so I was teaching you to suck eggs. I can see how tough things are at present. It's good that you're sounding positive - you obviously love Richenda and hopefully that will strengthen you both. I hope you find someone who will be a good and trustworthy tenant.

<>>

Yes. Oh yes, oh yes. How I know that feeling; Not asking for the earth, but simply to repay stuff we have HAD to borrow when we were in s**t last time.

Once that little sense of pride, of "just about coping" goes,

I felt like this not long ago, trying desperately to sell badges on the street, as the self-satisfied faces went by, i began to hate them. Not good. Poisons the system, destroys the "you" & makes it virtually impossible to clamber back up yet again.

Loans don't work, it's one more black cloud of guilt. Gifts do, which is charity in its real form. Best of all is being able to earn it yourself, but sadly for some of us, this is not an option now, in the traditional sense of "going out to work" & even doing stuff via the internet raises problems which ONLY money can solve.

*wanders off to dream of a computer which isn't dying etc*

personal priorities for me were:
Yoda
communication (phone, internet)
home (luckily at that time paid)
keeping body temperature relatively stable
addiction to cigarettes

--all the rest is luxury in this situation.

I can only help by trying to contact others who may be able to help more, this I have done, but believe me, I am thinking of you.



Terri

As I've said, I enjoy learning new methods of sucking eggs. I was just laying out what we have done so that some one of you might see something that we have missed.

If what I said sounded like some Granny complaining that these young folk don't understand that what seems new to them has already been tried and improved on then it was only because I have been telling everyone the same things over and over again till the story is pretty much polished.

That isn't to suggest that there haven't been plenty of times when someone asked if we had tried X and we hadn't. We tried it. It either helped or it didn't. Neither of us has quit yet. Neither of us has lost all the will to try.

It's just that one of us is a 'glass half full' person and the other is a 'glass half empty' person. I'll be filed and cross indexed if I can figure out which one is optimistic and the other is pessimistic. Doesn't that depend on what's in the glass and what has to be done with it?

Keep tossing and I'll keep batting. One of you may have a wicked googly and the world will suddenly be a far better place.

Which leads me to ask why anyone would want to waste perfectly good cream by floating their skittles in it and doesn't that cream really make the skittles board all sticky. That would be frivolous, though, so I won't ask either question.

Barton

As for you and your little cat, too.



(I bet that made her blush, she's so /terribly/ British, doncha know?)

Barton

Actually, she's French by birth & Siamese by origin, so she can take thes things pretty well in her stride! (currently spreadeagled on mummy's lap, back leg obliterating the spcae bar)

It is good you are open to suggestions.
I am sorry nothing new has come up yet for you.

I hope that Richenda is doing a bit better.
I agree this is not worth dying for but it sure makes you suffer.
Keep up the fight and hang on tight Barton!

Hi all,

For the moment, doing much better with a little (ok a LOT of) help from my friends .

Interesting to see the original post on this thread has been 'remove'. More interesting that H2 never notified me. And more interesting still is seeing that the timing is coincidental with .
(Oops, don't want to get moderated again)

I remember a time when an italic told me they looked out for desperate people and suicide notes, so that they could try to help. Now they just moderate them.

A plea for help, absolute desperation and telling everyone you have brain tumours, and they moderate it.

What is happening to this place? I can't believe they did that to you Richenda.

Who's to say it was an Italic that moderated it? And not all text referred for moderation are upheld. If you don't get an e-mail explaining why it was moderated, one of os (I could do it) can point it up with the italics. And those who are in the thread know what it said anyway, so it did it's job.

Keep your spirits up.

Any relation Terri?

http://www.b3ta.com/features/yodakitty/

to all... s the Rolskys to within an inch of their deeply cherished lives.