My family is absolutely drowning in a sea of debt, and I hope that you will consider reading our story to better understand what has happened and is happening. Thank you for your time, we appreciate you!

My husband and I got married very young, and became financially responsible for our schooling. We were poorly advised to "charge school expenses for the points!" We should never have done that, but regardless, we both pursued undergraduate and graduate degrees. Eventually we added in a small car debt, and a few small things here and there. Nothing that we weren't able to manage or work towards paying off. Which is what we did early in our marriage - we made a point to always pay off a little more than the minimum payments. We were making slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

But like so many, the pandemic unfortunately brought us extreme financial hardship. My husband's company cut his salary by 50% for almost 2 years, and then our baby spent several weeks in the NICU when first born for a heart condition. Financially speaking, these events devastated us.

We quickly spent through our very small emergency funds, found things that we could sell, and we began using our credit cards for basic need purchases - diapers, groceries, gas, etc. . .to cover the extreme loss in salary and to utilize our diminished cash flow for the overwhelming amount of bills that we had to pay.

We've worked very hard to cut our expenses, and we've done what we can to try and stay afloat - donating plasma, working online positions at night when our children are sleeping, trying to sell digital products, moving, and even selling t-shirts at a roadside stand.

We desperately want to correct our financial situation, and we have been striving to do it on our own. But in the last year, the minimums on our credit cards have become so high that we needed to take out a loan to just pay our monthly bills. And then we eventually needed to take out another loan to help make payments on the first loan. Everything has gotten out of control very quickly.

Most mornings I wake up with a pit in my stomach and tears in my eyes - how will we pay our bills, buy groceries, afford diapers, etc. . .Questions that I never imagined I would be asking myself. So we are asking for your help. Help from a stranger to help us get back on track, pay off our debts, and give us a second chance at life. Thank you!