Help with bills post car-accident (if you can)

UPDATE (November 2023): Was just in a car wreck. I'm relieved to say it was pretty minor for me physically, but it was very severe for my car, which I'm sure is totaled, not to mention I have no idea how much work I might miss. Anything helps.

UPDATE (October 2023): In June, I was out of work for a month due to an unidentified health condition, and ever since then I've been struggling to get back on my feet. I have enough to survive, but I'd like to get a little bit ahead of the monthly expenses again, especially because I have a job opportunity that I'm hoping will come back around in January 2024. I was close to being hired in September; and if I can land it, it would genuinely change my life...but I've got to make it there first.

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If you're seeing this page, you probably know who I am already. In 2019 going into 2020, I had a stable job for six years, heading into my seventh, and I felt pretty stable financially. Then a bunch of things happened. First, the pandemic and a transition into work from home. Secondly, I had some health scares that ended with a diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. On a day-to-day basis, this is not a severe disease (I just saw a movie where a character had this and dropped dead out of nowhere, which was pretty funny), but I did have to check myself into the hospital two or three times, plus a couple of emergency room visits as the whole experience really heightened my hypochondria (which already centered around my heart). It also comes with quite a few medications and significant dietary changes.

Finally, in July 2021, after over a year of WFH caused management changes and an increasing distance between myself and all the other team members, I was unceremoniously fired by a manager I'd never met. The guy I was working under was thrilled with my work, and I'd even set up a meeting with this other manager, who was new, to talk about what he expected of me. He canceled this meeting and made sure he was on vacation and unreachable the day he had someone else fire me. When I was canned, I was the longest-tenured member of the contractor I worked for.

I got a job at Alaska Airlines in September 2021. I was nervous about COVID, but things seemed to be trending in the right direction. It was a very good job, and I liked doing it, even if the scheduling system was like a medieval torture method, mainly because it involved a lot of exercise. However, I had read that heart conditions like mine could have serious side effects if I were to get COVID. In January, shortly after we canceled 15 flights in one day and hundreds of people slept at the airport for three days in a row while reports of Omicron ran wild, I went on medical leave. The stories of staff walkouts and mass infections after mask mandates disappeared made me feel like I made the right choice.

Between January and July 2022, I was out of work. Benefits helped me out, but at one point, I pulled out the measly amount of money in my 401k and used it to pay bills. I was just about out of money when I got a new job. The job itself is excellent -- 5 minutes from home, easy work -- but somehow, despite offering a higher hourly rate than my old job, I am making anywhere from $200 to $500 less every two weeks than I was making at the contractor. As a result, I'm finding it much harder than expected to pay off my debts and pay for groceries and rent.

I am wary about asking for money. I have a job, and I can make this work even if it means my bank account is empty every week on the day before payday. I also sometimes indulge in various collecting habits, although I've cut back on that. As such, I have set this ask lower than all of my debts -- just enough to give me a comfortable head start on them. As of now, I'd be struggling to make ends meet until May 2023; this amount of money could help me shorten that to something like the end of the year (if I work hard enough). If you can't afford to help me out, I fully understand. Still, I've been stressed about money for the past couple of weeks, and hopefully, this can give me a tiny bit of relief without just passing the burden directly onto other people.