Making Money Journal

Our first child arrived in 2001, 2 days prior to 9/11. When the maternity leave was over, my wife and I decided that she would stay at home and we would live off one salary until necessary. At that time, we had lived 6 months in our new home and had some money in saving to cover any needs. After a few months, she went to work part time. When I came home from the office she left to work for a few hours.

This situation worked for 3 years and while we were depleting our saving, we were still able to live credit card debt free. The only debt we added was a home equity loan to fix up up our kitchen. In 2005 our second child was on the way. This pregnancy was not easy on my wife and she did miss quite a bit of work. This was the time when we started to see our credit card balance start to carry over from month to month. The balances start small and have just steamed rolled.

The birth of our second child was not out of the ordinary, but 4 months into her life, we started to realize that she was missing milestones. By 6 months, the pediatricians started to worry and sent the little one for her first MRI, but it did not show anything. The initial worry that we had was that she was not looking at us or reacting to anything visually. Her hearing is fine, but the eyes were not working properly.

For the next 2 years, our little one has been through quite a bit, a second MRI, and ERG, spinal tap, muscle and skin biopsies, as well as a G-tube placement. Along the line, she has had more blood tests then I can keep track of. All this has found nothing so far, although our emotions have been all over the map. She does seem to be better visually, but not near “normal.” Also, she is not able to crawl, talk, walk or eat on her own. One thing thoug, is that she does receive quite a bit a therapy from the state. That is a plus!

Needless to say, this has been a strain on us emotionally and financially. The decision was made by my wife and I to concentrate on her diagnosis over our fiscal situation. My wife continues to work part time, but only about 10 hours per week. In the meantime the older daughter has been going to private school and has had the normal costs of a 6 year old. All you parents can understand the latter. This has meant a reliance on credit cards to make up for the shortfall within our budget.

In the next post, I will reveal where we stand financially and then later go over what steps we may take to get out of this situation.

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