Dang, girl, you have me weeping over here. You remind me of my own mom, when she was working 3 jobs just to keep food on the table. I'll call her tonight and say thank you. Nice post... Milkmom, like MP$40 said, keep your head up, and all will be okay! {{{{{{{{milkmom}}}}}}}}
Milkmom, definitely look into the substitute teaching thing. I'm in WI too and you just need a BA to get a 3 year temp. license to be a sub. Here they pay $90 a day, more in the higher population areas. Hugs, thoughts, and prayers, from one milkmom of two to another
Also, are you on WIC? If not, check into it with your county health dept. Kids are eligible till age 5, and you as a nursing mother are eligible until your baby is 1. They give you checks for things like milk, juice, eggs, cereal, formula if you're not nursing, peanut butter, and some other stuff I can't think of right now. It would certainly help with the food situation and you definitely would qualify.
Your words are so powerful! Yes, I have received so much from everyone publically and privately and actually I am better now with the news of the bank account than when I first posted. I guess that I am upset because all of the building that I've done will be ruined so quickly. You are right about me being scared about losing everything. It's just that I came so close to clean credit and now it's slipping away. I know I can rebuild as soon as things get better but I have to keep reminding myself of that.
Ok, I will call the school board (I think that's right) and see how to go about getting one. What part of WI are you located? No, I don't know anything about WIC. I guess I will call around and see what their requirements are for participation. Thanks for the well wishes and advice.
Yes, call your school's administrative or district office (or even the office of any of the schools themselves would be able to tell you). They can give you the address and phone number in Madison you will contact to get the licensing information. I'm in western WI about 30 minutes from the Twin Cities. (edit) Oh, I found a link for you. http://www.dpi.state.wi.us/dpi/dlsis/tel/bssub.html For sure call the county health dept. about WIC. They will really help you out a lot. This link will tell you everything you need to know about the program and where to call. http://www.dhfs.state.wi.us/WIC/
Some more ideas... Milkmom, What about working for an answering service part-time in the evenings? Then hubby could have some time during the day to look for something better. Perhaps your local telephone company could use another customer service person...a nice one! Has your husband tried the local employment commision? When I lived in Texas, there was an office called the TEC (Texas Employment Commision) whose purpose was to find local jobs for people receiving unemployment. Does your state have an office like that? You might check into it to see if there's some kind of program that can produce real leads for your husband. Also, he might try auto sales. Some of the companies in my area have started advertising BASE PAY + commission, because they have had such a difficult time in the past recruiting new sales staff based on commission only. What about your church? If you belong to a church, perhaps you could see if they need some kind of help...say, working in the nursery on Sunday mornings. What about offering child care to four or five children in your home? Since you are a night owl, you could advertise to hospital workers, such as nurses, letting them know you can care for their kids overnight if need be. I know you need a short-term solution and all of my ideas here will take time to work through. I just don't know of anything for the short-term. LIFE can be so cruel sometimes. I have been in your position once. I know it could happen again at any given moment. If it does, I am substitute teaching, lol! Good luck Milkmom... Calmest_LA
Thanks for the info. I couldn't get the 2nd link to work but I am going to call around and see what I can find out on both angles. Maybe the site was down for updates or something. I am in southern WI, 5 minutes from the IL border.
That is so funny!!! We were just talking about looking at the car salesman jobs because I noticed that they give a base salary in one of the ads here. I think it's a good place to start. You have given some great ideas so now we need to list them all and prioritize and see which way would help us in the short term the fastest.
Milkmom- When you contact the state about WIC ask them about commodity foods programs. Also in NH there is some church program where if you volunteer in any way (watch you friends kids for 2 hours, mow someones lawn, grocery shop for someone etc.) for $20 they give you a HUGE food basket, it includes either a turkey or ham, TONS of canned foods, breads, milk. It's about $100 worth of food. See if your church does it, for some reason the name escapes me. Commodity foods is where you get cereals, cheese, juices, canned foods. It's just like WIC, but you don't pick up the foods at the grocery store, you go to their warehouse and pick it out. WIC and CF are USUALLY the same office. Good luck MM.
You know Milkmom, me and hubby went through some very tought times ourselves a few years ago. Out of necessity this is what I had to do: 1) Learned to be a supergrocery shopper. I was able to buy groceries for 90% off by using coupons....really I fed me and dh and dh's parents on $15 a week...in Southern California 2) Swithced all lights in home to compact fluorescent....cut my electrical bill down by 60%....I live in California and this can be a big bill 3) Did many test drives...online rewards programs in the spare time, took advantage of phone offers (swithed to MCI one year and got $300 in Amazon gift certificates, switched next month to ATT for $120 check, and racked up $1000's in gift certificates to various merchants (this took some time and patience....I do not do these any more but can point you in the right direction for these offers.) 4) NO LAUNDRY until after 7pm, cheaper. 5) Consolidated houses....the parents...a little older were and still are struggling financially and live with me and DH (one day, I will have real kids)...both of us were able to cut our housing expenses in half. If you have room in your place, maybe consider getting a roomate temporarily. I would be more than happy to offer you advice and point you in the right direction to learn to grocery shop at 90%, lmk. But be warned, this can be tedious. Finacially, me and DH have recovered and I hope I never see those days again, they were AWFUL. I still keep the compact fluorescent lights and am happy to free up some time for less aggressive grocery shopping.....currently I get about 75% off. Best of luck to you.
Wow, I wish I could cut down the grocery bill. That would allow us to get more when we shop. I don't care about tedious; if it can be done, then I will do it. I never thought about switching to flourescent lights. What a great idea! If you could please show my some test drive deals like that, I will test drive anything. Doing laundry after 7pm is cheaper? Why? I have never heard of that but I will start doing that anyway. We live in a 2 bedroom with no family near us unfortunately. Thank you for your wonderful ideas. I am glad you got through those times. Hopefully we will be where you are soon.
Thank you KHM. I called and was able to get an appt. for next month. One of the girls said they heard of a program like that with the additional food program a few towns over but didn't have any info. I will have to research it further.
Milkmom, I am sending you a little something in the mail. This will include a money order and a web site link for test drives. Check out this forum, mycoupons.com and look for shopping boards. Under the forum of "tips of the trade" is excellent advice for those just beginning to cut down on their grocery shopping. Under "coupon/rebate" you should be able to find most of the coupons you need for the products you buy. The going rate is 5 cents for any coupon under $1 and 10 cents for any over $1....shop at a store that doubles. Under the forum of "Look what I found" are general deals going on.....test drive offers, swithching telephone service offers. I used to preview the Sunday coupons on the Wednesday before they came out and then match them up against products on sale at my grocery stores (the sale flyers usually come out once a week). There are several ladies that have these coupon inserts before they come out SUnday, (usually on Wedneday) so you can order from them the coupons you need. When an item went on sale combined with a good coupon, I would load up on that item, usually getting that item for 80 - 100% off. Needless to say, my cupboards in the kitchen are full, I have two freezers, and use both of the linen closets to stock the non-perishable items. Good Luck!
By the way milkmom, I will also send you a couple of compact fluorescent light bulbs. These are expensive, about $9 a bulb, but loaded up on these during a sale, lol...I paid about $2.50 for these. Its cheaper to do laundry after 7 pm because these are non peak hours and you are billed less.
Hello Milkmom, I hope you have hit rock bottom by now because there is only one way to go from there, and that is up. The dizzying array of splendid advice given here has left little ground for me to cover. However, I do have one suggestion for you: assuming your are accessing this board from your home computer you should seriously consider cancelling your cable-modem service and settling for temporary net access through your local library instead. Although this will seem like a grave inconvenience, the additional $40 or $50 you will save each month can go a long way during dire times such as these. Best of luck! -pbm
Thank you pbm for the encouragement. We will have to cancel it soon if my husband can't get any freelance work to support having the expense.
Update: We saved the checking account. They have reinstated it so no reporting to chexsystems. The manager said that they were about to boot the account out of their system or something. Thank you all!! My husband is getting his resume together for applying for a car salesman job. The ad said something about 3 day work week so that will leave him time to look for something more permanent. All of the blessings I've received from everyone here has started a windfall of good things happening. I just hope that I haven't put this board in jeopardy because of my posting. I am concerned with that. I have seen the best example of the human spirit among those who I haven't had the pleasure of meeting or thanking in person. I know that every posting I am saying thank you to someone on this board. I can never say thank you enough to any of you. We are moving up....
I'm so glad you were able to save the checking account. I had a feeling there might have still been time to do that. Please keep us posted on your hubby's success with his "temporary new career." DemPooches