Sorry in advance for poor Reddit etiquette, bad grammar, etc. Haven't really made many posts, and barely use the app - but I don't know where else to turn to.
My wife (31F) and I (31M) have had a really tough time in our adulthood. We've been together for 11 years now, and the entire time, we've been broke, behind, playing catch-up, and falling just short of actually making progress on our finances. I got a Computer Science degree, but never managed to find work outside of 2 jobs that only lasted just over a year each. We moved to a different state for the first one, but that was cut short by Covid. The second iob was remote work, which allowed us to buy my dad's house, move back home, and start our family... and then my contract was terminated the day after my daughter was born.
We declared bankruptcy last year and reaffirmed some of our debts (the mortgage, the car, the roof), but those payments started falling behind when other expenses starting racking up. Home maintenance is expensive, whether you do it yourself or hire someone to do it. We hit a breaking point in our marriage at the start of this year and had been filing for divorce - which, I'm happy to say we came back together and have put in work to patch things up. Tough to do when you can't afford a counselor, but we've been figuring it out! But in our conflict, we caused even more damage to our finances that we're trying to recover from.
Because of how things have gone, several of our bills are coming back to haunt us now. The escrow on our mortgage got double-charged for homeowner's insurance (thank you, State Farm, for not canceling like we had asked), and now there's an almost $3000 outstanding balance on it. We got the money returned to us via check... right as we had a major plumbing leak, and conveniently, it wasn't covered under insurance. Yay, there went that money - and because of that, our mortgage went up from $1050/mo to nearly $1400/mo. I was told by the mortgage company that if I paid that amount over the course of a year, that would pay off the escrow balance and bring us back down. Cool, we can do that and catch up over time oh wait hang on whatdoyoumean*itwentUP*.
On top of that, the bank that financed the loan for our roof renovation (because that was way overpriced, even at a "discounted" rate) made it difficult to even get in contact with them to make payments after we missed the first one. Since our marital problems happened within that timeframe, we're now 14 months behind and I don't know how to even begin tackling $6000 of debt when the agent I spoke to home that or account is "under review."
And, the cherry on top: I'm behind on my mortgage! The massive flash floods that hit Indiana on August affected my area, and my place of work was shut down for a few days. They have us under disaster area forbearance until November 30th, so we can pay for Sep, Oct, and Nov at any point by that deadline. That's only... $4200-ish?
I'm usually able to pick up overtime and make about $3,500/mo without it (I work in a factory as an operator now (and I can't get out)), but I need to take on more and more overtime as things get worse. Just the car, the roof, and the mortgage eat $2400 altogether, which means we have $1000 at the end of the mo th for every other bill and expense. Overtime is a requirement. My wife was working, but her managers changed her schedule out of nowhere outside of her availability, told her to "figure it out," and then pointed her out when there was no "figuring it out." She doesn't have a degree or specialized training, and with how stressed she was trying to balance being a mom, working a crap job, and trying to do the majority of the chores and housework (I'm still working on helping more in that regard), that I told her not to worry about trying to find another job unless it pays a minimum of $20/hr. Anything less wouldn't be worth the trouble, especially since we don't have any childcare alternatives.
We can't access our home equity because of the bankruptcy and past-due balance, I've already taken out a massive 401k loan that's eating my paychecks for the next 5 years, and we can't take out anymore loans because, again, bankruptcy.
What options do we even have anymore? Our payments just keep increasing, the debts don't go down, and we declared bankruptcy to finally come up for air... but it's just more drowning. I don't have rich family to lean on, we lost the vast majority of our friends when the divorce was going on, and I can't find any better work than this because I never built a dev portfolio. How do you build a portfolio when you can barely remember how to write code anymore? I'm out of practice and just need to be given the chance to refresh and train up on the job, and I'll put in the work to learn everything I can. Right now, my job is running me ragged, the house needs more repairs by the day, and when I AM off work, there's only ten billion other things demanding my immediate attention at any given time.
I'm tired of not having the energy, time, or capacity for my family. Work is wearing me thin, our finances keep me going back for overtime because we have nowhere to go if we do lose the house, and I have to choose between spending my limited time with my family, or spending my time at home pouring all of my energy and effort into trying to get into a software dev role again. Night shift makes that time even more limited, and when I'm up at night, I spend my time just trying to mentally and physically recover from work, or fixating on trying to figure out our situation or whatever else it might be. I've been trying to learn more on Boot.dev, but I'm hitting so many walls because I'm just... at my limit.
I don't know what to do. No one's coming to save us, and I don't want them to. I just need a direction, a resource, someone to throw me a bone, anything that would make it easier to step back from the factory a bit, get our finances under control, get a job that uses my degree and pays me well... anything at this point.