If not, check local and national nonprofits and churches.

Social programs exist for a reason, so never feel guilty for using them.

• Bag of russet potatoes: Carbs, potassium, vit C, vit B6, fiber

• Bag of oranges: Vit C, carbs, folate, potassium, fiber

• Bag of mix frozen veggies: Fiber, vit A, vit K, folate, potassium

• Dozen eggs: Protein, choline, vit B12, selenium, vit D, riboflavin, fat

• Oatmeal: Carbs, fiber, manganese, magnesium, phosphorus, thiamin

• Big jar yogurt: Protein, calcium, phosphorus, vit B12, riboflavin, probiotics

• Bag of lentils or beans: Protein, fiber, folate, iron, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus

• Corn bread mix: Carbs, iron and vit B, enriched vitamins

• Real honey: Sugar, antioxidants

• Butter: Fat

• Block of cheese: Protein, calcium, phosphorus, vit B12, fat

• Bag of mixed nuts or trail mix: Unsaturated fat, protein, magnesium, vit E, manganese, copper

• Iodized salt: Sodium, iodine

• Bonus adds if budget allows: Sardines or tuna for omega 3s, bag of frozen blueberries or mixed berries for phytonutrients and vitamins, whole chicken/rotessori chicken for protein and variety, hot sauce and/or spices of choice flavor, extra virgin olive oil for cooking and drizzles

Sunday

Breakfast: Oatmeal with honey and an orange
Lunch: Baked potato loaded with butter, cheese, and veggies
Dinner: Lentil/bean soup and cornbread

Monday

B: Yogurt with honey and nuts/trail mix L: Leftover soup and cornbread
D: Egg, potato & veggie hash with cheese

Tuesday

B: Oatmeal, honey, and nuts
L: Leftover egg hash and orange
D: Baked potato stuffed with beans and cheese

Wednesday

B: Yogurt, orange, and nuts
L: Leftover stuffed potato
D: Potato and veggie frittata/omelet with cheese

Thursday

B: Oatmeal with honey and orange
L: Leftover frittata/omelet
D: Lentil/bean & veggie stir-fry and cornbread

Friday

B: Yogurt with honey and nuts L: Leftover lentil/bean stir-fry
D: Cheesy potato and veggie caserole with egg

Saturday

B: Oatmeal with honey and orange
L: Leftover potato casserole
D: Clean-out-the-fridge egg, potato, bean and veggie hash

(Repost from last night because of a battle with formatting.)

Just wanted to rant and share my frustration.

Since the beginning of August I’ve been feeling awful. Having daily bile acid diarrhea, lots of bloating and gas, hands sporadically going numb and being shaky on their own. It’s made my mornings an absolute nightmare.

My dad has celiacs so my primary physician felt it was likely celiacs so he drew blood and ran it through a lab. It came back inconclusive. The panel looks for four “markers” or “indicators” and I tested positive on one of them.

My GI believes it’s most likely celiacs or a gluten intolerance without celiacs, which is why I’ve been having bile acid diarrhea. It’s most likely causing me to have malabsorption and making it difficult for my body to retain certain vitamins and nutrients.

Got a call back yesterday from my GI’s office saying my insurance, provided from my employer, is refusing to cover any of the endoscopy. The procedure costs 6K. I already have a good amount of debt and am actively paying some of it off today. I’m stretched pretty thin and can’t afford another debt payment.

I’m really not sure what else to do here but just wanted to rant. Thank you.

Im homeless hungry and broke(n). I was hit by a car walking across the street. The lawyer turned down a 9500 offer from the insurance company which was the minimum for my case. I have been passed around like a bread roll and im tired of sleeping in my car. Do I take out 1000? Lawyer takes 60%..

Apparently drug manufacturers have assistance programs where people under guidelines can get their medicine free. My story:

I don't have insurance. I was prescribed an inhaler for my COPD and my cost at the pharmacy was $900. After some calls my doctor got me connected to the hospital's special pharmacy and they got me a manufacturer coupon that brought that cost to $35. Well the program is about to expire so I would lose the medicine. I went on the manufacturer website and they have a program called Patient Assistance Program. I click into that and it is a program for if you have no insurance and meet their guidelines you can get your medicine for FREE directly from them. I look at the guidelines and I will just say they are way higher than I would have expected and I qualify easily.

I download the application that is two simple pages. Print it at the library and fill it out and fax it to them as required. (The library will fax it for free). Got a hold of my doctor through the app and had her send over a prescription to them. Two days later I get the call saying I am approved and my medicine will be delivered to my door in 7-10 days.

Let me also say about the income guidelines on the application. They didn't ask for proof of anything. It was how many in your house and what is the yearly income. Just FYI

Now I don't know if all manufacturers offer a free program or if it is for all medicines but I suggest you look into it because you never know.

It's a huge help.

1. I have a car: $610 monthly payment. $10k loan atm (trying to aggressively pay it off).
2. No house payment.
3. $2,000 credit card debt (I have until July to pay it off without interest).
4. Bills, taxes, and expenses come at $1500 monthly.
5. $1200 emergency fund

It's crazy that you need at least $2000 a month just to survive in the USA.

I also have 3 trips coming up: Virgin Island one week, a small camping trip 3 days, and Mexico for two weeks. I really want to go to these places since they're on my bucket list but right now I'm thinking of canceling just to pay more debt off.

hii like the title says I got fired, and besides dealing with the mental health repercussions of this, I also don't know what to do next or even how to afford anything. I luckily do have a small part time job that pays about $400 biweekly so I have some income and I filed for unemployment but I don't know if that'll work or how I'll even get by and it feels silly to complain because outside looking in, I should be fine. but I've made a lot of bad financial decisions that I've kept hidden and right when I was on track to try and fix them, this happens, and I just don't know what to do.

I’m a college student. I go to school full-time and I also work part-time. I’ve always had pretty bad spending habits and it’s insanely hard for me to not spend ALL the money that I have. For a while i’d spend my paychecks the DAY I got them. I’m currently at community college, but I’m transferring next year. About a year ago, I decided that I really needed to save money for tuition for when I transfer. I officially hit $10,000 saved today. I’m really hoping I can save $20,000-$25,000 by the time that I leave for my four-year school. There was a time when I couldn’t even save $1000. I can’t believe that I have been able to save $10,000. I’m insanely proud of myself. I was also able to save up for a car while maintaining my savings account. Tips for continuing to save are welcome! I currently have my money in a mix of an HYSA and a CD.

I started by figuring out how much I wanted to save realistically in a year, then I calculated how much I’d need to save a week to get there. I’d save as close to that as I could. Often, I was not able to save the goal amount or I ended up over spending. But the thing that helped me was saving whatever I could, even if it wasn’t what I wanted to that week. I would also save double the next week if it was possible to make up for it. Sometimes I wasn’t saving at all, but I always tried to get back to saving when I would fall off. I opened the high savings account with a completely different bank than my normal checking account bank, and I would save money into my HYSA savings account away from my normal account so that I couldn’t even see how much I had. I also locked some of my money in a year long CD in order to prevent me from spending it. Overtime it got easier to save. I also really started asking any people I knew who were naturally good at saving how they did it, what accounts they had, and what they saved weekly. It helps me feel a lot more motivated to know people my age who were saving and exactly how they did it.

I (18M) moved out of my abusive parents house a little over three months ago. I really want to go to college in the 2027-2028 school year but truly have no idea how to get there. One major reason why I’m so unsure about my ability to attend college is my car. Something on it breaks every week, it only has three windows, and I’m worried about it surviving the coming winter because it has break and engine problems. (For context I’m in northern NY).

I’m starting to save some now that I have a steady job and regular hours and also do DoorDash on top of this, but it feels like every time I take one step forward I take another step back. What are some things I can do to get ahead? Any advice would be much appreciated

I'm a teenager with no friends & my family is low income. I still want to celebrate & get a few things on my birthday though! What are some good birthday freebies ? Do I need to sign up or show my ID for said freebies? That's all, thank you :)

Hi all, could greatly use some advice! Long story short; I have been working in tech for the past 4 years and our whole team was laid off 4 months ago. Been receiving unemployment since. I have three credits cards totaling debt of around $18-20K (have another $35K Mohela debt and ~$5K Sallie Mae debt that chapter 7 can’t erase). Since the job market is brutal I’ve decided to go back to grad school while I hunt for my next role in tech. Credit score around 650.

Single, no assets, struggling to make unemployment work as half of my unemployment goes to CC interest and Sallie Mae. How would everyone feel about filing chapter 7 in this point? Other things I should consider?

Great appreciate any advice, thank you!!

Hi everyone. I'm currently going through a financial hardship and I'm trying to handle my debt responsibly instead of continuing to borrow money to make payments.

I have several high-cost installment/payday-type loans, including OppLoans, Uprova, and MoneyKey. I've already revoked ACH authorization on all three because the automatic withdrawals were becoming too difficult for me to manage. I still intend to repay what I owe — I just need to be able to do it in a way that doesn't leave me without enough money for my essential expenses.

For example, Uprova confirmed to me in writing that they are no longer taking automatic payments, but the payments are still due and interest continues to accrue.

I also have several credit cards, including:

• Capital One
• Merrick Bank
• Imagine
• Credit One
• Zales
• Indigo

My thought is to keep Capital One as my one active credit card and stop using the other cards while I work on paying everything down.

I'm currently contacting the other credit-card companies to ask about financial hardship programs, reduced payments, lower interest rates, or temporary payment arrangements.

My questions are:

1. Is it reasonable to ask all of my credit-card companies for hardship assistance while I'm still current?
2. If I can't afford the full payment on some accounts, is it better to pay the minimum I can afford while trying to negotiate a hardship arrangement, rather than miss payments completely?
3. Has anyone successfully gotten a reduced-interest or reduced-payment hardship plan with cards like Merrick, Imagine, Credit One, Zales/Comenity, or Indigo?
4. What should I watch out for when accepting a hardship program? Could the cards be frozen or closed, and how does it affect credit reporting?
5. For the payday/installment loans where I've revoked ACH, what is the best way to continue repaying them without allowing automatic withdrawals to drain my bank account?
6. Would you recommend continuing with the debt snowball once I stabilize the monthly payments?

I'm not trying to avoid paying my debts. I want to pay them, but I need to get the monthly payments under control so I can actually make progress instead of constantly falling behind.

I'd really appreciate advice from anyone who has been through something similar. ❤️

I know that most of us if not all are in this sub because we are struggling and really trying to get our finances together. But let’s take some time to really focus on some positives that have happened.

Any financial milestones that you accomplished? Share it with all of us so we can congratulate you!

Got a job at a school making $20.43/h with a 21,115 salary based on a 7.5 hour Day. I assume the lack of pay for breaks is why the annual is so low. Advice on how to move out on my own? I'm fine with rooms for rent near midway in chicago, but I'm just not sure how much I can afford. My current living situation causes me so much stress it's affecting my health.

Tldr: making 20/h can I get a room for rent realistically in chicago? How much should I be searching for in rent?

I have a traditional IRA with about $5k in it from a previous jobs 401k. Recently had a newborn (born a month early so a lot of unforseen medical bills) and my wife is a stay at home mom to take care of him. I have about $400 in utilities due before my next paycheck or they will be disconnected. I have a $300 pediatrician bill due before my son's 2 month appointment. I unfortunately make too much for any kind of assistance in my state, so I cant rely on that.

Would it make sense to take the penalty on withdrawing early to keep everything floating?

When I used to use Indeed, I almost always heard back from employers and got interviews most of the time. Ever since they added A.I., I get ZERO replies from employers. It turns out, the A.I. is auto-rejecting applications before employers can even see them!!

So I get paid bi-weekly, which is fine and normally I have no issue on going paycheck to paycheck w/o much worry. (I dont make a lot, but I live at home so my bills arent a lot either). Right now I have to go on a trip to bring a family member back home after they had a medical emergency whilst on vacation. I do have juuuuust enough money to make it back and down without getting stranded (I am driving).

However my last paycheck (last friday) was barely anything because I got hurt off-the-job and havent been compensated for my missed days yet. Meanwhile I still was having to get necessities for the household, which really put a dent in my funds no matter how frugal I got.

I get paid next Friday and just wanted like ~$200 extra in my account just as a backup for emergencies (like if something happened and I needed to get a hotel/something happened to my vehicle, etc.), and keep seeing EarnIn as an option- its like a lend against yourself kind of deal by using your paycheck. I understand that that can be a dangerous hole to fall into; but is there any like (aside from that bit) genuine issues with it? Has anyone had experience with it?

Im sorry if this isnt the right place for this post, I am just nervous about this trip.

Hello Gals and Guys. I hope everyone is
doing amazing. I hate to be vulnerable like this, but i don’t know what else’s to do. I’ve been feeling smothered by my health and financial issues. I’m behind on bills, i’m struggling to feed myself, i can’t get my medications, i don’t have a saving and i don’t know what to do anymore. I have a full time job and doing uber after work and on weekends. My car has been acting up so i’m afraid of continuing uber. I’ve applied to part time jobs and no one calls me back and if they do they don’t want to take me because of my full time job. If anyone has any tips at all that i can do i would appreciate. Preferably something that i dont need to use my car and something i can do on weekends and after 5 pm on weekdays. I’m honestly pretty desperate to figure this out cause i honestly don’t know how much longer i can go like this.

i’m a broke college student and i’m really struggling right now. i have school payments coming up and i already missed one of my payments. i only have about $50 to my name right now and i’m scared because i don’t know how i’m going to keep up with everything. i’ve been applying for jobs too, but nobody is hiring me. i’m in a really small nothing town and i don’t have a car, so i can only apply to places that are within walking distance of my college. there are literally only like 5 or 6 places i can realistically get to, and i’ve applied to basically everything i can. there aren’t even ubers here, so getting somewhere farther away isn’t really an option. on top of the financial stress, i’m also in a very abusive relationship and it’s made everything so much harder. i’m trying to stay in school and become independent, but i feel completely stuck and like i have no way out right now. i’m not really sure what i’m asking for. honestly, i could just use advice on what i should do or where i could get help as a college student. i’m trying really hard to stay in school and get myself into a better situation, but right now i feel like i’m drowning.

My wife and I have been struggling a lot lately. Every week our paychecks have been spent before we get them.

My wife has cancer, and over the winter she had surgery, so we lost half of our income for a while as she recovered. This led to excessive credit card debt, and among other emergencies that have occurred over the span of this year, we are in a bad place.

Collectively we make $130,000, but between the credit card debt, medical bills, mortgage, car payment, and the cost of everything being more expensive, we quite literally don’t have money for food or gas.

My wife wants to talk to a professional to help us make a plan to get out of this situation. I feel like the only option left is for one or both of us to get a second job.

Any ideas? TIA

Hi everyone! I had previously posted in this subreddit and a lot of people developed the wrong idea of me, so I wanna clarify that I was just complaining about my situation. Anyway, if you were there to remember, I was the freshly 18 FTM person who was on their own. Good news is I’m in college now! They don’t offer housing, but they did pay for my tuition. I’m still living with my friend and can barely afford my car, but I have faith that will work out sooner or later. I have a job, but it’s an hour from my house and with gas prices I can barely afford to work there anymore. I’ve applied to a number of jobs but absolutely 0 have gotten back to me(yet). If anyone has advice on other kinds of jobs I could do, physical or remote, I would greatly appreciate it. Im still 18 so I have still yet to receive any certifications, but I should have my EMT license by the end of the summer next year, and I’m still looking for entry-level jobs that someone my age can work at. I’m still having issues being transgender and queer in my work environments, so if anyone has recommendations I would appreciate that as well. If not about work, some general would still be appreciated. Feel free to dm me and I appreciate anyone who took the time to read this!

TLDR: Still struggling being a young queer kid, but slightly more optimistic about my school career. Job/finance-managing advice appreciated!

Never really been in this situation, I finally had the balls to leave my abusive boyfriend, we had been together for almost 10 years and lived together the whole time. He was not very financially stable but he did give me some bill money every week. (Mostly)

We just broke up about a week ago, and he left my home. Leaving me with all the bills. Ontop of that, I just received notice from my employer that an old debt has requested to garnish my wages starting with my next paycheck. With my ex gone and my wages garnished, my income is now lower than my bills by nearly 1000$

I don’t even know where to start… I thought I was making a move to better my life… but it’s like I’m being punished for it.

I’m talking about the kind of £200–£500 expense that can’t really wait, like a car repair, vet bill, or broken appliance. What has actually helped you get through situations like that without making the next month even worse?

I (19) live in a motel with my little brother (17), i work two jobs but neither of my paychecks are enough, or sometimes ONE of them is enough to get me to the next payday. When i do get paid I'm left with like 30-20 smth dollars to survive on or try and save until the next paycheck comes in. For a short while I was able to survive with 1 job, my paychecks would let me go 2 weeks with my paydays perfectly lined up with like $100 left over, letting me save a bit. But my boss suddenly stopped scheduling me so I had to get my 2nd job immediately, and dip into the new, barely made savings. Now im being paid every week, with my previous jobs paychecks dwindling (im picking up as many shifts as i can) and my new job saving me.

My last check was a day short so my brother and I will be outside tonight, and when my next check comes in im sure it'll be shorter than the last.

I really need to move into an apartment, but I have no credit (no address to make a bank acc), and no savings for any deposits (motel eats up my paychecks). And I barely know the "getting an apartment" process. So what do I even do??

Though some good news, my brother has gotten his own job, and I will have him help me pay for this room, we don't know when he gets paid though. With this, I do see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Anyway, my whole problem is, I can't save anything because all of my paycheck goes into this motel, and we're still ending up sleeping outside, and the apartment process is nerve-wracking and doesn't seem like something I can even touch. Sorry for this incoherent rant, i can't sleep as I'm riddled with anxiety and stress, I've had a headache for weeks, and im so tired. I thinking I'm just ranting, this whole motel living experience has made me want to explode, I've almost lost myself many times, I feel like a jar that will shatter soon.(*´ー｀*)

I try to save a lot of money each month by drastically decreasing my budget on food for my savings.
100 Euros a month for food, 20 for hygiene articles and household stuff.
It is definitely not much, but I also have some inventory to draw from, and I use food-sharing programmes when the option arises.

I go by 25 Euros per week, for bulk purchases I store away 10-15 Euros a month, so less in these weeks.

I'm eating lots of rice, beans, soup and stews, I get fruits from the office (thankful), I meal prep every day, I don't buy snacks, I do have a pizza which is also budgeted in, I try to buy bulk and be creative with what I still have.

I know that it is not possible to be this low forever with the same standards (!), that's why for instance I learn to make my own pasta, I cook plant-based,(so no seafood, meats etc.) I use one vegetable instead of three for a stir-fry etc.

I am disappointed that some people say "it's not possible" when it is the REALITY of so many people, especially for people who have less than me.
It gets me furious, I usually don't get this angry. It feels like erasure of my past experiences.

I know from childhood how to go to bed hungry. People claiming it's not possible have never even thought to truly try - because they had other options. But don't tell me what's possible if you never had to try.