Debbie Jones* is a 50 year single mother with a graduate degree in Sociology.  She has worked in the Social Work field, providing counseling and support to foster families in her community.  She recently worked for a well known non-profit agency which relied upon federal and state grants, as well as private donations for its funding.  Cut backs in funding for social services resulted in the agency losing much of its funding.  As a result the agency had to lay off a large number of its staff, including Debbie.

She has been looking for work unsuccessfully for several months.  New positions in the social services are nearly nonexistent in her community.  She has one daughter in college that Debbie can no longer help with school costs.  Her son is not in school now, but is working multiple part-time jobs in order to save money and return at some time in the future.  None of the family has health insurance.  In addition, she can no longer afford the apartment she lives in.  Fortunately, Debbie has a friend who lives alone in a nearby house.  Her friend also has had some economic setbacks and could use a roommate to help offset her costs.  Debbie anticipates moving into the new house soon.  She continues to look for work.  She is fortunate to have unemployment, but it will run out soon.

*Name changed to insure privacy of actual person

This is my story.  I am a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor who has worked continuously for more than 30 years.  I have a good position with good pay, excellent benefits, including medical insurance and retirement.  A member of my family has been ill for nearly 20 years.  Over the past 10 years our out of pocket medical bills have climbed to the point where they are anywhere from 20 - 30 percent of our family income every year.  At one point they were even higher.  

We were doing okay at taking care of our monthly bills, but the medical providers (hospitals and physicians) wanted us to pay more on our accounts.  We had credits cards with almost 0 balances and very low interest rates.  Very shortly after we began using the cards, even though we were making our payments on time for the full amount due, our interest rates on all cards more than doubled.  We were told that the rates increased because we had too much credit available.  The credit card balances began to increase.  Soon the rates were increased across the board by another 5% or so because our balances were now too large.  The payments had just about tripled from their original amounts.  We began to have difficulties making the payments.  So the rate on all our cards were increased another 5% .  At this point, the interest rates on all our bills was about 23% and we getting deeper and deeper and debt.  We have entered into a plan to eliminate the credit card debt over a five year period.