I’m going to be a lot more open and honest about things than I have been recently… it hurts my pride, but I need to get it out.

I’ve just finished looking at our financial situation, and it isn’t good. Things have been tight for the past few months, with Mary in school and so forth. We’ve been barely keeping our head above water.

But there’s a surge coming (to continue the nautical metaphor)… and I don’t know how we’re going to get through it.

As of right now, we are a month and a half behind on our mortgage, two months behind on our car payments (with December’s payment for each pending), and the credit card bills have started to slip. We also have heating bills and overdue taxes on the house to consider… not to mention the cats are overdue for a checkup… and the car needs its 40,000 mile service (in order to keep our extended warranty valid).

Mary has had a little bit of money coming in from work study, and we’ve had roommates who contribute as well… but that’s likely to change in the next month or so.

You see, Mary is going to take a semester off, and the financial aid money we had been using to help make ends meet during the semester won’t be coming this spring. One of our roommates is likely to be moving out in December or January (he finished his thesis and plans on moving away from Bangor), and the other one has been making noises about leaving as well (he’s been trying to keep it quiet… but did a poor job of it).

Come January, it looks like all we’ll have is my paycheck. Nowhere near enough to meet our financial obligations — especially with a baby on the way. Unless we get some kind of major cash infusion… we’re going to go under.

We’ve already gotten some help from family, and I’m looking at liquidating anything that can bring in some money (good bye magic cards, so long large RPG collection)… but that’s not likely to bring in anywhere near enough, and not soon enough.

Quite frankly, I don’t know what to do. It’s everything I can do at times to keep from just breaking down… a couple of years ago everything was going well from a financial standpoint, but now it’s twisted the other way around.

I try not to burden Mary with it… she’s got enough going on right now with school and the pregnancy and her back problems. She can tell something is wrong, though, and doesn’t know how to help me. Hell… I don’t know how to help me.

If anybody has any ideas (or a spare nine or ten thousand in cash lying around), let me know. I’m exploring some options, but anything you can suggest will be considered. (Speaking of which, we applied for heating assitance this winter and were denied. I make significantly more than the income cap for a couple — the baby doesn’t count yet. I imagine that other social programs will result in the same result.)

All right… I’m done for now. Sorry to dump this on y’all.