Quick background: My husband was laid off from a major corporation in 2005, he took a re-education package and after about 6 months of recovering from a very difficult career experience, he decided to take a 180 degree turn into healthcare. In 2009, he graduated with honors, a Registered Nurse.

Funny thing about the "nursing shortage", it is a shortage of experienced nurses, not new grads. The market if FLOODED with new grad RNs and he has not yet been able to find any gainful employment...aside from a 520 contract with the city that expired almost a year ago.

I have worked full time for the last 7 years and make decent money for my line of work (administration), but it is not enough to support our family of 4.

As of last summer, I am unable to continue paying on our credit card debt...we focus now solely on food, housing, transportation, and utilities. It has been this way since August 2010. In that month, we consulted a bk lawyer and paid most of the fees associated with filing - he is one of the best in the state and we are a really simple, straight forward case (he says). We met the means test easily and have completed pre-filing credit counseling. When our refund for 2010 comes back (in the next couple of weeks) we will be able to fix our cars to safely drivable condition, pay a couple of medical bills (on top of everything else, husband underwent major surgery last November), fix some problems on our house, and finish paying our lawyer so we can at last file our case.

I'm so tired of the calls. Our credit cards (I believe) have finally charged off our accounts...6 months of non-payment will do that I suppose, so the nasty debt collectors are starting to call now. The worst part is the utter feeling of total and complete failure. It's not like we ran up our credit buying vacations and "toys", we did use them to fill in the gaps that my salary couldn't cover though (a couple of major car repairs, medical bills, even at times groceries).

I'm feeling extremely weighed down by all of this though. Four months ago, I was suicidal. Feeling MUCH better now thanks to a really excellent book that had been recommended to me ("Trusting God Even When Life Hurts"), really helped me get some perspective back though it is still a big struggle as my husband continues to look for ANY gainful employment. He is ready to give up nursing all together, it is so bad.

An actual blog I started last year: Stuck in the Middle Class (as it slips away)