Community Support for sfdcfox

Question

sfdcfox does a great deal for our community and is currently asking for some support in return.

It sounds like in the process of helping others they now need some assistance themselves.

Please see Emergency Debt Assistance if you are interested.

Answer 1

I'll be sending out formal thank yous to those that individually contributed, but yes, the request was legitimate, and yes, it was really hard that I had to ask (it still makes me want to cry that I had to do something like this).

This was one of those "kicking the can down the street" type deals, where I'd loaned money on good faith that it'd be returned, without interest, and I started racking up late fees, overdraft fees, interest fees, all the while thinking that surely all the people I'd helped in their time of need wouldn't do this to me, but things happen, and I got left with the short end of the stick.

We started pawning our possessions to try and float until the next paycheck, which resulted in more interest and fees, and we kept falling further in debt. I didn't realize how serious it was until my wife told me that we were about to lose our pawned possessions and it was a significant amount of money. I'd kept thinking that "one more check and we'll be in the clear." Unfortunately, debt doesn't work that way, and when I'd sat down to do the math, I realized that we were nearly $3,000 behind on payments.

Thanks to the amazing support from the community, we've already raised almost $2,100 as of this evening, which will bring all of our delinquent accounts out of the "danger" zone, and hopefully we'll get to a point where all our bills are current. We're still in a "which bills do we pay first" situation, as there's some lag time from funds are sent to the time we receive them, but right now we'll be able to bring most of our accounts to "less than 30 days late". Assuming we're able to get that far, then we'll be able to get back on our feet, but ideally we would like to be current so that we can stay that way; our monthly expenditures is only roughly 50% of our income when we're not being dinged by overdraft and late fees.

Of course, we've learned our lesson and will be restricting our financial charity for the near future, but thanks to the community, I'm able to keep the lights on, and keep on answering questions. Again, I can't believe the overwhelming response I've received, and I feel truly blessed during this holiday season.