by Stacey Mcclure

Created on: November 30, 2009   Last Updated: December 02, 2009

Masterminds

For the past ten or eleven years, my husband and I have paid all of our bills on time, brought both of our credit scores into the 700's, and had enough money to always have food in the house and clothes on our backs.

In January 2009, my husband had a heart attack. He had 100% blockage on one side, and 90% blockage on the other, requiring him to have 3 stents put in.

Scared and not knowing what the future would hold, I went down to DHS to ask for some sort of assistance. At the time, we were running our own business which was our only source of income. I gathered all of our paperwork together and the clerk keyed it into the computer. She finished up and informed me that we were "Over on Resources".

When I asked her what that meant, she said "you own things that you can sell to buy food." I asked her specifically what she proposed that I sell. She said "you can sell your trailer; it is not secured by any loans".

OK, let's break this down. My husband will probably need a few weeks to recover. We can sell our trailer, which is our income producing vehicle and our sole source of income and use the money to buy food. Then, when he is ready to go back to work, he won't be able to because we have sold our "Bread and Butter" (no pun intended). How does that make sense?

So we don't sell the trailer, but we struggle through without any income for about a month. Since we had to spend the little bit of money we had to buy food, our bills are falling behind. When my husband is able to go back to work, it takes about 30 days to get the cash flowing again, so that is 2 months without income. We get through it somehow.

The bills that had fallen behind include the truck payment (our sole source of income), and the insurance for the truck. If we don't have the required insurance, we cannot haul any freight.

Eight months have passed, the business is closed due to lack of funds to run the truck, the truck has been repossessed and we are in the process of filing bankruptcy.

My husband and I are both actively looking for work. I applied for a job working at DHS. My application was approved within hours. The only thing is, they want me to take a computer based test that is only conducted in Nashville which is 5 hours away. Neither of the cars we currently have is reliable enough to take the trip.

The government has a ready, willing and able person who is qualified to fill a position and support themselves and their family, yet they can't figure out a way to give a computer-based

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