Last week, we found out that my husband has melanoma. It's an aggressive form of skin cancer that in most people is easy to eradicate. My husband needs treatment, and we are required to pay out of pocket for it. We don't have the money. From a realistic perspective, my husband is most likely going to be okay. The scary part is that I don't know what I would do if it were not. What if this were life-saving treatment that he needed? What if it were one of our children? We wouldn't be able to afford it.
I'm a compulsive spender. We all are. If we want to do something, we just do. We think about the cost other than whether we have the money in our checking accounts right now. We are drowning in debt. We've been fighting to get out of it for ages, but we're not making any progress. We are struggling.
In The Complete Tightwad Gazette, author Amy Dacyczyn wrote that some families are on the gangplank, regardless of their income. That's where we are - on the gangplank. And I want to move us off of it.
