You know, just when you're feeling sorry for yourself and think you've got problems someone else comes along and makes you really thankful that you're not in their situation.

I have a librarian friend who is in a really tough position. Her husband has been in prison for as long as I've known her and she's raising 2 teenage girls on her own. The library board pays her $7.75 an hour for 30 hours a week. That's it. She's trying to make it on $232.50 gross a week! Last year she had no heat for a while until my boss took over a pickup load of wood for her. She has not had a car that works for well over a year now so she walks over a mile to the library and home in the dark. She has no phone because she has not been able to pay the bill.

This week the electricity in her house is not acting right. At first everything was extremely bright and then it browned out. She woke up in the night to the DVD player humming. So she woke her girls up and they got the things they would want to save if the house burned down and spent the rest of the night sleeping in the living room in case there was a fire so they could quickly escape. They've been sleeping in the living room all week now. She has brought her family pictures to the library in case her house burns while she is at work.

She called the electric company and they came out but told her it's something in her wiring so they're not responsible. Her neighbor has looked things over and found what he thinks the problem is, but said a certified electrician needs to do the work. She can't afford that. She already has bill collectors calling her at the library because she is behind on all payments.

This electrical problem has ruined her refrigerator.

Things like this sure make you thankful for the situation you're in. Things don't look so bad to me now. I wish I had a ton of money to help her out.

I've been feeling very overwhelmed by financial things the past few days.

My car needs 2 new tires for the winter driving here. We checked with our friend that we order tires from and found out the tire prices have jumped 30% lately and that these tires are not real common ones so they're even more expensive! They're going to be $135 each. We can just pay him monthly or weekly or whatever so that doesn't concern me too much, but just adds to expenses.

We've also been trying to get term insurance so that we know we're covered if anything happens to either of us. I see on the applications they sent us that they have marked annual premium and that we are to pay when the paramedical exam takes place. I definitely don't have that kind of money to give them up front right now. I'm going to call today, if I get a chance, and see if we can either do monthly payments (which is what I thought we were doing) or postpone the start of the insurance until my husband gets his profit sharing check in December.

The CC debt just doesn't seem to be going down as quickly as I thought it would either.

I just feel like I'm drowning in debt and not getting anywhere.