We haven't done some headline-worthy or polarizing thing, we are just a family who could use a hand right now.  

With all of the headlines and insane reasons people are able to garner help from this community, I figured I would turn here to see if anyone could see it in their hearts to donate to a real family who just try to do good in the world, and are finally ready to ask for help ourselves.

I am an Army Veteran (8 years active duty), my wife is a teacher and our primary income source. Prior to Covid, we were doing pretty well, we thought. We had a little in savings, we had little to no debt, we had work throughout the year. We even had enough between savings and credit (again, we thought) to finally expand our small home and give more room for our two growing children. By no means were we ever rich, nor did we even have enough to do whatever we wanted without hesitation. We wanted to use everything we had to make things better for our kids, to give them more space and get them out of a shared bedroom. The problem with this, Covid changed what our budget needed to look like to finish. We had broken ground on our expansion just a couple months before Covid hit. While my father and I were doing much of the work, we also needed to hire labor, buy materials etc. Workers started not showing up, or wanting exorbitant amounts just to risk coming to someone's home and work. Materials skyrocketed. Our project that we thought we were prepared for turned to additional mortgages, project loans, and a lot of additional credit card debt. We pushed on, because at this point, our home was opened up to the elements and we had no choice.

We pressed hard through Covid, despite setbacks. We found issues with the existing house that had to be addressed, had contractors and workers cheat us out of money, and had many other things come up. We got out home "enclosed" , but not finished. We had many family and friends that were helping us pass away along the road to completion, making things even more difficult. My father, my contractor in a manner of speaking, had a massive heart attack that put him out of commission for a year and almost took his life. My mother passed away recently at just 61 from heart issues, and both my wife and myself have had heart issues as well (my wife had a possible mild heart attack right after my mother passed the end of last year, and mine was prior to my father's).

I was in college again at the time Covid hit, trying to finish my degrees in graphic design and photography. Little did I know, those industries would quickly become dying breeds thanks to Covid. Not to mention, I had to finish my last classes via zoom like everyone else. Considering the expensive equipment, papers, supplies etc needed for photography in particular, which was once provided by the school, had to be bought on my own, it only added to the unexpected expenses.  I did continue with my schooling, and graduated with multiple degrees in 2021, as Valedictorian no less. You would think this would make things easier, but it hasn't. With the uptick of AI and everyone having photographers in their own family or circle, the education I received was becoming less viable as a means of income. My wife does not get paid during the summer as a teacher, so for a couple months out of each year it is an even bigger struggle.

We have been selling our things, and doing what we can to keep income coming in just to keep up. We live month to month, barely, especially with all of the interest from all the debt incurred during covid. Our monthly outgoing is unsustainable on our normal income, let alone the reduced income we will have in just a couple short weeks. We had a forbearance on one of our mortgages to help try and catch up, and that has only made things worse as they now want that paid in full and have also reported to our credit, crushing that even more. Summer starts in a couple weeks, and we don't know how we will make it through without some assistance just paying the bills at hand, let alone general living or finally finishing our home. Half of our house is currently studs with no working electric, no floors, and by no means a livable portion of the home yet. I work on things daily, but as a dad, dad duties always come first.

We are not out here asking to be made rich or even for a handout per-se. We ourselves often donated our time and things in general to many people and organizations in the past, and plan to continue when feasible again to pay any help forward. We are just asking that anyone who can might just give us a little grace and support so we can reground ourselves. Any help you give will help us hopefully make it through the summer while we continue to try and pay things and not be forced into foreclosure or anything of the sort. While we would love to finish the house, we have grown to understand it will happen in due time, although 5 years is quite a long time as it stands. We are not asking people for that part directly, we only discuss it to explain the main factor on getting us where we are right now.

This is not something we would normally do, but right now we don't know where else to turn. Thank you for reading, and if you see it in your heart to give know that we appreciate every cent we know you yourself worked for. We take nothing in life for granted.