Hello All,
I hope all of you are doing well and had a great holiday season. I am reaching out to you because I really need your help and I have nowhere else to turn to. As some of you may or may not know, my wife stopped working 4 years ago because of health issues. Allison has a heart condition that they cannot fix and they have given her a short time to live. This condition makes it where she gets exerted very easily and cannot breathe correctly. On top of that, she also had a stroke which makes her speech a little hard to understand at times which causes her not to be able to do any kind of work. At the time she quit working, I was doing pretty good at my job which was selling cars. Then Covid 19 hit, the economy went to crap, and sales in the car business went south. Dealers were hiring more and more salespeople to try to compensate, and in turn they took away sales from people that had been there for years to a point you could not make a living at the dealerships unless you had someone else in the family that was making some sort of paycheck. At the time I was selling 15-20 vehicles a month. Covid is pretty much a mute issue anymore but with supply chain, plant layoffs and the ridiculous inflation, the auto business is pretty much dead in comparison of where it was. I tried to keep up hoping that it would come back but in my area at least, but it has not.
We are in the process of trying to get my wife on disability and it has been a struggle with the government and there is a waiting list miles long. Allison had a hearing set in December but for some unknown reason they postponed it to January and now we find out they changed it again to the end of February. This hearing is to see if they will accept her claim. It sounds like she should be a shoe in for it, but as you all know, you cannot trust the government for anything.
I have been working Uber to try to keep up on our expenses but I live in a college town that mostly depending on the students being in session. When they are not, they return to their homes in other cities besides Columbia which makes it hard for other drivers to make anything. But something is better than nothing.
With all this going on, I got to a point to where I am late on everything. I have been working with people to keep things at bay until the hearing but had a setback last week. My insurance ran out on my vehicle. Without insurance, Uber will not let you drive for them. I had the money to pay for it, but the very day I was going to pay it, I had a tire blow out and had to use the last of my money to get someone to come help me change out my tire. Of course the spare tire is only for temp use, so I am limited to where I can go. All of my tires are bad, but I was hoping they would last a little longer until we found out about the disability thing.
As it stands right now, I am dead in the water. I am looking for a job, but have no way to get there. We live 30 miles from Columbia in a town of 200 so there is no work here and one has to commute to make a living. My landlord has been nice about being late on payment but 2 months behind is something he cannot carry any longer and is going to have no choice but to evict us if we do not come up with something. Our utilities are two months behind as well as my phone bill. The city will shut off our water in two days if we do not pay it. Luckily, it supposed to be below freezing temperatures this week, so I do not think they will shut off our electric.
Will all that being said, I am asking if my family would help us out. I am asking if, between everyone, you could come up with $3200. This would get us out of danger of being kicked out of our place, a set of tires on my truck and insurance on it as well. This way I can Uber for now and look for a different job.
I have had had a heart attack and have 4 stints in my heart, so I know life is short. Me and Allison have been married for 34 years and haven’t had the best of luck. I have made some bad financial decisions in my life which has also caused me to be in this position. I am embarrassed to even have to ask for help but I feel I have to or we will be out in the street along with all the other homeless in the country.
Sorry for the long winded story, but I wanted you all to know why I was asking. I know some of you have helped me in the past, and I will work to pay you all back just as soon as I can.
Please help us if you can. If not, please pray for us.
Thank you,
Tim and Allison Simon