USA Land of Opportunity?? YEAH RIGHT!

majaka · Feb 3, 2005

I am steaming mad right now!!! I have been trying to go back to school but need loans and grants. But guess what I don't qualify because my husband makes too much! He works two jobs and is a full time student himself. We barely pay the bills with the two jobs that he has and the allowance that I get from my trust fund from my dad when he died. I know what you guys are thinking oh trust fund she should be able to get money from that to go to school. WRONG!! I can't get ahold of my money til I am 25 and right now my uncle is in charge of my trust fund. My uncle is soo tight fisted because my father told him that was to be for school and after school it was to be for a house if there was any money left over. My uncle thinks that we should be able to make it on my husband's two jobs and the allowance that he gives me monthly and still have plenty left over for school and emergencies. One month we had 2 pennies left in our checking account after paying the bills and we still needed to buy groceries. We don't even make enough to save any money so if you are thinking oh well get the money from your savings account. We don't have one. Plus we are newlyweds. We are supposed to be out and having fun and enjoying each other right?? Yeah right! My husband is having to quit one of his jobs because he has been working so much that he's making himself sick. My husband drives 70 miles one way each morning just to go to school. We pay AT LEAST 500 dollars per month in gas. And right now we live in one of the cheapest areas in the suburbs of the DFW metroplex without living in the country. And we have the cheapest gas prices too! I hardly go anywhere since right now I am a stay at home wife. My husband wanted it that way so that when he would get off work/school I would be home and not off somewhere working. Because if I worked we would never see each other! We have both been really sick this month and we can't even afford basic medical insurance so on top of that we have hospital bills to pay.I hate driving right now because we are liability only and my luck I would get hit by someone and then they would claim it was my fault so I would have to pay for the damage to their car but my car wouldn't be fixed. OH how I miss full coverage!!! I qualify for loans but since I have a trust fund its ridiculous that I have to get a loan. My uncle thinks that I can work full time and go to school full time since he does it too and has two kids to boot and coaches all of their teams. But he is constantly stressed out all the time and I don't wish to live that way since I have a depression problem which gets worse when stressed. Plus I can't afford to go to a pyschiatrist to get medication for my depression however mild it is at times. I know I am gonna have to go back on medication if I ever go back to school. But the problem is actually getting there! We live in a country where things are promised and everybody has a equal chance at getting a good education. YEAH RIGHT!! Not to mention tuition prices go up every year in my state! Not to mention the wait list for nursing schools gets longer and longer every year!!! *SIGH* Plus we owe my father in law more than 30 thousand dollars because of my husband's school loan and truck and motorcycle and we owe my mom at least 5 thousand. I needed to vent. Sorry guys about the multiple upper caps words. I know it's yelling in the world of being online.... I feel a little better now LOL but now I feel like crying

This is a land of opportunity. Where else in a world can a person go back to school when they are 40 or even 50 years old. Where else can you get a job in an afternoon. Why don't you go to Europe or Africa and live there for a while.

UM Review RN, ASN, RN · Feb 3, 2005

So glad things have turned around for you!

Just in case you might have a friend in need, I just wanted to add that it is possible to work your way up. Some hospitals have tuition reimbursement programs, so you could literally work as a housekeeper while going to school, and the hospital would take care of your books and tuition in exchange for you working for them for a couple of years.

I got through nursing school working fulltime with the help of tuition reimbursement and a lot of my friends have too.

Best wishes to you.

SmilingBluEyes · Feb 3, 2005

(Edited to add: I missed the later posts before writing this.)
Land of opportunity does not mean you will have an opportunity to vault into a high paying job with no education or experience. There is absolutely nothing wrong with working as a custodian (my dear grandmother did until she died at age 74.) My first job was a housekeeper in a nursing home and during nursing school one of my three jobs was cleaning a church. Where there is a will, there is a way.
We all have issues in our lives. We have the right to pursue happiness, not to have it handed to us. I know your road is going to be hard, but take the loans, get the "low paying crappy job" even if it's scrubbing other people's toilets, and go after what you want. Good luck :).

Perfect post. I was born here, lived here all my life, but have had to work for everything I got. The "opportunity" you refer to is really the freedom to pursue one's dreams, and having the ability to WORK toward that goal in the manner one sees fit without interference from oppressive governmental bodies or others. That is an opportunity the USA still offers to us that other countries do not. It never meant "freebies for those who need them". Being military, we made little enough to qualify for WIC, and food stamps, but not for daycare assistance. Go figure....So I had to scrape and eat a lot of rice beans and ground beef to pony up for daycare so I could go to school. My "opportunity" lay in being able to GO to school, however much it hurt financially, and go on to graduate. And I did! :)

I am glad The OP now sees this. And to the OP, you have the right to vent anytime. I won't condemn you. I have been where you are, being a military spouse. Talk about never seeing my husband? He was gone, out of town, my entire 4th semester in nursing school!!!! So, that essentially left me a "single mom" of a 3 year old boy at the most stressful and academically difficultl point of nursing school. I used to break out in hives and developed temporary PVC's in my heart beats, due to all that stress. But I made it.....

Ya do what you have to, and when done, you feel enormous pride at your accomplishment. Please don't be discouraged. Keep plugging away, do what you have to. We are here to encourage you along your path to becoming a nurse, believe me. We can be awesome cheerleaders here....and we will be here to remind you when you get down in the dumps, that you CAN do it. We all did! I wish you the VERY best. Hang in there, and keep on pluggin away! :)

Tweety, BSN, RN · Feb 4, 2005

(blondebritbrat, if you're going to pm people, you should enable your pm to allow us to respond to you.)

I didn't mean to imply your uncle was rich. It's always been a joke of mine that I wish I had a rich uncle who put me in his will. :)

Again, best wishes and good luck in all you do. Money is the source of much stress and distress in our lives isn't it?

Fun2, BSN, RN · Feb 4, 2005

I can understand your situation, but stop and think.

You pay $500 in gasoline?????? Try moving closer in...there's your tuition!

Get the loans, or seek scholarships.

Work part time, go to school part time. If you could go to school part time, without hubby minding you being gone, you could work part time. That way you can save up some tuition money. Take one class at a time.

Wait until your trust fund opens up. ...whatever.

I know that every situation seems terrible for the one dealing with it, but you have to help yourself. America is the land of opportunity, but God helps those who help themselves. Don't set around with your hand out. Get up, do what you can. See if you can find scholarships or something. Put your time at home to good use.

....and most of all, good luck! :)

Q. · Feb 4, 2005

My two cents: take the loans and go to school. If you get to pay them back with a trust fund at the end, great. If you don't, who cares? You'll just be like most of the rest of us. I graduated in debt. Getting the education I needed to start a career was well worth every penny. If you look at it that way, you might find your situation isn't as bad as it feels right now.

Agree 100%. 80% of my nursing education was in the form of loans, which just about ANYONE qualifies for, and I'm still paying them off to this day. If you have a trust to pay them off with, all the better. I didn't have that.

apaisRN, RN, CRNA · Feb 4, 2005

I'm glad things are looking up. I have two pieces of advice: get yourselves health insurance, you can't afford NOT to. And if you are faced with loans again, remember that school debt and mortgages are "good" debt. They are an investment in your future. It's not like running up your credit card on clothes and nice dinners out.

My husband and I have no undergrad loans, and we have been blessed financially in other ways as well. BUT - we will have to take out loans for me to go to CRNA school, for tuition and some living expenses. I was raised to be very conservative with money, and I hate the idea of debt too. But this is to improve our lives, and we can live more simply and have a little more money anxiety for a couple years while we do this. I keep telling myself this. A lot of people have gotten far in life by starting on loans.

Good luck with everything. Take care of yourselves and think carefully about your financial choices.

BadBird, BSN, RN · Feb 4, 2005

Honey, you are young, and newly married. I think you should not focus of what is in your trust fund and get your little patootie in a job. Make your own money and take some of the stress off of your situation. Start out in a community college taking prerequisites, even if you only take one class a semester. You will gain knowledge and strength as you work towards your goal. Your uncle sounds very controlling, once you are 25 get a attorney to go after your money, if was left to you not him so you are entitled to it. Until then don't think about it, just take once semester at a time. Good luck.

Jo Dirt · Feb 4, 2005

BTW Fallonrn, I am sorry you feel that I am a "nutjob" and hope that nobody else gets the response that I got from you when all I wanted was some advice on whether I should take the loans or not. Maybe I should have made my original post clearer. For that I apologize too.

BBB, I can empathize with you, and I believe I know how you are feeling right now, because I have been through many situations as you have described (suffered from severe depression most of my life -I'm 30 now-lost my father at age 17, have been sexually assaulted many times in my life-by my older sister's boyfriend and by some boys at my school. Last year I "flipped out" from my depression and ran off and met these idiots in another state who claimed they wanted to help me with my depression. Well, this woman's husband raped me.

Anyway...you get the idea.

You sound very emotionally charged right now, and I know firsthand that when you are feeling this way it is not the best time to make major financial decisions. Please see if you can find a clinic or someone who can perhaps prescribe something to help you calm down. I have been taking Lexapro for a year and I feel like it has saved my life.

You may feel as though you haven't a penny but if you write down and budget your money, do without or get rid of things you don't need, you will be surprised at how resourceful you can be. Maybe you will do without cable tv or eating out for awhile, but you will be doing what is really important: taking care of yourself.

If you always do what you've always done, you will always get what you've always got.

Chad_KY_SRNA · Feb 4, 2005

I am glad things have turned around for you. Life is like that sometimes. God bless,

Chad

blondebritbrat · Feb 4, 2005

Actually guys, I am leaving this forum which is why I haven't responded to some of the comments on here. I got quite a few nasty pm's after I posted this and I tried to ignore it but people will be people and pass their judgement on other people. Maybe I should have not given so much information and just asked whether I should take the loans and kept my mouth shut. That is why you couldn't pm me back Tweety because I disabled all of my options and have since left. So thank you guys for all those KIND replies and will return only when I become a nurse and have a nursing question.

bonnieL123 · Feb 4, 2005

If you really want to go to school you'll find away. Due to other circumstance I was not able to go to school until my children were grown, I am 45 years old and in school full time. My husband also made to much money for me to qualify for grants, but we tighten our belts and are making it. Make a plan and stick to it if you want to go to school.

OK....you're broke BUT you do not work. You want to go to school AND you qualify for loans BUT you think that is ridiculous. You don't want to work because you would never see your husband...well I'm sure there are a lot of people in that situation... what good is a lot of time together broke and stressing when you could work and actually enjoy the time you do have together? Speaking from experience (I won't go into my story) GO TO WORK, get some loans, go to school, get a good job, live happily and let your trust fund help pay off your debt.