I am about to get really real with you guys.

I don’t usually share a lot of the nitty gritty life stuff, but after sharing a bit with you over on Instagram you’ve been very supportive and a lot of you are in the same kind of boat!

So here goes nothing. Let’s dive into this last year how our messy finances have taken over our life.

Now if I am being honest, we were in a bit of a mess before this time last year. But at that point I had it under control.

We did what a lot of people do with their first big credit card. We spent. And spent. And eventually overdrew and things got way out of hand. Then we made the mistake of closing the account and chopping up all of our cards, which we later found out was actually a bad idea. You shouldn’t close your credit accounts because it reflects poorly on your credit.

Anyways, we did that.

And all that added into the first big hit on our credit. But we got it under control, set up a great payment plan, and have been working on that for two years at this point.

Okay, now fast forward to this time one year ago, when everything started to get messy again.

If you didn’t know, I became a stay at home mom after the twins were born.

It just didn’t make sense to work. Same goes for a lot of millennial families.

Thankfully, my husband had an awesome job.

He made enough to support us, plus he loved the work. So all was good.

Then exactly one year ago today, on my 23rd birthday, he was laid off.

The company closed it’s doors without any sort of mention as to what was going on. Cue the beginning of our messy finances!

At the time, I was taking my birthday shopping trip and hitting up all the places around town that offered birthday deals. My husband called me while I was in line at Dutch Bros Coffee getting my killer FREE birthday drink.

I had the kids in tow, everything was going great. I had taken them with me all over town and was feeling good.

But when he called, I knew something was up. First of all, he never called during the day. He drove a lot for work so we didn’t talk much during the work day. And I just kind of knew by the sound in his voice that he had lost his job. I could just feel it.

And from there everything started to tailspin.

We went to our local human resource office the next day to get signed up for food stamps and any other benefits we were able while he looked for another job. He applied for handfuls of places. I applied for a handful of places also. But we still didn’t know what we would do.

Our plan was essentially to have whoever gets a job offer first go back to work and the other would stay home with the kids. My husband landed a decent job offer within the week, however, it didn’t make nearly enough. But it still qualified us for benefits so we were able to stay afloat in that sense.

I started doing side jobs such as decorating cakes, cleaning for people, and selling what we could do without. And I realize I could have found a night job or something along those lines, but honestly with my then two month old twins I just couldn’t. I was the definition of a “mombie” and did not have it in me. Quite frankly, I barely had it in me to even take control of our messy finances.

My husband continued to look for a better job, but then life came at us again.

Mind you, at this point we had no savings. Him losing his job, along with the holidays and life expenses had wiped that out. Wiped everything out.

It started with being served for a traffic accident that our insurance had thrown out two years prior due to the other party imposing invalid claims.

I can talk about it a bit as we have recently won the case. Essentially they were suing us for thousands of dollars hoping that we had zero evidence to back ourselves. Talk about STRESS.

Thankfully, my husband had a dash cam in his car at the time and recorded the whole thing and you could clearly see in the video that there was no issues with the other parties vehicle during the brief collision.

So we were being sued, then my husband gets into not one, not two, but three effing accidents in the upcoming months. THREE. Two of which weren’t his fault. They were minor accidents, however, still put us out of a car and cost us hundreds in random fees.

Then the last accident landed in a total loss which ended up barely covering the amount we owed on the car. We ended up using what little savings we had to put down on a new car.

My husband did find a new job that paid better in between all of the accidents, which led to us moving closer to his work when our lease was up this past June. We thought it would be a great idea, as our old house wasn’t suited well for the twins and moving closer to his work also meant being closer to our family. But a few weeks after moving we received an enormous bill for the “damage” we caused in our old home.

We then tried fighting the charges as we felt they were beyond excessive and irrational. Within a month they had sent us to collections, without any kind of word. Everything was a total shock but honestly after our luck this past year I wasn’t too surprised.

All of this happening back to back never gave us the time to really get back into the swing of things. To fall back in line with a budget.

We have been constantly playing catch up with what little we had.

And now we’re here. And I’ve given up on our messy finances and don’t have a clue what to do with our finances with where we are at. I have been going back and forth for the past two months with different ideas but I have finally realized that this is so much bigger than me.

We cannot do all of this on our own.

My husband and I aren’t financial experts (obviously) and need some outside help.

So this week, we are going to talk with a bankruptcy lawyer about our messy finances. I don’t know if filing bankruptcy will be the best option, but ideally what I am looking for is some guidance. I figure those lawyers have a lot of experience with people in our position, and will be able to show us our options.

And I think I am going to bring you guys along with me.

Talking about financial problems is a hard thing to talk about. I have no clue why I am ever sharing all of this intimate information with you guys. But something I stand for with Twins and Coffee is sharing the reals of life. And this is just one of them, and one of them that I know for a fact a lot of you have experienced as well.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this while I pan out the details. We are already diving into the Dave Ramsey way, which I will talk about in another post. But would you be interested in following our journey to financial success?