Glad I found this board!

Avatar for redwillow72
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Glad I found this board!
4
Mon, 12-13-2004 - 7:26am

Hi everyone! I'm obviously a newbie here just trying to vent! Here's the scoop so far. I'm a 32 year old SAHM with one DD. DH is a physician. I'm sure you're all thinking mega-bucks. Think again. When I tell you the situation, you'll see it way differently. When we got married in 2000, DH was working for a physician group. This was his first actual job in his field, since he worked for the ER for years on end. My SIL lost her DH on 9/11. DH ran to be by his family's side. He came back to find out he lost his job. He proceeded with a lawsuit, didn't win much, but he won. I at the time was working. Since there was this problem, DH said he couldn't work for anyone ever again, so we ran to open up our own medical practice. I quit my job to be his secretary and to learn how to deal with insurances. We built up a good practice together. It was from scratch though. Normally when people start a business, they have money saved. Nope! We used all our credit cards, took out all kinds of credit lines, refinanced, etc. But we thought that wouldn't matter b/c we were getting a lot of referrals. Anyhow, we got pregnant in 2002 with our DD due in 2003. DH didn't want to send DD to daycare, so we hired a real "winner" sarcastically speaking. She was the downfall of our practice. She was stealing petty cash, acting really weird, wasn't scheduling properly...so about three weeks after my c-section, I went into the office part-time b/c all we kept finding were people who wanted the big pay, but didn't want to work. Thank goodness my grandparents were available to watch her. So after that, things went down hill. We moved into a bigger space which was double the rent, after refinancing we couldn't get a second mortgage on our building because our production went down...we started racking up our credit card bills again.........and the latest is we found our business checking account overdrawn! Our business account is what feeds our personal account to pay for our home expenses! We actually had to borrow money from DH's parents, and now we only have $400 in our business checking! Sure we have settlement money saved from our refinance, so we may have to dip into that unfortunately. We're afraid of going bankrupt or even losing the business. I never went to college, so I can't make a large figure if I needed to go back to work. We have a nice 4-bedroom house and thinking of losing that is scary. I took out all my credit cards from my wallet and stored them away. We told all the adult family memebers no christmas gifts this year. We had also purchased furniture on a credit line which there is no payments until Sept. of next year, so as soon as the bill comes in for that, we'll pay that from the settlement money. I'm so scared. I've never been in this situation before. I've always had perfect credit, and now that my name is on all these credit lines with DH, and the mortgage, I'm afraid my credit is going to get spoiled. I'm not blaming DH. It's just how things turned out.

Jen

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Mon, 12-13-2004 - 7:54pm

Hi Jen,

I just wanted to give you a {hug} and say Welcome! We're glad you're here (not glad you're in debt...just glad you found us :)

It sounds like you're dealing with a lot at the moment. It's great that you're going into Christmas with a realistic attitude. It's those kinds of shifts in thinking that will get you out of this.

Looking forward to reading more of your posts (if you haven't seen it yet, we 'check in' every Monday to share how the previous week went...feel free to jump in if you haven't already!)

Again, welcome.
BK




iVillage Member
Registered: 02-19-2004
Mon, 12-13-2004 - 9:25pm

Hi and welcome to the board. Sorry to hear about your stressful situation. Are things looking up for the business or down? If you have money coming in and you think you can recover soon, then just keep plugging away. If not, why not consider renting out your home and then renting a place for the three of you that is much smaller. It could just be for 6 months or a year, but it could ensure your mortgage will be paid, and free up some living expenses.

Do you have one car or two? If you have two, consider selling one. If you have cell phones, cancel your home phone and cancel your cable. That should free up $100 per month. Basically go on a home budget diet, no eating out, take your lunch to work, no new clothes, no nothing. I realize you may be doing that already, though. What about finding another doctor to share the space with you? That could reduce your business expenses. I am trying to think of what else, but that is what I have so far.

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Avatar for cl_phocid
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 12-14-2004 - 5:56am

Hi Jen and welcome to the board.

All my best,
Danni

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-16-1999
Wed, 12-15-2004 - 7:48pm
Please don't think this is dumb or simplistic but... We had a friend ( a dentist) who managed to open his private practice about two weeks after the cut off yellow pages ads. Because he decided not to take "capitation" dental insurance he was essentially left with no real practice at all and all the debt of opening an office. He lives in a resort area so he managed to do well by becoming the "on-call" dentist for many of the major hotels. I think he sent the front desk of each place a muffin basket and chatted up the front desk crew as he left a stack of his cards. If you had a dental emergancy in that city the card you were handed was probably his. Everyone paid cash/ crdit cards and lots of it. He actually set up a room in his office where he could sleep if he had to since he was willing to be on-call most of the time. I think he charged about $200.00 to open the doors to his office. Is it possible that something like that could work for your husband if you live in an area that has a fair amount of out of town visitors? The patients would file their own claims and it is quick cash. I know that our friend phased out of the "hotel practice" as his regular practice built up but it paid the bills well for a while.