My wife and I keep cutting back, and we're getting significant raises, but yet we keep going further and further in the hole every month. Restocking the fridge and freezer is now well over $500 a month. Mortgage is up, taxes are up, fuel is up. Pile home maintenance costs, transportation maintenance cost, credit card interest and student loan payments. We're both in 50k careers. We would need to make double what we're both making in order to actually pay down our debts and have enough money to live.

How is this possible? How can two people working full-time salaried 40 to 70 hours a week, keep getting further and further behind despite cutting unnecessary spending? How in the fuck is this okay to anyone? It's getting to the point where I'm strongly considering criminal enterprise, despite the fact that we both work government related jobs.

I'm exhausted, I'm frustrated, I feel like I'm being crushed under a boulder at the bottom of a lake. I don't want to go on living like this. I've been talking about getting a second job but I'm literally at my first job from 8:00 to 8:00 Monday through Friday and on the weekends I have to struggle and work to try and keep our house from falling apart, Plus doing paperwork on Sundays for work, and my vehicle drivable.

It's the 6th of the month, All of our credit cards are maxed out, All of our accounts are at $0 and 0 cents. Where the fuck do we go from here?

Edit: some people have asked how the mortgage has increased... Escrow underpayment caused by exponentially increasing property tax. When we bought this house 2 years ago the property tax was $799. We just got our new assessment, it's up to $2,112.

A 970 ft² one bed one bath, on a double lot, assessed at $177,000. Like give me a break.

Oh yeah this house needed a new roof this summer, Only half of which I managed to get done, 6k in credit card debt later(major structural damage had to be repaired)

And yes someone hit it on the head saying that I'm a teacher. Unfortunately the workload just isn't negotiable. I either spend my nights and weekends grading and doing lesson planning or I spend my nights and weekends fielding calls from parents about why I didn't do the grading and lesson planning on my nights and weekends 🤣. As I said on that comment, If someone, anyone, had had the decency to sit me down and explain the realities of the decision that I was making when I went into this major, I would have turned and ran. Teacher prep courses do not prepare you for the reality of teaching. The worst part is that I'm a shop teacher, I have real skills, but my degree is a BS in technology education.... No one even knows what that is. It's an absolutely worthless degree which is crazy considering that I have 3/4 of the same classes as an industrial safety major.