I have been hesitant to post asking for suggestions because I have seen people in this group absolutely troll the living hell out of people for having credit debt that they can't get out from under. So I'm going to give you my backstory even though you can probably give a fuck less. I am a full time single dad of 2 girls, custody was 50/50 until my ex went off the rails and I had to take the girls from her. It's been 2 separate uphill battles because in Oklahoma fathers have next to zero rights, it is an absolutely ludicrous mother state. Thank God I won, and my kids are safe. I had an excellent job as a member of management for an assembly plant, unfortunately I had to voluntarily remove myself from management in order to get off of nights and on today shift whenever this last custody battle happened and I knew I was going to be getting the girls full time, I took a $7 an hour cut in pay to stay with the company but to get my transfer to mornings. In the last 2 years I have had to take four disbursements out of my 401k to keep from going into the negative in my bank and to stay up on bills, I racked up over $20,000 in lawyer fees as well as having to retain and constantly pay a parenting coordinator to keep an eye on my ex, add in weekly trauma counseling, add in medication, add in a couple $1,000 from having a private investigator follow my ex around to gather more evidence... Long story short I'm tapped and have well over 15 grand in debt and I'm drowning.
I could really use some non-snarky suggestions, everybody's situation is different, and if I had it all to do over again I would still do it the exact same way because the outcome was me getting my kids.