Housewife
Interview: Housewife
This person does not want to come forward with her name. I show her full respect. I interviewed her, and this is the outcome, with her own words which i translated to English for you to read.
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We are 3 in the home, 2 adults and 1 child. We both have a job, but my husband has lost his extra hours, but he is the main source of income. I have been laid off, but i was allowed to continue working at a 50% position. So the income of the home has been cut by 50-70%.
We bought a property some 45 minute drive outside the capital and i drive to work every day to the capital. It costs us around 40-50 thousand just gas per month. So after i was laid off it does not pay off to drive to work, in terms of income and expenses, but i can not afford to quit working .. so we do not know what we can do. As is, there are no jobs available at this place we live at. My husband works in Keflavik which is a 15 minute drive, and has a 12 hour shift plan and is a project manager.
We have two cars, the loans of them have raised by just about 10 thousand ISK per month. We can not afford to buy winter tires for the cars or pay the loans of them, the payments are piling up. I was offered to freeze the loans on the cars and pay for the next three months only 50% of the dues, but to do so i have to pay all the bills that are behind and the automobile tax which is around 120 thousand ISK of the both cars. So we will probably lose the cars, and when that happens we can not do our jobs since we both have to drive out of this town to get to work.
The house mortgages are also raising a lot, and we are not able to make ends meet. We are behind on payments a few months back and our house is on its way to be auctioned. What happened about that was that i had an overdraft on my account that was invalidated. I asked the bank to renew it like I usually do when this situation comes up. I did not hear from the bank so i thought this was through but when pay day came along, I noticed that my wages were stuck in there because the overdraft had not been renewed. I spoke with the bank (this is in may) and they say that there has not been enough pay roll in this account in at least 1 1/2 year but they have never commented on this before when i spoke about prolonging the overdraft, which i did every 3-6 months. I am really working two jobs, (cleaning for companies) and one paycheck always goes to this account, but the other paycheck always goes to another account. I made a deal with the ban that if I would but ALL may pay into this one account from the next payday, I would get my overdraft put back on. Then payday comes and both my paychecks are deposited into that account. And again, the bank denied to put the overdraft back on because my pay roll is not enough. Now there had been two months with out pay and my wages are all frozen in there. Which meant that we could not pay the mortgages and others. The third payday comes and also interest relief and all that goes into this account and i get the third denial. The loans of the house were being collected through a law office now. There i spoke with a woman who handles these issues and finally she contacts the bank after i told her the whole story that the bank it self was standing in the way of us being able to pay the mortgages. The mortgage on the house are from this same bank, this very branch. Finally i get the overdraft prolonged, but the bank paid up a little loan from me plus VISA bills that had been piling up as well, so after that i only had 40 thousand ISK to put into the mortgage. They paid the other things without speaking with us about it, it was a priority to
me to pay the house mortgages. So we are few months behind on payments because of this, and we can not get a refinance of your mortgage either because the bank says it is impossible. Finally we discover that the lawyer at the collection law office advised us to freeze the loans and get a mortgage refinance and it was supposed to be possible. So we are struggling to get that done, but it is very hard. We really do not know
what the status is.
We have an 8 year old son who is attending school here. He is happy and successful, since he does not know much about the depression or the situation at home. I have done my best in keeping him away from that knowledge, as i think it is not right to put such burden on children. Me and my husband are trying as we can to make each day, and perhaps 1-3 times a month I cook dinner for us at night. We have not had the money to
but food. We do try to have the up most essentials like milk, bread, cereal and such. Usually the dinner here is cereal or soup. We often run out of money entirely, not for gas to get to work. So we have used our sick days from work when that happens. There is no money to buy clothes or shoes for our son, but we have had much of it given to us both for us and our son, and that has saved us. I do not care if we can not buy
clothes for us, but not being able to do anything for our sun is very depressing and burdening. But this has always managed some way or another. We do not even have money to see the dentist or a doctor when something has happened. We have a great family all around us but now everyone seems to be struggling as well. That´s just the way things are.
I have to admit that these worries are a heavy load to carry, worries about the house and the cars. I can not imagine ending up on the streets or having to move in on someone. We are trying to save what we have to save or can. I think the house is most important, to have a roof over our heads.
We have not asked for food aid, or any other help.
The attitude at the bank when you go there, is extremely cold. I get filled with anxiety every time we have to talk with the bank.
The priority now is to save the house and the cars. But on the other hand Christmas is around the corner and i am not seeing that i can buy the Christmas dinner or Christmas presents, not even for my own son. I have always been a Christmas child but i´m dreading for this Christmas and there is just over a month till they arrive. I would like to skip them this year, i would do so if i did not have a child. Pull the covers over my head and just lay there.
This has been very hard on us, we fight more and there is mental stress and anxiety. I remember that i always looked forward to get paid. Now i´m just nervous because we know we can not pay what we have to pay.
About the government, then i have not seen it yet that they are going to help people who are having problems like they stated just after the crash. I think they are only saving themselves. Us the common citizens have to pay for the rest of our lives, they have leveraged our children as well. I think everything is just black, and i do not see that i´m going to make it, and the worst thing is, that i do not know where to look for help. I feel like all the doors are closed. This has increased my anxiety and depression, just the worries about not being able to pay mortgages or buy food. I have no idea where this will go ……………….
Translated by the owner of this website.
