<prompt> Human: Ive been a Reddit user for awhile now throwaway to share my story and I was intrigued by personal finance. People here genuinely knew how to correctly budget, save and spend money and they were willing to share their knowledge. It may have been in a tough love way, but they tell you what you need to here. There are also, I believe, 3 types of subscribers to pf. First, the ones who truly need help, are desperate, yet will do anything to get out of their financial mess. They are the ones who ask for help, take the advice and change for the better. They are usually the success stories have have wonderful updates on how they are improving their lives. The second group are the people that have had their rough times and have figured out a way to fix their lives. They are financial stable and able to offer great advice. Then there are the 3rd set of subscribers, like me. They are in denial. They realize they have a problem, since they started looking for help here in the first place, but they lie to themselves that its a serious problem. They ask for help but convince them self that its not as bad as everyone correctly views it. They think everything will eventually work itself out and that theyve just hit a rough patch. Nothing to see here. I can now see that I fall in that 3rd group. If I can offer any advice, please dont be like me or in that 3rd group. My denial has caused me to live an overspending lifestyle and has caused me to dig my hole deeper and deeper. A year ago I asked for advice here, got some solid suggestions, and convinced myself that the people giving advice were overreacting and that Id be OK. I spent the next year spending more money than I had or was earning. My wife did the same. Instead of stopping each other, we enabled each other. There was no one to stop and sensibly look at the situation and simply say maybe we should wait till we have the money . We though itd be fine since we both had well paying jobs and had the money to pay for it. Well our lack of emergency planning bit us hard in the ass. Unexpectedly, my wife lost her well paying job. She works in a trade where working for yourself is more advantageous, and her employer figured this out and didnt want the stress of running a semi big business anymore. The only benefit this did was motivate my wife to realize she could do it on her own and get her to start her own business. On the other end, its added a whole new amount of stress. It will take months for her to build up a clientele anywhere near to what she dealed with before and all of her income now is going towards operating costs. My decently paying job is barely enough to cover the bills, without factoring gas, groceries or any spending money. Ive spent the last week looking at the numbers at its basically impossible to pay our bills in October without one of us getting another job. Because of our lack of planning and our denial of paying off our debt, life is going to be hard for awhile. I already dont see my wife and kids enough as it is, and with a second job, Ill be non existant at home. We are both stressed out all day everyday and it is hurting our marriage. The stress is also taking any patience we may have and leaving us snappy and resentful. My wife went from loving spending all week with the kids to feeling smothered by them and the stress while Im at work. Weve spent the last 3 years working opposite schedules to avoid daycare, and now that we may need it, we cant afford it. My wife has changed from a mostly happy person to some one who I think is truly depressed and just wants to be in bed all day. Ive turned from the patient calm person wholl do anything to make people laugh to someone who keeps my stress inside and let it slowly kill me. Every moment alone is a fight to hold back an Anxiety attack or thoughts of depression. I fear its starting to affect my work and if I were to lose that, wed lose everything. Sometimes I think itd just be better if I died and left my wife and kids with my life insurance to start over. So thats my story. My lack of learning how to budget, lack of saving and emergency planning and denial that anything was wrong has dug me a hole I feel I will never get out of. If you think you need help, SEEK it out and be opened to it not being what you want to hear. If you dont have any savings, stop and open a savings account and start saving today. Even pennies are a perfect start. And if you think everything will be OK and work itself out, think of the absolute worst case scenario regarding your job or finances and act like itll happen today. Plan for everything going wrong and come up with a plan to tackle it head on. Dont be like me. Save, plan and prepare. And if you have a spending problem, seek help. Id trade every material thing I own to be happy again. Instead Im in a crater sized hole with only the garden shovel that got me there seeing the signs of a flood coming and wondering if Ill ever see the sun again.  <response>: The good part of realizing youre one of the third category is realizing the people on this sub are still here to help you out. Once you talk with your wife when she gets home, come back and give specifics of what you need help with this time around - well help you start digging out. 