Friends for Life » Money Management Stories

Secret Santa Claus

inez — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 07:26:40 +0000

Bill works in our Money Management Program and one of the people he helps is a frail, elderly lady. He has been helping her for several years. She lives alone. Her income is tiny, but he makes it work for her. She doesn’t have many bills except for the ambulances. Each time her health failed, she called an ambulance and the charge was $600. And, if the hospital didn’t keep her overnight, Medicare didn’t pay any of the bill. If they did keep her, she still had to pay 20% of the charge. Bill worked out a deal with the ambulance company. Each month he sends them $50 on her ambulance bills.

Today the ambulance company called Bill. They are sending her $50 back. Just before Christmas a man came to their company and asked for the name of someone who was struggling to pay his or her bill. This secret Santa paid her entire bill.

A Park for Charlie

inez — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 18:40:09 +0000

Every once in a while, Charlie calls to say how grateful he is to Friends for Life for the help we have given him. We have been working with Charlie for about 8 years now. He is a vet and he had so many problems, but in the past few years he has come to know the Lord. Now, he has the most amazing attitude in spite of the fact that he has lost both legs and has lived through lung cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer and other health problems. Through the years we have helped him manage his money. When he had a chance to buy a house a few years ago he called us. It took some time to get the payments reduced to a point where it was possible, but then Charlie was able to buy his first home. He is a good neighbor and he watches out for all the children. When a park was built in his neighborhood, they named it after Charlie. You can read about Charlie in this article by Aileen Loehr at the Fayette County Record. Charlie is such a happy guy and he gives all the credit to God.

We Can’t Understand Anything She Says

inez — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 05:08:28 +0000

I never heard of Huntington’s Disease until I met a tiny, elderly lady who had this horrible disease. It is a degenerative brain disorder that affects a person’s ability to walk, talk and think. Victims shake uncontrollably. I remember standing in her living room talking to her because I did not want to sit down. It was one of many ‘awful’ houses that got that way because our clients were not able to take care of themselves or their homes.

A grant from the city would make all the repairs that she needed for her house, but the contractors refused to do the work unless we would provide an interpreter. Her disease had slowly taken away her ability to speak clearly. The disease had progressed to the point that it seemed impossible to understand anything she said. Fortunately, I had one employee who understood her so we were able to work with contractors to get the work done on her house. We helped her get new ‘slightly used’ furniture to replace the ‘awful’ stuff. I was especially pleased when we were able to replace her dining room suite. It was just a board resting on saw horses. She was so unsteady on her feet that she constantly fell against it and, of course, it would fall and so would she. We found a used dinette set that didn’t fall down when she leaned against it.

One day we told her we would pick her up to take her to buy new shoes. It had been a very long time since she had new shoes and she was very excited. When we got there, she had dozens of tiny cuts on her legs from trying to shave with very unsteady hands.

She loved to go places. When we took her to the doctor, she would ask to ride by the lake. In fact, wherever we took her we had to allow extra time to ride by the lake. She was a bright woman who loved her independence and with our help she was able to stay independent for a very long time – in spite of her illness.

Cooking on a Space Heater

inez — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 04:28:59 +0000

She was given a turkey for the holidays, but she didn’t have a stove. She really wanted to have a Christmas dinner, so she wrapped the turkey in foil and cooked it for twenty two hours on her space heater. This lady’s house was falling down around her with plumbing leaking so badly that in order to bathe her, her home health care worker had to turn the water on at the street, heat the water in a coffee pot, fill the tub with water, bathe her, and then go back out to the street to turn the water off.

She owed money to loan companies – lots of loan companies. In fact, $390 of her $420 a month income was supposed to go to loan companies. It took us almost two years to help her pay off all her bills, but every loan company was paid. We got a grant for her to fix up her house, including a stove (no more cooking on the space heater). I kneeled down beside her wheel chair one day and she said, “I prayed God would send someone to help me and I know God sent you to me.”