QUESTION:  My wife and I are having problems with our  finances.  She is a nurse and brings home about $4,000 per month. While,  I work in a real estate brokerage firm and brings home about $3,000.  When the real estate business was booming, we were making a lot of money.

We even used to flip houses, at one point we own five houses. At that time, we were thinking about running  a nursing home as a business. However, my wife was hesitant to leave her stable job. For the last couple of years, however, I was barely making money and all our savings were used up trying to save all of these houses. We hope to sell them for a profit or even just to short sale some of them. Eventually, we lost them one by one. Our home is our only property right now.  

QUESTION: Our creditors are at our door! My wife’s salary is being garnished by the State. Frankly, I’m at my wit’s end.  It all started when I pulled out my 401K savings to start our own business. My wife and I purchased a fixer-upper and made money by re-selling the property.  At one point, we have 4 properties and were making about $50,000 to 100,000 per month. I thought the good times will never end.  

I must admit that we did live it high. Every year, we go on family vacations to Hawaii and the Philippines.  Now, we are left with about $120,000 in credit card bills.  A week ago, American Express sued us for our debt. On top of these, my wife’s paychecks is being garnished for our 2008 State taxes that we failed to pay. We tried consolidating our debts and paid the a debt consolidation company almost $700 every month. However, even that we can barely afford.  We have cut and shaved every bit of unnecessary expenses.  But the future is very bleak.