Overwhelmed by out-of-pocket medical costs, Valerie Towe and her husband, Paul, saw their debt load begin to swell last year.
Facing a steady stream of bills for 77-year-old Paul’s chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and neuropathy, Valerie began to tap credit cards to keep up.
“I wasn’t able to make ends meet,” Valerie, 65, told Yahoo Finance.
The cost of weekly groceries added to the strain — nearly doubling last year, she said. And to top it off, as her caregiving duties ramped up, Valerie shifted to a part-time job.
“When you’re a caregiver, you can’t work a full-time job,” she said.
The worst of it, as anyone who has rolled over credit card balances month to month knows, is the ballooning debt that accrues when you can only pay the minimum amount of the balance on credit cards that are ladened with interest rates topping 20%.
