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closePAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK Fighting debt's grip
PART OF A SERIESThe struggle to make ends meet in Centre County“The biggest thing that hit us in the face was the rising priceof gas and the change in our health care coverage.”
Anne Danahy
- adanahy@centredaily.com
HOWARD — On weekday mornings, Jeff Snyder makes the 30-mile drive from his family's house on a quiet street in Howard to Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Grays Woods, where he works part time on building maintenance.
CDT photos/Catrina Rawson
Jeff Snyder hugs his wife, Betsy Snyder, while working at the Angel Food Ministries at the Howard Christian Church.
After two hours at the church, Snyder drives to his full-time job at Advanced Color Graphics about five minutes away. When the day ends there at 4 p.m., it’s back to the church for another hour.
For the past year, Snyder has been working part time at the second job in hopes of paying off the debt that he and his wife, Betsy, realized had quickly mushroomed. Betsy, a stay-at- home mother for their two children, took a part-time job at Lowe’s.
Together, with the extra part-time jobs, the Snyders make about $52,000 a year. Jeff Snyder said it isn’t that he doesn’t make a decent wage at Advanced Color Graphics, where he’s worked about 14 years. And the debt didn’t come from exotic vacations or new cars.
They have a mortgage on their modest Howard home, which Betsy Snyder’s father built and they purchased when he died. And the unglamorous costs of day-to-day life piled up: gas, medical bills and food. Raising two children and paying for home repairs and aging cars.
“The biggest thing that hit us in the face was the rising price of gas and the change in our health care coverage,” Betsy Snyder said.
Eventually, they said, they were looking at “serious” credit card debt. About two years ago, they began getting calls from collectors about overdue payments on gasoline credit cards. Before Jeff Snyder took the second job, he said, he would cry himself to sleep at night worrying about which bill he was going to pay and which ones he wouldn’t be able to.
Along with the Snyders’ new jobs, Jeff took a 13-week money management class through the Howard Christian Church, where his nephew, Brian Snyder, is pastor.
“It gave me a lot to think about,” he said. “It showed you really how the credit card companies are ripping you off.”
He realized he would be in a store for one thing and find himself adding other things to
the cart. The Snyders admit they could sometimes have made better choices.
“They are making it so easy to get credit cards. They promise you the stars,” Jeff Snyder said.
The Snyders missed one payment on a card and their interest rate went from 6.9 percent to 21 percent.
Other factors are outside their control: It took their 15- year-old son Joshua, who is 6 feet 1 inch tall and still growing, two weeks to outgrow a pair of sneakers.
After ending up in substantial credit card debt, the Snyders opted for a home equity loan with a low-interest rate. So far, they’ve paid off about $2,000 in gas cards and have started working to pay off other debts and set aside some money for the inevitable costs that crop up.
“We’re slowly working down all of our credit cards. It’s a slow process,” Jeff Snyder said.
Since taking the Financial Peace class, Snyder designates money from his paychecks for all of their expenses, with the hope of building a savings cushion.
“When you’re living paycheck to paycheck, it’s tough to do,” he said.
They try to shield their children — Joshua and Kate, 10 — from their financial woes, making sure there is enough money for Joshua’s band uniform and Kate’s dance classes. But they look for money-saving measures where they can find them. Betsy makes all of Kate’s performance costumes by hand and extra driving is avoided.
“It costs me $50 a week,” Jeff Snyder said of the cost of gas at the end of October. “That’s if I don’t do any extra driving. That’s just to and from work.”
While they have a house and computers and enough money to pay for their children’s after-school activities, there is no extra money for when the 1995 truck has to be replaced. The cost of car repairs recently wiped out the few hundred dollars they had managed to put in an emergency fund.
Despite what Jeff Snyder called “one step forward and two steps back,” when it comes to finances, the Snyders say all of their needs are being met. When the truck was in the garage, a neighbor lent them hers.
“Our faith helps hold us together,” Jeff Snyder said. “We know God will provide for us.”
Anne Danahy can be reached at 231-4648.
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