Brian Anderson and his family.
Name: Brian Anderson
Age: 30
Hometown: Murray, Utah
I was working at an entrepreneurial company. We were selling financial planning software. The company took a big dive when the economy went south. I was laid off in July 2009.
I spent the next couple of years working temp jobs. Unemployment insurance lasted for a while and so did COBRA. But then COBRA became prohibitively expensive.
Because we were pregnant with our third child in 2010, we managed to qualify for Medicaid for my wife and children. Otherwise, we would have been completely uninsured, the whole family.
As time went on, as we got into our second year of only having temp jobs and inadequate employment, we ended up dipping so low that we qualified for food stamps.
We are now on WIC (Women, Infants and Children). It covers some of the groceries...enough to help a little bit.
I finally got an interview at FranklinPlanner.com and I got the job in March 2011. It was better than anything I ever had.
After that point, we were making enough that we could get off of Medicaid and food stamps. We had insurance again. Life turned around for us.
NEXT: Heading back to school
