We have always been low income, actually it is considered very low. My husband had a high fever when he was little and had brain damage so he has to do manual labor and he rarely had a full time job. He has had the same job for 15 years now, but he he got cut down to 25 hours per week last Dec. But at least he makes per hour. I can’t really make much money either. I am suspecting ADHD but I know I do have depression I get bad anxiety attacks. I have had part time jobs before but the last 2 were disasters so I kind of lost interest in working. I have tried doing ebay but you almost have to have money to start with to get inventory. I would like to make crafts and needlework to sell. Right now I have a paper route but am hardly making any money once I put gas in the van. We roughly make ,000 a year and we live in rural Michigan. Here is how we are living. We own a small ranch home on a bit over one acre that we bought with a rural development loan. The payments are very reasonable which I don’t think is the problem. We have a huge property tax bill though, for our income, of over 00 a year because of a city water assessment. We have home insurance to pay. The taxes are about to go higher because my mom has given us money in order to build a garage so we can do woodworking and crafts and things. We have a well and the water is crappy so we have to run a water softener and a water cooler. We will have to get a USDA loan in order to get city water hooked up which I think will save us money in the long run but we run the chance of not qualifying to get the loan because they have income limits and we are running right at the limit-???? we make too much money! We can’t get any other loan because we had a bankruptcy 2 years ago. That is how we used to live. On credit cards. Even when we lived in an apartment. We had a townhouse apartment with a basement and and it was government subsidized. We paid about the same as we are here but we did not have taxes or insurance to pay. The only thing is about those apartments is once you make even a little bit extra money, the raise your rent. My husband is the one who went the most hog-wild on credit cards, buying wood working equipment and electronics. I didn’t use them much for myself. Not hardly at all until we moved here and then it was mostly for clothes. We did use them for a lot of traveling and we even got cash off one once to buy an old car. When we moved here we used them a lot for home improvement because this house was a shack and my husband has a lot of pride. He is afraid to let anyone know we are low income. We also had to use them for car repair. Everytime we get a second car it ends up being a hunk of junk because that is all we can afford and then it breaks down. So right now we have one car (a minivan) that my mom paid for after we had our other cars repossessed after the bankruptcy and we are supposed to be paying her back but are having trouble. The insurance is plpd. We have a landline phone and my husband has a cell phone, which in my opinion, has a higher payment than we can comfortably afford. He gets it through verizon and it has a contract. He got rooked into getting a smart phone last Dec. and it was a disaster; we could not afford it so he went back to a regular one. I don’t know why he just doesn’t get a Trac phone or something cheapy but he gets concerned about the coverage areas. I do not have a cell phone; well I do own one, a trac phone, but I don’t have minutes on it because at this point I feel it would be a luxury. I rarely call anyone because of my social anxiety anyway. We have dsl internet and the cost of it is going higher and higher. Right now it is I think. We could get a slower one but we like to run Netflix shows on it so I don’t know if a slower one would work. We have dishnetwork, the cheapest package and we are thinking about canceling it when the contract runs out because we rarely watch "regular" tv. My husband is older and only likes to watch stuff from netflix like old westerns and stuff from the 60’s. I like to watch HGTV but to pay over a month to watch one channel it is not worth it. I mostly read or surf the internet for my entertainment. We have a dog that we have to buy food for and pay vet bills for. We do not buy cigarettes or booze or get tattoos or anything like that. My husband does tend to spend a lot of money at hardware stores for his "puttering" hobby. I rarely buy anything for myself these days. We have one daughter who is on her computer almost 24/7 she has mild autism so she prefers solitude and her computers which we have to buy. She gets ssi and we depend on that for some income too. But she is almost 18. We don’t have much food in the house. We are paying on a loan to get cemetery plots. We make too much money to get food stamps or medicaid. We have to pay for dental

Solyndra announces it plans to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is suspending operations and seeks a reorganization. Click here for the company’s full statement.

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Solyndra, a major manufacturer of solar technology in Fremont, has shut its doors, according to employees at the campus.

"I was told by a security guard to get my [stuff] and leave," one employee said. The company employs a little more than 1,000 employees worldwide, according to its website.

Shortly after it opened a massive 0 million facility, it canceled plans for a public stock offering earlier this year and warned it would be in significant trouble if federal loan guarantees did not go through.

The company has said it will make a statement at 9am California time, though it’s not clear what that statement will be. An NBC Bay Area photographer on the scene reports security guards are not letting visitors on campus. He says "people are standing around in disbelief." The employees have been given yellow envelopes with instructions on how to get their last checks.

Solyndra was touted by the Obama administration as a prime example of how green technology could deliver jobs. The President visited the facility in May of last year and said "it is just a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism and the fact that we continue to have the best universities in the world, the best technology in the world, and most importantly the best workers in the world. And you guys all represent that. "

The federal government offered 5 million in low cost loan guarantees from the Department of Energy. NBC Bay Area has contacted the White House asking for a statement.

Some Republicans have been very critical of the loans. "I am concerned that the DOE is providing loans and loan guarantees to firms that aren’t capable of competing in the global market, even with government subsidies" Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns told the New York Times.