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In early April, Katelyn was in a financial bind. At home and sick with COVID-19, she hadn’t been paid in weeks. And her bills were due.
“My landlord is kinda beating down my door right now,” she said in a voicemail to the podcast hotline: (724) 276-6534; that’s 724 ARM N LEG.
Weeks later, Katelyn got back in touch: She had made it through with her financial health intact, thanks to a combination of playing hardball with one company and knowing how to play nice with others.
Katelyn works in collections for a financial institution, so she knew how to ask for help. Even so, she didn’t find the process easy. She came out of the ordeal with hard-won tips for all of us, and a heck of a story.
Here are two other resources from the episode: our favorite TikTok mom shares tips for dealing with medical bills and collection agencies, and Hello Landlord. It’s a free online tool that automatically generates letters you can send to your landlord, asserting your legal rights. (Right now, those rights may include some federal protections against evictions.)
“SEASON-19” of “An Arm and a Leg” is a co-production of Kaiser Health News and Public Road Productions.
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Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
by
Dan Weissmann
Kaiser Health News
Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
