I’m 76 and drive for Uber after losing my savings to my wife’s cancer bills. I’m not sure how long I can keep driving.

The now-famous article is based on a conversation with Jeff Mason, 76, who Driving for Uber Earn extra income in New Jersey. Mason and his wife liquidated their savings after her death cancer treatmentshe had experienced it before Affordable Care ActLimitations on insurance companies denying coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions. The couple has spent the past two decades trying to recover financially. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In 1960, when I was 10 years old, I started shoveling sidewalks and mowing lawns. I once paid 25 cents to mow a lawn. Growing up I worked at produce markets, washed dishes, and worked in retail. My mother was ill for several years and died when I was in high school. I went to prep school for a year and then to college, but I gave up my studies to become the carer for my younger siblings. I drove for my siblings for a few years before going back to college.

My father owned a construction company and I worked for him during the summer. I transitioned from being a manual laborer to working with engineering staff. I learned how to operate heavy equipment and large trucks, build bridges and highways. I also worked at a wastewater treatment facility and then moved into management. I do estimating and project management for a professional construction company that does warehouse and loading dock work.

My wife is a stay-at-home mom, but when our youngest daughter moved out, she decided she needed to do more. She found a job at an environmental testing company.

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Within a year, she started experiencing abdominal pain and visited the doctor several times.

She visited her family doctor, who determined she had classic symptoms of a bad gallbladder. She underwent her first surgery and had to stay in the hospital for several days. It wasn’t until months later that the bills started coming.

Our son is getting married and my wife’s job is voluntary, not forced. She took a voluntary leave of absence and began receiving unemployment benefits. We began paying over $100 a month to COBRA to maintain her health insurance.

A few months later, she discovered a lump in her chest. We started getting bills from doctors and hospitals. They told us there was no insurance. I said we did it. We are paying COBRA and I have received all the canceled checks. She had breast surgery, but the hospital told us point blank that we didn’t have insurance. She was sent home the next day because we couldn’t afford it.

The easiest way to understand what is happening is to assume that the company has 300 employees. We paid 1/300 of the monthly premium. They did not pay the remaining 299. So even if the insurance company takes our money, we are not covered. They want me to go from me paying my insurance and her paying hers to basically paying four policies out of one income. I make too much money to qualify for government assistance.

We went to several attorneys and each of them said we had no case because there was no intention on the part of anyone to defraud us.

As her cancer progressed, we were unable to obtain insurance with continued coverage.

I talked to an insurance company that turned us down and they said we would need insurance for anything else that might happen, but she wouldn’t be covered for cancer treatment because cancer is a pre-existing condition. At the same time, we had no income. The company says the only way she can get insurance is if I divorce her and she can collect benefits and get insurance.

We decided to liquidate. We cashed out our IRAs, sold our cars, remortgaged our homes, and emptied our savings. After a year, I started making monthly payments to everyone. We eventually ran out of money. It took me 13 years to pay off my second mortgage.

I remember getting a bill from the hospital for about $246,000 to cover the cost of the surgery and her recovery in the hospital. We still have a long way to go in dealing with the aftermath. By the end, the bill totaled about $300,000. This all happened before the Affordable Care Act.

The rebuilding process is slow. Our IRA doesn’t exist at all. I remember coming home one day to find my wife crying on the front porch because the bill collector wanted more money. During her treatment and recovery, she never cried once.

The consequences continued into the 2000s.

Our credit was pretty bad at the time. It took us a while to get the credit card. Our car broke down and I was working hard but couldn’t get back and forth. I bought a cheap motorcycle and used it to get around construction sites. Little by little, we built credit.

I worked 12 hours a week, half a day on Saturday, and almost every Sunday night. I also worked part-time. We started saving $10 from each paycheck. We live sparsely. We didn’t spend any money. My wife didn’t go to the hairstylist or buy makeup. We bought a cheaper house. I’ve also been lucky enough to have never been fired.

We have lived in the same three-bedroom house in New Jersey since 1988. Sometimes family members need a place to stay because of their own circumstances. There were probably 10 or 15 people staying with us for a few months. Among them was my father, who spent the last five years of his life here. Our house is called a sanctuary. People come here to heal, both spiritually and physically.

My wife got involved in elderly care after going through cancer, transporting people to and from the hospital. She formed a bond with someone who had an elderly parent or family member and began caring for them part-time.

I really don’t want to retire in my 60s, but we are both getting older and my wife wants me to spend more time at home. When I retire, I have some equity in my home and about $300,000 in my IRA. I also started setting up an IRA for my wife, which has brought my account to five figures. This allowed us to travel extensively within the United States for the first few years. But part of me feels like we might not live that long because everyone around us is dying.

I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had several heart surgeries. I decided to relax my wallet and stop worrying so much about saving. In those years, we probably spent more money than we should have.

During the pandemic, I noticed that I needed to get back to work.

We live on a 20-acre property surrounded by nothing but woods. We lived an isolated life without many friends.

I started driving for Uber to continue the lifestyle I had at my last job. My original goal was to make $100 a day. A few weeks now, I’m making well over $600. I’ve had weeks where I’ve made over $1,000. I usually work evenings and weekends. Since I started driving for Uber, I haven’t had to withdraw any money from my IRA. Money anxiety begins to disappear.

Even with my prostate cancer, pacemaker, and half a lung removed, my strength and stamina are still very good. As a mental challenge, I try to push myself in any situation. I find night driving very peaceful and I enjoy the solitude. Driving increases the self-sufficiency of my life, and I also meet the denizens of the dark, who are often more interesting.

We all want to leave something for our children, despite their wealth. We don’t know what their lives will be like in 10 years.

I wonder how much longer I can drive. I know that if I retired today, we would be able to make ends meet and possibly remortgage our house. But everything is getting more expensive. Our children care about us and want us to be closer, and we know they will support us when we grow up. But I’m not too worried about our future.

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