LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. -- "I feel like if we had someone to sit down and help us figure out how to get back on track, we could be OK again and our kids won't suffer and neither will our pride. Hopefully you can see that we are trying to make good decisions, but right now it's really time for a professional's help. We just aren't sure where to turn and how to do it."

That was just one part of the desperate e-mail Alicia and Tony Warner sent to KCTV5.

The family of five is in such dire straits financially that its credit is destroyed. Family members are not able to make payments on any of their bills, and most importantly, they're in danger of losing their cars and even their home.

"I don't even open up the credit card bills anymore. I don't even open them. Don't know what to do with them," Tony said.

The Warners said it all started with what should have been the happiest time of their lives, a little more two years ago, when Alicia found out she was pregnant with twins.

"I always said, 'I wish I had twins.' It's what my comment was, and here I am, getting married, now twins, and I thought, 'This is going to be perfect,'" Tony said.

But it was far from perfect in mid-2007. The twins were born prematurely and spent weeks in the hospital. And as the weeks went by, and the twins started growing, so did the couple's bills.

"It all started just from the drives to the hospital, even just for that minimal time, barely a month, and it started every day, two trips every day over from the Missouri side to here," Tony said.

And with thousands of dollars in bills to pay, the couple's luck continued to fall as the nation's housing market collapsed and Tony, in construction, found work hard to come by.

The drastic drop in income combined with the spike in expenses forced the couple to use credit cards. Pretty soon they were increasing credit lines. One card is at $15,000 and they're maxing those out as well.

They find themselves in a situation where every bill is behind, the phone won't stop ringing and there seems to be only one way out.

"We didn't know if we were going to have to do bankruptcy. We just didn't really know," Alicia said.

"We're always a month behind. I'm behind on everything. Thank God I got a credit line with my barber. I'm not kidding. I'm dead serious. I owe my barber money."

Alicia and Tony, after coming to grips with the fact that their financial future is in jeopardy, are now sitting down with Jana Castanon, a credit counselor.

The first, and most important thing to deal with, according to the counselor, is saving their home.

They have enough money to pay the mortgage, Tony said.

With that out of the way, their counseling session got under way. According to the counselor, once the couple agrees on making sure the home payment is the most important payment they need to make, then they can break down the rest of the bills.

"Definitely the mortgage comes first, and then the car payment, and it's showing here that you are past due on the car payment," Castanon said.

As the session went on, the words "past due" became a common theme. In fact, as they went through all the bills and collection notices, Tony came to a realization.

"That's another reason we decided to do this, because it would seriously take some kind of miracle. I mean, behind on every single bill," Tony said.

According to the counselor, one thing Alicia and Tony could change were their expenses.

They could eat out on "Kids Eat Free" nights and track expenses. A $3 cup of coffee each days could add up to about $70 a month. Save change. Use paper money and manage a checking account well so non-sufficient funds fees don't stack up, Castanon said.

Afterwards, the final solution was easy to see, not so easy to hear.

"There are two types of bankruptcy. There's a Chapter 7 bankruptcy that can wipe away all of the debt," Castanon said.

As Alicia and Tony thought, and the counselor agreed, bankruptcy was their best option.

"You hope there's another way out of it, but what do you do, even if you're so far upside down, and think of how many years it would take to get back on track to pay that stuff off. It would take you 20 years," Castanon said.

It's an option, which although unpleasant the counselor said, should help the family save their home, and live a much less stressful life.

Castanon said, "Through financial education, through learning the hard way, I can only imagine that their future, they will continue on this journey and they will be fine. They will be fine."