assistance for those above poverty line

My husband makes $43,000. We were doing just fine until I was injured in a car accident, and lost my job. Now we are hardly scraping by. The main reason for this is the tremendous burden of both our student loans. Mine is manageable, but my hubby just finished med school and has $140,000 in loans. All eligible loans have been consolidated. We are paying as low an amount as possible, adn there’s nothing more we can do there. But even this comes to $800 each month between the both of us. This takes about 36% of our income (it’s really like paying rent twice). We were also forced to buy a car, as he has to be at work before public transport starts running, so we have a car loan payment of $150/mo.

We have a very good credit history and score. I’d like to keep it that way. We have no credit card debt. But I don’t see how we can keep going with the amount of bills we owe. We don’t buy much: we never spend a lot of money on material things, and I reduce, reuse and recycle as much as I can. But it’s still difficult to make ends meet. Even though he’s a doctor, he won’t make an income worthy of his education debt for another 4 1/2 years, as technically he is still in training, and receives a “stipend”, not a salary.

Now, if the government would decide to allow doctors to have an interest-free grace period while they complete their 5 year residency (i.e. practical training), all would be well. But I don’t really see that happening any time soon. So I am desperately trying to find other options to help reduce costs in other areas.