I'm a 30-ish hacker, married with a mortgage, car payments, the whole nine yards. For the past five or so years, I've been in a tight financial situation. We've always managed to make ends meet, but haven't done enough to pay down my student loans or credit cards. As a result, I'm making the best money I ever have, but am so leveraged that it doesn't make a dent.

My wife can't work because of physical issues and anxiety. I've had a spotty work history until recently due to a undiagnosed mental illness (I have treatment for it now, and I'm doing much better) but have always moved up in my career somehow. I'm now the subject matter expert for native iOS and node.js development at my full time job, and I've never been happier with my work.

Due to some stupid mistakes last tax season, I owe a good chunk of back taxes. I'm making payments on some, but some are due before the end of this year. I want to work my way out of this situation, but I have few decent connections to ask for freelance work. I also don't want to be a charity case, but I really want to work on a couple of serious projects to get myself out of this hole and get my financial life back together.

Most freelance gigs are woefully pathetic. Many times, I come across "tire kickers" that stop returning my emails after I tell them my rate (it's realistic, but not exorbitant). Freelance job sites are a joke, and I rarely receive a reply. It's also difficult for me to ring up old clients and go "hey, have any work for me?" since it feels very desperate.

What I need most is advice, contacts, or any combination of the two. I have successful projects in iOS, PHP, Node, and Ruby under my belt. If pressed, I can work on C# as well. What can I do to fix this situation in such a limited amount of time, and what do I do to keep this from happening again? I'm not in my twenties anymore, so my expenses are more significant than just "eat ramen for a few months".

Thank you for reading HN, you're a great community that I've gotten so much value from. I highly respect input from you.