Roughly 15 million Americans experience identity theft each year, according to federal estimates — but that number stops feeling abstract the moment you sit across from someone it happened to. When I reached out to Hector Santiago through a Facebook group for retirement-focused caregivers in early March 2026, he had posted a short, almost apologetic message about feeling “behind on everything.” I sent him a direct message that afternoon. He agreed to talk the next day.
Hector is 40, a retail store manager in Richmond, Virginia. He is single and the primary caregiver for his father, who is 71 and lives with him. His income sits in the lower-middle range — he grosses roughly $46,000 a year in base salary — and until last fall, overtime shifts at the store added about $400 a month to his take-home pay. Then corporate restructured scheduling. The overtime disappeared overnight.
The Year Everything Went Sideways
When I sat down with Hector over a video call, the first thing he told me was that 2025 was the year he stopped feeling like he was keeping up. “I thought I had a system,” he said. “Then the overtime got cut, and the system just… broke.”
The overtime loss alone cost him close to $4,800 over the year. At the same time, he discovered in August 2025 that someone had opened two credit cards in his name — one with a $2,200 balance already charged, the other with $1,400. He found out when he tried to refinance a small personal loan to cover his father’s new prescription costs. He was denied instantly.
The fraud dispute process took four months. He filed reports with the FTC and both card issuers, but the damage to his credit score — which dropped from 672 to 591 — remained. “Nobody tells you how long it takes to climb back,” Hector told me. “You do everything right and you’re still starting over.”
What He Heard About the $2,000 Tariff Dividend
Hector first heard about the proposed tariff dividend checks in late 2025, when a coworker mentioned it during a break. He looked it up that night on his phone. According to reporting by Fortune, President Trump promised to send $2,000 tariff dividend checks to Americans, suggesting they could arrive around mid-2026 or slightly later. As of early 2026, no legislation had been passed and no payment date had been confirmed.
The proposal has drawn significant scrutiny. According to IBTimes, the plan would exclude roughly 42% of households earning over $100,000, directing payments toward moderate-income earners — a group that includes people in Hector’s income range. Still, no formal eligibility rules had been published at the time of our conversation.
“I don’t know if I’ll get it or not,” Hector said. “But I keep reading about it because right now, $2,000 is the difference between catching up and falling further behind.” He wasn’t wrong about the stakes. With his credit still recovering and his father’s monthly medications running about $310 out of pocket, his margins were razor thin.
The Pandemic Checks He Never Fully Collected
While reporting Hector’s story, I asked whether he had received all three rounds of pandemic-era stimulus payments. He paused. He was confident about the first two, but the third — the $1,400 payment authorized in March 2021 — was less certain. He had moved apartments in early 2021 and believed a check may have gone to his old address.
Hector said he had never checked his IRS online account. When I explained it was possible to verify prior payments there, he went quiet for a moment. “I just assumed if I didn’t get something, it was gone,” he said. “I didn’t know you could still look into it.”
The Waiting, and What It Costs
There is a particular kind of financial stress that comes not from a single crisis but from sustained uncertainty. Hector described checking news headlines about the tariff checks roughly every few days. He had mentally earmarked a potential $2,000 payment: $800 toward rebuilding his emergency fund, $700 to pay down a high-interest credit card he opened after the fraud incident to cover a car repair, and $500 toward his father’s next specialist appointment.
That cycle — robbing future months to cover the present — is a pattern Fortune noted is common among lower-middle income households, with BofA senior economist Aditya Bhave warning that “the consumer divide is about to get deeper” as larger tax refunds flow disproportionately toward higher earners. Hector falls into the segment that stands to gain the most from any broad-based payment — but also the segment most vulnerable if nothing comes through.
A Story Without a Clean Ending
When I spoke with Hector a second time in late March, not much had changed on the policy front. No $2,000 check had been authorized. His credit score had ticked up to 609. He had paid $180 off the high-interest card. His father had a follow-up appointment scheduled for April that would cost roughly $240 after insurance.
“I’m not complaining,” he told me near the end of our call — then laughed softly at himself. “I say that and then I list everything that’s wrong. But I mean it. I’m still here. My dad is okay. I just need one month where I’m not just surviving it.”
Whether the tariff dividend checks materialize, and whether someone in Hector’s income bracket qualifies, remains an open question. According to the latest reporting from Delaware Online, no formal eligibility framework had been released as of late January 2026. That uncertainty is its own kind of cost — one that doesn’t show up in any budget spreadsheet but that Hector carries every single day.
Leave a Reply