Have you ever sat across from someone who describes their financial life with the precise, defeated calm of a person who has rehearsed the numbers so many times they no longer sting — and wondered how long it took to get to that point?
That was the feeling I had when I first met Glenn Espinoza in the spring of 2026. A veterans’ support group in Kansas City had connected us after Glenn mentioned, during a group meeting, that he’d recently discovered a tax credit he’d been eligible for — and had missed — for three consecutive years. Someone in the room thought his story was worth sharing. They were right.
The Life Glenn Was Managing Before We Spoke
Glenn Espinoza is 60 years old, a project manager in IT, and has lived in Kansas City, Missouri his entire adult life. He served in the U.S. Army in his twenties and came home, built a career in technology infrastructure, married, divorced, remarried, and is now raising a blended family that includes four kids — two from his first marriage and two from his wife Carmen’s previous relationship. On paper, IT project management sounds stable. In practice, Glenn’s version of it has meant contract work, gaps between roles, and a household income that hovers in the lower-middle range — around $48,000 to $54,000 in recent years.
When I sat down with Glenn Espinoza at a diner near his home in the Waldo neighborhood, he pulled out a folder. Not a digital file — an actual manila folder, worn at the corners, stuffed with printed statements and handwritten notes. That folder told the first chapter of his story before he said a word.
The folder contained, among other things, a 2023 auto loan statement showing a balance of $18,500 on a 2019 Ford Escape that a dealer had appraised at roughly $9,100. He was underwater by more than $9,400 — a gap that had quietly widened as the car depreciated and he made minimum payments during a stretch when contract work dried up in late 2022.
“I bought that car right before everything went sideways,” Glenn told me. “I thought I was being responsible. I’d just started a new contract, the terms seemed manageable. Then the contract ended early, I had a medical thing in October 2022, some bills went to collections — and suddenly my credit score was 591.”
How a Credit Score Drop Changed Everything at Once
A 591 credit score is not catastrophic in isolation. But Glenn explained that its effects compounded in ways he hadn’t anticipated.
When his home’s roof began failing in the fall of 2024 — two layers of shingles, a soft spot over the garage, flashing pulling away from the chimney — contractors quoted him between $12,800 and $15,500 to fix it. He looked into a home equity line of credit. He was turned down. He looked into a personal loan. The rates he was offered ranged from 24% to 31% APR, which he called “a trap, not a loan.”
“The credit score thing is like a punishment that never ends,” Glenn said, leaning forward. “You make one bad stretch — and I’m not even saying it was all my fault — and then every door you need to open has a different kind of lock on it.”
His bitterness about the 2022 period was palpable. He didn’t dwell on blame, exactly, but he was careful to note that the contract that ended early had done so because his employer offshored the work — a decision made above his level, with no severance and two weeks’ notice. He filed for unemployment, received it, but the gap between that income and his household expenses still produced the missed payments that damaged his score.
What He Found at the Veterans’ Support Group — and What He’d Been Missing
Glenn started attending the veterans’ support group — which focuses on financial and reintegration challenges, not just mental health — in January 2025. He described it as something he did reluctantly, pushed by Carmen, who had been watching him internalize financial stress for two years.
At one of the early meetings, a volunteer facilitator — a retired accountant named Dennis — mentioned the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. Glenn had heard of it. What he hadn’t known was that he had qualified for it in 2021, 2022, and 2023, and had filed all three years without claiming it.
According to the IRS’s EITC eligibility guidelines, workers with qualifying children and income within certain thresholds can claim credits ranging from roughly $600 to over $7,800 depending on filing status and number of dependents. For Glenn’s household — married filing jointly, with qualifying children, and variable income that dipped below $53,000 in contract-gap years — he fell within the eligible range for multiple tax years.
Dennis helped him understand that the IRS allows taxpayers to file amended returns (Form 1040-X) for up to three prior years. Glenn had time to act on 2022 and 2023. He also learned about Missouri’s Property Tax Credit, sometimes called the Circuit Breaker Credit, which is available to lower-income Missouri residents who own their homes and meet certain income thresholds. His household income in 2023 qualified.
The Process of Filing Amended Returns — and What It Actually Yielded
Working with a free tax preparation volunteer through the IRS VITA program, Glenn filed amended returns for tax years 2022 and 2023 in March 2025. The process took approximately six weeks each for the IRS to process, which is standard for paper-filed 1040-X forms.
In total, the amended returns and state credit returned approximately $4,220 to Glenn’s household. It wasn’t enough to fix the roof outright. But it was enough to change what was possible.
“I won’t lie — I was angry when I got that first check,” Glenn told me. “Not grateful. Angry. Because I thought: this money was always mine. I earned it. And for three years I just didn’t know enough to claim it, and nobody told me.”
Where Things Actually Stand Now
The outcome for Glenn is mixed — genuinely so, and he’d be the first to tell you that.
He used $3,000 of the recovery funds to address the most urgent portion of the roof repair — a targeted fix over the garage and the chimney flashing — while deferring the full replacement. A licensed roofer he found through a church referral did the targeted work for $3,100, with Glenn contributing $100 of his own savings. The broader roof replacement is still needed but is no longer an imminent leak risk.
The car loan remains underwater, though the gap has narrowed slightly. He has not been able to refinance due to his credit score, which has improved modestly — from 591 to 628 as of early 2026 — after the collections accounts aged and he added a secured credit card to begin rebuilding. According to the CFPB’s credit scoring resources, recovery timelines for scores damaged by collections vary widely, but consistent on-time payments and reduced utilization typically show measurable improvement within 12 to 24 months.
The 2021 EITC he missed — worth an estimated $1,580 based on his income and family size that year — is gone. The IRS window closed in April 2025, about six weeks before Glenn even learned it existed. He mentioned this fact with a flat, measured tone that told me it had settled into something he’d chosen not to fight.
Glenn also learned, through the veterans’ group, about the VA’s housing assistance programs — specifically the Specially Adapted Housing grant and the Veterans Housing Assistance Program offered through the state of Missouri. He has begun the eligibility inquiry process, though he acknowledges the process is slow and the outcome uncertain.
What Glenn’s Story Tells Us About the Gap Between Eligibility and Access
After my conversation with Glenn, I kept returning to a single detail: the folder. He had kept every statement, every notice, every quote — meticulous documentation of a situation that had been quietly worsening for three years. He wasn’t disorganized. He wasn’t irresponsible. He simply didn’t have the information that would have let him act differently.
This gap — between what programs exist and who actually knows to claim them — is not unique to Glenn. The IRS estimates that roughly 20% of eligible taxpayers do not claim the Earned Income Tax Credit each year, leaving billions of dollars in unclaimed credits. The reasons are varied:
- Complex eligibility rules that change based on income type, filing status, and number of qualifying children
- Mistaken assumptions about who qualifies — particularly among workers with variable or contract income
- Lack of access to free professional tax preparation
- Distrust of or unfamiliarity with government programs, particularly common among some veteran populations
Glenn embodied several of these at once. His income varied year to year in ways that made him unsure whether he was “above” or “below” the threshold in any given year. He assumed the credit was primarily for low-income families with young children, not for a 58-year-old with a blended family and contract-year variability.
When I asked Glenn what he would say to someone in a similar situation — underwater, credit-damaged, staring at a repair they can’t afford — he paused for a long time before answering.
“I’d tell them to find their version of Dennis,” he finally said. “Not necessarily an accountant. Just someone who knows more than you do about what’s out there, and who will actually sit with you and look at your specific situation. Because the worst thing is assuming you already know you don’t qualify.”
Glenn Espinoza is still paying off an underwater car loan. His roof is partially fixed. His credit score is creeping upward. And somewhere in a manila folder in Waldo, Kansas City, there’s a printed copy of an IRS refund notice for $1,740 — money that was always his, arriving three years late.
Related: Your IRS Refund Tracker Went Blank After Filing — Here’s What That Actually Means in 2026
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