by Hope
Continuing from my last couple of posts regarding the current situation and my personal finance choices, I am considering all options. And I do still have options.
The Major Challenges
Mortgage – I am officially officially one month behind on my mortgage payment this coming week. Per my Googling, I can expect 2-4 months of no mortgage payments to trigger foreclosure, but I am going to call my lender this next week and have a conversation. I do not want to risk foreclosure, so I am exploring options to sell before that.
Auto Insurance – If I can’t pay last month’s auto insurance balance by November 4, our policy will be cancelled. This is my #1 priority this week.
Electricity – If I can’t pay last month’s bill by November 9th, we may be subject to it being cut off. I believe I can make a partial payment and buy a little more time.
Water – I have bought a little more time by making a partial payment, but last notice said I had to be current by November 24th or risk it being cut off.
The Good News
I’ve picked up some extra paying work this coming week. And it could lead to a bigger project, ie a pretty complex website build. Now, I won’t get paid this week, but I will bill this week so that should help with the above.
Options
Depending on my conversation with my mortgage lender, my thought is to give it until the end of this calendar year to see if I can find steady work. If yes, great, I’ll recover and get back on my feet a little at a time.
If not, then putting the house on the market very quickly in the new year will probably be my best bet. Houses are still selling relatively quickly here, and I have a good amount of equity in the house since I got such a good deal on it and have done LOTS of improvements. Alternatively, if I can get caught up enough, I could rent out the extra room and see if that plus some extra work could keep us in the house.
The house is the biggest drain on my funds. The other is bills for Gymnast and he is going to begin contributing now to his bills, that will take some pressure off. (Originally he would take them over completely come January, but he is starting now instead. I don’t know if he will cover everything right now, but he knows the numbers and we are using this weekend to do some research on best options.)
Hope is a creative, solutions-focused business manager helping clients grow their business and work more efficiently by leveraging expertise in project management, digital marketing, & tech solutions. She’s recently become an empty nester as her 5 foster/adoptive kids have spread their wings. She lives with her 5 dogs in a small town in NE Georgia and prefers the mountains to the beaches any day. She struggles with the travel bug and is doing her best to help each of her kids as their finish schooling and become independent (but it’s hard!) She has run her own consulting company for almost twenty years! Hope began sharing her journey with the BAD community in the Spring of 2015 and feels like she has finally in a place to really focus on making wise financial decisions.
I just don’t understand why you are so dead against getting a fast food job. It would help you till someone else comes along. How far are you from a slight bigger town? How much do you owe on the house your going to sell to live in your car. Does beauty know she might be living in the car too? And 5 dogs you say. Hope I’m sorry personal debt might be personal but you have mentioned before you didn’t feel the kids were safe walking around, how about poor Beauty living in the car?
Apparently she’d rather put the poor dogs she adopted into a shelter than get a fast food job. Because she’d be too embarrassed. Note how she always refuses to answer when people suggest fast food.
Countdown 1, 2, 3 until Hope assures us that there are no jobs at all in her town or within driving distance, unlike the rest of the United States.
I have applied at fast food jobs. However, to accept one of those, I would have to give up my current stable, part time job making $25 per hour as they need day shift people at this time.
So the math does not math…currently I get 20 hours per week at $25. They are paying between minimum wage and $10 per hour. So unless an afternoon/evening opens up it doesn’t make financial sense.
Really? You seriously have offered to cover nights and weekends (the hardest shifts to fill) and fast food has turned you away? Or the local grocery store? I 100% understand not wanting to choose those options, but they sound far preferable to losing a house. How exactly are you going to work if you’ve living in your car?
People are giving you good advice—you would do well to listen and not make excuses.
I had to look up the minimum wage for GA. Holy crap.
I’d explore the roommate option sooner than later. I’ve rented out rented out a room in my house three separate times with much success!
Yes. This is the direction I’m heading as well. I have to figure out where to put all the stuff that came out of storage and my office stuff to make this happen. But this is viable solution or partial solution to me as well.
You cannot be for real…this has to be an outlandish ruse for this site. Seriously. No so called “professional” can be this daft.
With the holiday season and winter there are often fundraising drives and some extra funds available to help people at risk of having utilities cut off. Definitely reach out to your local United Way, St. Vincent de Paul and other non-profits for help. That can help you focus your funds on keeping your house payment current.
Good luck, Hope.
I have been able to get a $30 per month credit for my home internet virtually cutting it in half. I was going to try to go without, but between my job hunt and Princess school, I hope to keep it as long as I can.
Honestly Hope I can’t even. You make deals with your kids and then say ooopps I was off so now you pick up the slack. You better sell the house now – there is no telling what the next 2 months hold on home sales.
Deals with my kids…you must be one of the very few BAD readers who is okay with me continuing to help my kids after they turn 18 and graduate high school. Believe me, I would give ANYTHING to be able to continue to help my kids. Even sell my house to help them.
But at this point, I had to ask Gymnast to contribute sooner than the 6 month mark I had given him. There were no more options.
It sounds like Beauty is working but not contributing. Can she contribute to the cost of living in your house ie utilities? You’re clearly in a desperate situation.
Apart from that, I’m taken aback by the harsh and mean tone of many posts, especially by one person in particular. Wow. Judgemental doesn’t even begin to describe it. Even if Hope is paid some small amount for her posts, so what? What is so bad about that??
Agreed. Nobody is forcing anyone to read this site. Hope I think if you opt not to sell the house a roommate is a great next step.
Another thought. In Mass you could have your doctor write a letter about your health issues to avoid electricity being cut off (if, say, you need a refrigerator for insulin or electricity for a nebulizer or CPAP). It doesn’t mean the bills stop accruing but they can’t turn it off. You may want to look into that.
Beauty has had trouble finding a full time job as well. She is working retail and they were only giving her 2-3 shifts per week, and if a truck didn’t show up, her hours were cut.
Thankfully, she’s just taken on a 2nd job which will help. She is paying for her schooling and hasn’t been able to save much with the job situation so I am trying to keep the pressure off so she can be ready when the time comes to pay for next semester. School is the priority.
She has recently begun paying her own phone bill, and she often buys groceries for the house.
I agree on the roommate front. I will admit the delay has been twofold:
1. I have to find somewhere else to put everything taken out of storage.
2. The kids are all coming home for Christmas. In order to have room in the house, we need that spare bedroom.
But I am definitely going to work toward having it ready for post-Christmas.
Since you’re addressing me I’ll explain.
It’s about 2 things: transparency and her motivations for posting. As for transparency, Hope has never ever been transparent with the numbers.
As far her motivations, there’s a well established pattern. She posts some, disappears for weeks/months, and then posts a bunch of things in a flurry before disappearing again. This is especially true when things are going badly. The worse it is, the more she posts. There are often posts that have absolutely nothing to do with finances.
Why would she do that? It’s not to listen to advice. If she were doing that, she wouldn’t be in the mess that she’s in now.
The only reason I can come up with is that she’s paid. She’s using this blog as a source of income, however small it is. The motivation is the income, not changing her behavior. So just be honest about it.
And judgement? Yup. I do judge people who let others be negatively impacted by their continual poor decision making. Her kids and animals have suffered because of it, and she keeps justifying making the same poor decisions over and over.
I 100% agree with you. Those of us who have been here since the beginning see it.
I have been reading this blog for years. I know that it is my choice to read it or not and that the bloggers don’t owe me anything. Most importantly, I try to live by a quote I once heard – “you don’t make anyone do better by making them feel worse”. I don’t think calling someone names is really a useful way to break a cycle of behavior.
I so agree with you! (Kate)
Beauty has had trouble finding a full time job as well. She is working retail and they were only giving her 2-3 shifts per week, and if a truck didn’t show up, her hours were cut.
Thankfully, she’s just taken on a 2nd job which will help. She is paying for her schooling and hasn’t been able to save much with the job situation so I am trying to keep the pressure off so she can be ready when the time comes to pay for next semester. School is the priority.
She has recently begun paying her own phone bill, and she often buys groceries for the house.
Their excuse is the same – they have read the site for so long and see Hope doing the same things over and over again. And instead of turning a blind eye, they want to come here and chastize her because they feel like she needs to know just! how! they! feel! Poverty is a hard cycle to get out of, and so many Americans are one decision away from it. In Hope’s case, she took a chance on a full time job and we are seeing the negatives of it not working out. It’s easy to chastize people from our computers – which is what a lot of these haters love to do.
Poverty is hard, yes. In this case it’s self-inflicted.
Losing a job is not uncommon.
And surviving off savings for almost a year…
What is the point of trying to make Hope feel worse, of sneering at her? It doesn’t matter how she got into this situation, she’s here now. A little kindness would go a long way.
SMS – they do it every time. I have seen postings about no one wants to work – Hope does, but she explained in another post she’d have to give up her current day job to work day shifts at minimum wage. It only ever takes one occurence for someone to end up where Hope is. I agree it is frustrating to see her repeat the same mistakes, but you’re correct what does being unkind do for anyone? They feel like because she never listens to their advice no kindess is needed. Why not just ignore her posts?
I suspect that this site has attracted the attention of a commenter that has been leaving rude comments on finance related blogs for years under various names. Hope is not above reproach but it is pathetic for this individual to move from blog to blog leaving such harsh, unhelpful comments just to make herself feel better about her lot in life.
I’ve been thinking about your bills going late, you could contact the DHS (I’m not sure if it is called the same thing in GA. It’s where people apply for medicade/food stamps), and see if you qualify for help with your electric/gas/water bill. If it is in shut off notice state, they will put a hold on the account being shut off until a termination has been made.
Thanks for the suggestion, I am beginning to make the hard calls this week to find out if I have any other options that I haven’t explored. I know I don’t qualify for any financial assistance.
We didn’t qualify for financial assistance, but we did get help with our electric bill. It all started online, but took a while to navigate their very confusing website.
Why can’t Princess get a student loan so you could stop paying her bills? Or why can’t she and Beauty take a semester off from school since you’re in a desperate situation? One semester off is no big deal.
I know you want to think of yourself as the person who would do anything for her kids, but as they say, you have to put your own oxygen mask on first.
Do you know how hard it is to go back after “just one semester” off? Let’s just say that I have been through that with more than one child.
With Princess a year and a half out from graduation and carrying most of the financial burden herself, it is priority one for me to be able to help her finish on time, with no debt.
Beauty has taken a semester off here and there. Unfortunately, due to her legal status, she is not able to get any financial aid (no FAFSA until I can adopt her.) So she’s cash flowing each semester now.
I realize you don’t agree with my choices. But there are facts and situations and circumstances not presented here.
Yes, I do know how hard it is to go back after a semester off. I frequently had to in college because of lack of money.
Isn’t Princess taking finance courses? She will get a good job after graduation and can easily pay back a small student loan. It is foolish of you to continue to prioritize your desire for her to graduate without debt over homelessness. But again, no point in saying so since you’ll dismiss it.
I will not be homeless. If I end up selling my house, I will go live and help out with the care of my mom and dad. And should hopefully have better luck finding a full time job in a much larger market with way more personal contacts.
And yes, Princess is majoring in finance and already has internships lined up for the spring and summer. If all goes according to plan, she will have a post-graduation offer at the end next summer.
Hope, have you looked into a parent plus loan for the college expenses you’re helping with?