Hello everyone,
I want to start out with acknowledging that I’ve written and deleted this post several times. This is a difficult thing for me to do and I don’t know how best to do it.
To get to the point, my wife and I find ourselves in a tough situation. I will summarize the situation now and, for those who want to know, will put how we got there in dropdowns below.
We started June already running late on our rent. We would have the balance on our payday of June 8th, so we let the landlord know and took the $100 late fee hit. Then, on June 6th, our vehicle had a complete failure, the repairs for which would far exceed our available funds. My wife is only allowed so many callouts before forfeiting her job, so she took 3 in row then to get us to our payday. I also was unable to work during this time +. In the meantime, I tried to find an arrangement for a new vehicle. However, we still owe on our vehicle and I was not able to find any dealers, even the buy here – pay here, that were willing to grant an additional car loan with the existing loan, our monthly expenses, and myself working temp work. So, when our pay came in, we found the “best” vehicle I could find, a 2002 Hyundai Accent with 94k miles. This was the manual car with hose in the gas tank that I discovered after purchasing it for those who remember from the chat channels:
As many of you astute readers have already realized, that money was already spoken for, but it was a non-choice. We could have paid our rent with it and stranded ourselves***++***, soon to be unemployed, and facing the same situation in less than 30 days with no means of transportation to address it. So, we approached our landlords and explained the situation. They were understandably not amused. After much persuasion, they chose to ignore the advice of their lawyer and came to a written arrangement.
They wanted the back due rent paid with our next payday as well as the following month’s rent paid early as a sign of good faith. It would be a tight fit, even with us both working, but we’d make it. They served us a Notice to Quit, and then an agreement to tear up that notice and not file it with the courts if this agreement was kept. Given the alternative, we agreed, and signed it on Saturday, June 10th.
On Sunday, June 11th, the car we had just purchased died on my way to work, stranding me at a local Burger King. What proceeded was an over week-long circus of various DIY repair attempts and begging, pleading, and cajoling ways to get my wife to work. I was unable to get the car repaired and, while I managed to find various ways to get my wife to and from work (due to the undeserved kindness of others), and thus employed, I wasn’t able to do the same for myself, missing out on available shifts during this time.
Now, this story takes a more positive turn. Folks in our community became wise to our transportation issues, and some very kind individuals decided to repay some earlier kindnesses. They pitched in to find us a vehicle. A local towing company had seized title on a vehicle that had been abandoned on the side of the road. Typically, they then fix up and sell these abandoned vehicles. Well, some phone calls were made on our behalf, favors exchanged, prices lowered, and literal strangers making up the difference. We now have a running 2000 GMC Yukon Denali sitting in our driveway. The Yukon has a bunch of miles, but the towing company had dropped a new engine into it when they were preparing to sell it, making it a far more reliable ride than first appears. This immense act of kindness pulls our collective bacon from the fire and allows us both to work and catch back up.
Or it would have, if it had happened a week earlier. Here’s the catch. I didn’t work the last week. I did go looking for odd jobs I could find on foot nearby our home, and got a day’s worth of weeding a blueberry farm, but wages for the week are largely lost.
Those lost wages were among the money we needed to meet the agreement above. I’m running around doing as much gig work as possible right now (pays same day), but we won’t make it, even before considering the difficulty of earning a reasonable wage doordashing with a truck with a V8 engine.
The deeply frustrating part is that we would be solvent very soon. As July’s rent is due early, we won’t have to come up with that on the 1st, and we’d be fully caught up July 6th. On top of that, it isn’t a large sum of cash in the grand scheme of things. It really isn’t. The problem is the agreement we signed earlier in the month is not open to amendment. Our landlords have made it clear that we either meet our earlier agreement on the 22nd, or we’ll be evicted.
So, I find myself here, feeling a decade older over the last two weeks, seeing a way forward so close at hand, but also impossibly far away.
We sincerely need short term and immediate help to get over this obstacle +++. Short term in that we can gladly and happily reverse any and all transactions on July 6th, and immediate in the sense that we’re out of time to figure out the shortfall in other ways.
In a show of my sincerity, I will dox myself to anyone DMing me (just not here where Google will scrape it and list it for all time). I can and will verify any and all details.
I know this isn’t the typical forum for these sorts of things, but I’m out of options and I don’t know what else to do. So, if I’ve ever helped you, or just made you smile, or if you’re just feeling remotely compassionate, now is the time we really need the help. Sincerely. The cost of not making it over this hurdle will be dire and I can’t face it and my wife without knowing I did everything I could to avert it, even simply begging for help.
Please help us.
+No longer working remote.
As some of you know, back in February of this year, I was laid off from Remote job working for a Nonprofit Organization. I went on unemployment and sought another remote job in the same field. In the meantime, my wife kept the job she had been planning on leaving as the Assistant Store Director of a full-size regional grocery store. In Late April, I secured a job as grant writer for another Nonprofit Organization. With me working, my wife then left her managerial job in May and eventually took an overnight stocking job at a sizable pay cut, but a sanity and quality of life improvement. It took about two weeks to switch from one job to the other, but it should have been workable with me working. The issue with this, is I have no experience with grant writing, and was open about that in my interview. About a week after my wife left her job, I was told I wasn’t a good fit and was asked to resign. Given the weekly cap for unemployment and the fact that I had already expended most of the time allowance previously, I instead took temp work so I could begin working immediately, as my wife had not started working her new job yet. Basically, the worst possible timing set us already playing catch up in early June.
++We live roughly 15 miles outside of Traverse City, the main source of employment in the area.
The rents get untenable the closer you get to Traverse City, but the further away you are, the more dependent you are on a car to maintain employment. It was one of the reasons I was trying to stay in remote work.
+++Help is either not available or not forthcoming from our families and friends for a variety of reasons.
I am fairly estranged from my family. I grew up in Jehovah’s Witness family. I am not a Jehovah’s Witness. Those familiar understand the ramifications. As for my wife, her sister is currently fighting leukemia, and her family is tapped out trying to keep her and her family afloat. They can’t help us. As for our friends, neither one of us is very extroverted; we tend to keep a few close friends. Times are tough and the means simply aren’t there. The calls have already been made.
