So back in July, my father died unexpectedly. He had been in the hospital for a decent amount of time. But it was nothing he hadn't been through before. At this point, it had become routine. Since his death, my life hasn't taken on any immediate changes, other than stress. But it's about to. Here's the story.
If it matters, I am in the Kansas City area. And about five years ago, my landlord decided not to renew my lease on my apartment I'd been renting for about a decade. I never got any explanation for that. But during this time, Dad was in a nursing home facility, until some wounds of his healed. When I informed him about the lease, he made the offer for me to come live in the house. He said he'd feel better about someone being there to look after things. I would surely enjoy the opportunity to get my credit repaired and take care of some debts I'd amassed over the years, due to a lazy live-in girlfriend I had for a good while. So I took him up on his offer. During that time, I was able to save a little cash, make some needed car repairs as they happened, and enjoy life a little bit. I did also repair my credit. I was feeling good about how things were progressing. And I was on par to have a decent chunk put away in a few years, in preparation for buying a house. At least that was my plan.
For starters, there is no way for me to stay living in this place. The mortgage payments are just shy of $2000/month. The house was paid off back when I was in middle school. But after some financial indiscretions on my mother's part, that has all been undone. Dad didn't find out for may years that she was building up debt at record pace. Once he did discover what was happening, he divorced her. But the damage had already been done. There was a 2nd mortgage taken out on the place a while back. I don't know the particulars. But there isn't any equity in it, as far as I know. So my only option here is to let the house go back to the bank.
In the meantime, I've been scrambling trying to find a suitable home to buy. I also have my ex's son who will be coming with me. And a cat. And tools that I'm not willing to give up. So I was hoping to find a place with either a walk out basement or a garage, and a t least two bedrooms. I know plenty of people who were able to pick these types of houses up in the past for around $70k. But I can't find anything close to this in a decent neighborhood, and in decent condition, for less that about $90k. And since I'm completely unfamiliar with the home buying process, I've been given the runaround by a couple of real estate agents. It really seems like they aren't willing to help someone who isn't looking for a house that's going to net them a big chunk of commission. I thought I was okay with buying a mobile home a couple of weeks ago. And I still may be. But during the process of waiting for the background check to come through, the one that would have worked for me was sold to someone else. I'm very gun shy about renting now, based on what happened in the past. And I can't continue to pay this mortgage, or everything I've saved will be gone in just a few months. But I can't just quit paying it now because of the uncertainty of when I'll find somewhere to go. I don't want to come home from work to find the locks have been changed and all of my things now belong to the bank.
I've got 40+ years of things to sift through in this house. Things that I could sell. But it would take time and patience. And I don't think I've got a lot of time here. And I won't really know what I can keep until I find out what kind of place I'll be able to get. I'm so overwhelmed that most days, I've just been frozen and pretending like none of it is happening. But time is passing whether I want to acknowledge it or not. I have no help with any of this. No relatives that are involved to lend a hand with anything. This is my first time dealing with anything like this. So I'm completely clueless. To top things off, my job that I had been at for over a decade was sold to another company about four months back. Now I'm making $600 less that I was before all that. I'd love to find a better paying job. But with all of this going on, I just don't think now is the time for it. Plus, even though I am a reliable employee, my previous position wasn't anything that is in high demand, or pays a stellar salary at most places. Losing $600 a month is huge, considering that is what I was paying for rent at my last apartment. And to make things even more scary, when I visited their website to get a ballpark on the square footage of my old apartment, I realized that they had raised the rent to about $830. That made everything even more depressing. On my current income, $800 seems impossible. Since its nearly what I bring home every two weeks. What am I supposed to do?
It's just getting to the point where all of these things are piling up and I don't know where to begin, or where I'll end up when all of this is settled. I wasn't sure where to post this because of it's multifaceted nature. But since the financial issues seem to be the biggest hurdle right now, I decided to start here.
Submitted September 23, 2017 at 08:24AM by marker-one http://ift.tt/2wNNND1
