Life After The Army » rent

Looking

Charlotte — Sat, 15 May 2010 11:36:38 +0000

We’ve been looking at places to live and went to this one apartment/townhouse community and got some floor plans and prices. There were a couple place that the living room was big enough to put in home theater seating.. not that I would do that.

This place offers something called Sure Deposit that will drop the cost of the security deposit drastically. Around here just about everyone wants a month and a half plus the 1st months rent. With that program we would only pay between $350 – $700 for the deposit plus the 1st months rent. That makes it much more affordable for us.

They won’t have anything available to show us until the middle of June so I will keep you posted on that later.

So far… not so good

Charlotte — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:44:40 +0000

We’ve been trying to find a place to move to and we haven’t had much luck. We went to see a couple places and the 1st one was $1150 a month and wasn’t really a bad size except our dining room furniture wouldn’t fit in the dining area (tiny, tiny, tiny), the closets had no doors (just shelves on a wall), absolutely no pets allowed (landlord has a big dog though) and the biggest thing was the house was literally 5 feet away from the landlord’s house.

Then we went to see a double wide on it’s own lot. That place was $925 a month and was so tiny. The “master suite” looked like only a twin bed would fit in it. The 2nd bedroom was so small if you put a twin bed in it it would take up the whole room. None of our furniture would fit in this place. You would have to be a little person to live there. The ceilings were just a few inches above hubby’s head and he’s 6’2″. It felt very claustrophobic in there.

We’re probably going to have to put our stuff in storage and live in our camper until we can find a place. Not my idea of fun. Hubby, me and the cat… JOY! At least it has a nice kitchen area.

I’m still packing away here. Hubby brings home a few boxes at a time from work otherwise I’d probably be done by now, if I had more boxes.

Andi, her boyfriend Drew and Benton were here this weekend. Benton is such a good baby and rarely cries. Drew is officially Benton’s dad. He stepped up and adopted him. He’s a good guy. Hubby likes him so that’s saying something.

I am still alive….

Charlotte — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:31:05 +0000

Really I am… I’ve just been really busy trying to find a place to live and packing. I haven’t really had much time to do any postings here or on any of my blogs.

Benton is doing great. Andi said he had his 1st doctor appointment yesterday and he’s gained back the weight he lost after his birth and then some and is “the picture of health”.

Problems are still running rampant in this family though. Andi was visited by the bank’s repo guy the other day and now she no longer has a car. She told me that on the good side of that she no longer has a $520 a month car payment on a car she doesn’t like. That is all the Army’s fault as she hadn’t gotten a paycheck since the beginning of June and it didn’t help that the bank would not work with her at all. I have Ford Motor Credit for my car and I’m behind in my payments too but they are working with us. They say they want to keep their customers and vehicles together. They deferred the 2 months we are behind and tacked them on to the end of the loan. So we are good to go.

So since Andi won’t be able to come here with the baby we will probably be making a quick trip to Pennsylvania to see them soon. I can’t wait to see Andi and Benton. We’ll get to meet her boyfriend Drew too.

JoJo has been helping me pack. She’s been the “inspector”. She gets on the packed boxes and even in the empty boxes to “inspect” them and give her seal of approval. She climbs into open cabinets and drawers… basically ~~getting in way~~ being cute.

Well… back to work.. there’s lots to clean and pack!!

Screwed beyond belief

Charlotte — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:31:28 +0000

This is probably going to turn into a long and ranting post so don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I woke up this morning to find that our auto insurance company took a payment out of our account that wasn’t supposed to come out until the the 25th. My rent check had already been deposited and will bounce. I called the insurance company and they checked everything and found they made a mistake with the dates. They are refunding the money they took out but it will take 3 to 5 days but…. they will refund the bounced check charges from the bank. I will have to fax them a copy of the statement that shows the debits and charges from the 5th until they charged me for a bounced check.

This isn’t all…. I’m probably going to lose my gas, electric and cable soon. I can’t afford to pay any of them. I put an old TV and radio on Craigslist to sell and had several people interested but they evidently weren’t interested enough to show up like they said they would. I was counting on that money. Why do people do stuff like that??

There will be no money for any Florida vacations, food, cigarettes (yes.. I still smoke and do not want to quit), gas for the car or anything.

Andi is out of the Army and that “wonderful” institution has screwed her too. They kept her last pay. She has no money at all either. The baby is due very soon and she doesn’t even have diapers to put the baby in. She applied for unemployment but who knows how long that will take to kick in. Her stuff from Texas is supposed to be here this week and I don’t know if she’ll have the money to come from Pennsylvania to meet it. It needs to go into storage.. I don’t have room here to put it.

The Army will not pay for the birth of her baby unless she goes to a military base that has a hospital with a maternity ward. We are not close to any here and she’s not close to any in Pennsylvania. I’ve never said bad things about the Army while she was in but now that she’s out I can tell you that the Army sucks…. !!!!!!

I’m depressed, angry and almost wishing I were brave enough to do away with myself. I could never do that though. Today I was in the car and wishing that someone would cross the line and hit me head on and end all this crap.

There are still no job prospects on the horizon and I really want to give up hope. I don’t know if I’m going to be evicted or not have my lease renewed because I haven’t gotten a renewal to sign yet… it’s up the end of this month.

Selling off the farm

Charlotte — Thu, 28 May 2009 17:37:01 +0000

Not a real farm but I put some things up on Craigslist to sell. I really hate to sell my elliptical but we really need money bad. It won’t be enough to buy even Outer Banks foreclosures but it will help to pay some bills that are due/late.

If these things don’t sell then by the middle of June I won’t have internet or TV… so if I vanish that’s why. I’ll try to get back as soon as the money situation will allow. But until then I’ll be trying to sell as much as I can and hope for the best. Hopefully we can pay the rent this month.. it’s due no later than June 5th.

And on to something totally unrelated.. I’m watching All My Children. Why did they have to kill off Stuart? It should have been Adam that died. Yes.. I know they are played by the same person but the 2 character were so totally different. Stuart was kind and gentle and Adam is a mean, nasty, no good so and so.

Weekend Stuff

Charlotte — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:48:00 +0000

It’s been a busy weekend. I had to take my signed lease renewal papers to the real estate office. They raised my rent $25 a month this year. I guess I should consider myself lucky because they didn’t raise it last year. Hubby says this is the last year here. Next year we will either buy or rent a house. He says if we are going to pay this much we might as well go for a little more in a monthly payment and get a house.

I had to park my car in another parking lot because tomorrow they are paving the rest of the parking lot. I won’t be able to park in my own space again until Tuesday after work. This is gonna suck… but I’ll get my exercise hiking back and forth from my condo to my car. I don’t know why they didn’t just do it all at once when they did part of the parking lot a couple months ago. It makes no sense… *sigh*.

I cleaned the kitchen and the floors yesterday and did laundry today. I still have to put the clean clothes away. I also need to ask hubby to pick up a couple fire extinguishers for me. I didn’t even think about having any until today and since I’m on the second floor that might be a good idea to have 1 or 2.

Hooked on HGTV

Charlotte — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:54:14 +0000

I love watching the home improvement shows on HGTV. It causes a big problem for me though. It makes me want to do over rooms in my condo. I can’t do that though because I rent.

I’d love to take out the icky bathroom sinks and replace them with pretty Pedestal sinks. The only problem I would have is losing counter and storage space. I wish I could talk the owner into updating this place.. it’s so stuck in the 80′s.

I either need to stop watching these shows or I need to buy my own house.

Major screwup!

Charlotte — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:27:24 +0000

Unemployment has screwed up. I called in my claim, like I have to do every other week, on Tuesday. I should have gotten my check on Thursday. I went to the mailbox… no check. I went to the mailbox today… no check. I called them.. sat on hold for 15 minutes only to be told that everyone who did their claim on Tuesday has not gotten a check and they are investigating what happened to the checks.

That wouldn’t be a really big problem except I paid my rent with a check that’s now no good. Most of the money is in my account for the rent and the unemployment check would have made up the rest. Unemployment told me to call them next week if I haven’t gotten my check. Thank goodness I go back to work on Monday and I won’t have to rely on unemployment anymore. We’ll probably have to end up borrowing the balance of the rent due or calling them to see if they’ll hold it until hubby get’s paid on Friday. They’re already holding till Monday for me because I had to pay it on Thursday and I told them my unemployment check was late.

I’m glad that we don’t depend on unemployment as our only source of income or we’d really be screwed this coming week.

I’m about to flip out here. On top of this I was to get paid for some things I did and will only be getting paid for part of them this week. The others will be paid on the next payday. Sigh!!! When it rains … it pours.