Sleepless night

 I spent the entire night worrying that my sister is going to end up homeless because she’s had at least 7 months to find a place and she still hasn’t done anything about it.  We are running out of money to pay the bills to keep her in Dad’s house, yet the reality of that hasn’t sunk in yet.  Here’s the enabler in me because if I were in a position to do so, I would buy a 2nd house for her to live in under the condition that she pay 30% of her income toward rent plus the utilities, cable and garbage. Pick-up.  That way she could have her cats while paying me a $300 fee up front and I would wrap that additional charge of $25 per animal into the rent.  I would pay the taxes and insurance as long as she meets her financial obligations with me.  But that’s all a dream because I don’t have the resources to do that while I’m still paying the mortgage I have. I wish I could.  I wish I had planned my finances differently over the past several years, but as my mother used to say, “If wishes were fishes”.  

Tom and I could have done things differently too, but we didn’t.  It’s not all his fault, I’m responsible for much of it.  We weren’t frivolous spenders, but we lived beyond our means by trying to live off my income alone while he struggled to make his business profitable.  A businessman he was not, and I knew even less about running a business than he did.  So we borrowed beyond our means and lived paycheck to paycheck to support our family.  I thought I would recover from all of that after he died, but though I’m doing better, I have no real savings.

The money from Dad’s house will give me a cushion after I pay off my credit cards and loans, but it won’t give me enough to help Elaine and meet my goal of being financially sound in my older years.  

I’d really like to focus on paying down my mortgage so my kids aren’t burdened with it when I die.  No one should have to pay their parents debt.  My Dad took care of his so we wouldn’t have to.  I want to do the same for Sara and Jason. 

I really don’t have that much credit card debt, but what I do have is nearly 100% of my credit limit.  Consequently my credit score sucks.  My goal is to pay my cards done to zero and just use them periodically to keep them active, paying them off each month.  

The Qcash loans are the next things to go.  Even though  they are less than $4000 together, they have high interest rates and take too long to pay off using the monthly plan.  So after I get the credit cards down, I’ll pay one Qcash at a time off until they are gone.  With the money from Dad’s house I could realistically have the cards and the loans paid off this summer if Dad’s house sells by then and we get a reasonable amount of money from it after all is said and done.  A pipe dream?-maybe- but possible?-yes.  

I’m going to look at that plan now and come back to this later.