Our family has lived through hard times for the past 10 years, and has only recently started to financially stabilize. As the man of the household, I have had a hard time holding down a permanent job due to my disability, and I have jumped from contract to contract with several months of unemployment in between. With my wife’s income, we barely made ends meet during that time, and lived in relative poverty. While I was unemployed, we had to go to the foodbank for food, and have a budget of only $50 for groceries. I have struggled and managed to finally find a stable basic job in 2021. From 2021 to 2022, I made enough money to both further stabilize our family and save up $10,000 with the aim of finally saving a down payment for a house, due to our rising rent. But in 2022, my income [along with my wife’s income] was no longer enough to keep any savings for our family. In 2022, as living costs increased, we managed to just break even. But as the cost of food doubled, and the cost of rent and infrastructure increased, our net income after expenses has slowly started to go down. For the first time in 4 years, we again facing the possibility of bad debt. Because of this, the best thing would be for us to move into a house, where we can pay off a mortgage within 25 years, at a cost of under $1,000 per month.
Having a house would stabilize our monthly payments on our home at a lower and more affordable price. After the mortgage is paid off, we would only need to worry about utilities, which we could better control. As I work from home, it would also allow us to move into a house with a third bedroom that I could use for an office. As I am very well educated despite having faced a series of unfortunate events that caused much misfortune for me and my family, having my own workspace would give me the room to work on projects that could potentially bring our family up from our previous misfortune and leading us towards a better life. I already have some inventions of my own designed on paper, but the one obstacle I face in our small apartment is the space needed to try them out with the free materials I have been able to obtain.
We would need the down payment relatively soon, as our son would be graduating from elementary school in the summer of 2024, and we would want to move before he starts middle school in September 2024, so as to ensure a smooth transition for him. We would like to hit this target before December 2023, so that we can more surely look for a home in the winter months of the first quarter of 2024. My wife does not want to leave our friends and family behind in an area that is too far from her workplace for her to commute given her own physical condition. We also need to consider where our son goes to school, and how safe the area we live in is; I would not want my wife or son to be shot in our own neighbourhood, or for my son to be bullied at school. The one good thing we have right now, is that we live in relative physical safety despite a few rogues in our area, and our son has good friends at school.
After doing some research, I found that we would be able to afford a mortgage of $150,000 over 25 years, which would result in a payment of $833.75 per month at a 4.5% interest rate. The problem is that there are no homes that cost less than $150,000 in our city. With the cheapest 3-bedroom townhomes in relatively safe areas of our city costing around $300,000 these days, we would need a down payment of $150,000 to be able to afford to buy a townhouse that fits our needs. We would also need around $10,000 for other moving expenses, property inspections, legal fees, our first payment of property taxes, and our first home insurance payment. This means that the $10,000 we saved would be insufficient.
As such, we are asking for $150,000 to help us pay for a down payment on a small townhouse that our family could move into, and turn us away from the relative poverty that is very slowly encroaching on our family.
We would be very grateful for any help we can receive.
Here is my paypal link: paypal.me/DesiSil
Thank you!