Hi my name is Helen. I moved to Italy a few years ago, with my husband, as he wanted to live near his family. I of course didn’t know the language straight away so it was very difficult to find a job.
At this time, we were looking for a place to live and I was looking for a job, so myself and my husband came up with the idea, why don’t I work for myself and we ended up buying a three bedroom house, with the plan to renovate two of the rooms and rent them out to visitors or tourists.
So we found an old house and started renovating it, one room for us to live in and of course the other two rooms to rent out to tourists. So after a year working on the house, which needed absolutely gutted and all new electrics and plumbing, the two guest rooms were fully renovated and we decided we would open them up and start renting out these two rooms in order to make some more money and continue the renovations for the rest of the property. Then of course one month after opening, we had to close due to going into lockdown because of Covid and just like for everybody else this became a very long two years of waiting to get our life back on track.
We got through those two years by using our savings but always had in the back of our mind as soon as Covid passes, we would start again and finally, this year we reopened.
With my husbands job being the only source of income and our depleted savings, it was a great relief to reopen this year and we both finally felt we were back on track, so we opened up our rooms for weekends with the idea of guests at the weekends and continue renovations through the week now that some extra money was coming in. Then when all renovations are complete we could open full-time and start building up our savings again. But then something strange started happening with the economy.
In March our first electric bill arrived and this had doubled from the previous year it had gone from 400 euro’s to 880 euro’s, then in June the second bill arrived and again from 400 euro’s the previous year it had gone to 1550 euro’s. Now in September we received our third electric bill now which has gone up from 400 euro’s the previous year to almost 2250 euro’s. On top of all of this our mortgage has slowly been creeping up monthly going from 600 euro’s to now almost 900 euro’s a month, all of this on top of the general cost of living, such as food, water bills, petrol etc. The fear of what the next bill’s will be, is just depressing.
We are currently looking for a new energy provider and myself I am looking for another part-time income. But it does feel like we are going one step forward and two steps back.
I am hoping to raise 4000 euro’s to cover the debt that we are in now and hopefully give us time to find a solution to our financial problems. So if there is anyone out there that can donate and help us, we would be so grateful and you would be helping relieve a lot of stress and that horrible sinking feeling that comes along with insecurity.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and thank you for your kindness.
Love and Regards, Helen
www.paypal.me/hmidalcin