Dear Generous People,
My family is drowning in debt and we are on the verge of declaring bankruptcy!! This is our story.
I am a mother of 3 babies under 5 years old. I am a special education teacher and my husband is a plumber. We are both hard working and responsible individuals. Ever since I gave birth to my first born in 2019, I had the urging desire to become a stay at home mom. However with how the economy is today, we cannot afford to live under one paycheck, so I became a working mom and was lucky that my family was willing to take care of my kids while I was at work. Then in 2021, I decided to “take action” in order to change our financial situation so that I can stay at home. The financial situation of living paycheck to paycheck, of being dependent on other people to take care of my kids, of missing their milestones. My husband and I decided to sign up to a mentorship program to learn how to flip houses. The mentorship program itself was great and we learned a lot. However we were taken advantage of by several contractors in our journey.
We were able to find great deals where the numbers worked and were able to obtain funding through hard money lenders however we had contractor who under budgeted and then after we closed on the house we learned that they under estimated the rehab budget. We had GCs who ghosted us, we had GCs who made the house worse than it was previously, and every time a new GC would come in their estimates is ALWAYS higher than what was originally budgeted for. Also all of the houses went passed the estimated timeline, in fact we have only completed one because we can no longer afford to finish them or keep up with the payments. In addition we had people who partnered with us however because we cannot afford to keep up with the payments or finish these projects these houses will be foreclosed and we won’t be able to pay these people back without your help.
Two of the houses are already in the process of getting foreclosed on. One is in the market but not getting any traction because of the current market we are in right now. I cannot lower the price due to the liens it has on it. Another home is up to finishes but we do not have the money to finish the house let alone keep up with the interest payments. All our debt combined is easily around 500K+. And trust me I bang my head on the wall everyday for getting ourselves into this!! We truly were just trying to build a better life for our family; unfortunately we mismanaged these contractors who took advantage of us, and ignored the red flags to fire some of them sooner. I just want a clean slate and a peace of mind at this point.
We have exhausted all of our resources to try to finish these houses and pay people back, finish these projects such as, taking out two personal loans (which is the beginning of us living paycheck to paycheck), maxed out our credit cards to buy construction materials, borrowed money from our retirement accounts, emptied out our 401k. We literally tried everything, but we keep on drowning in more and more debt. It has been such a vicious cycle. My husband works overtime at his job almost everyday just to try to help us stay on our feet. I have attempted some side hustles but it’s not much to help us get out of debt since we are literally just trying to maintain our current bills. Our goal when we started was to be able to spend more time with our kids but instead the opposite happened we spend less time with our kids, are forced to stay at our W2 jobs, and when we are with them our heads are not at the right place. Flipping houses for was became a nightmare!!
In addition the family who was taking care of our kids was diagnosed with cancer and is unable to take care of our kids since she is now having to start undergoing treatment. We honestly can barely afford our expenses now, let alone child care for 3 kids, but I also cannot afford to not work. We are researching options to declare bankruptcy however I know that can take years and we need help NOW!!!
I want to thank you in advance for reading this long post. If you find it in your heart to help us out.
You can send it through the following platform:
https://www.paypalme/ktavarez16