Asking for help to rescue my family's home from foreclosure. This is a HUGE ask, and a hard one for my mother to ask for help with, but we've had to turn to crowdfunding as a last resort. In late August we learned that the house we've lived in for the past 20 years is up for foreclosure. After reaching out to the bank and waiting for weeks for an answer, we were informed our only option is to pay upwards of 12k by September 30th.

My parents bought this house in 2005. Almost every memory of home for my brother and me, both the good and bad, are from this house. My mom is a widower and life since meeting my father in 1988, losing him in 2018, and trying to navigate life after him has been a rollercoaster with extremely intense ups and downs. He was a deeply troubled person, and subjected his wife and children to years of verbal, emotional, financial, and even physical abuse. Every mistake that he made, my mom had to fix for him. Every problem he caused my mom had to get him out of. Every dollar he spent (and there were thousands), my mom had to make up through work. He was unemployed for the majority of my life, my mom being the sole provider. He often neglected his parental duties, my mom having to pick up the slack.

In 2010, my dad was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer. My younger brother was not even old enough to understand what was going on. My mom at that point had been dealing with years of financial stress, and the next two years of my dad going in and out of the hospital was no help. In 2012, she lost her job at JCPenny due to company downsizing, and took a significant pay-cut when she was able to find a new one. In my high school years we were always tight on money, but she always found enough time to show up to and pay for every sports event, extracurricular activity, school dance, the $20 we would ask for to hang out at the mall with our friends, and everything in between.

In the summer of 2018 my dad suddenly passed from a heart attack. Less than 6 months after my dad's passing, we lost both of my mom's parents. My grandmother was my moms biggest, and arguably only, support system. During this time, my younger brother was struggling both in life and his first year of high school, and I was trying to navigate my second year of college, both of us battling intense anxiety and depression, as well as dealing with years of untreated trauma and stress from the way my dad treated us. My mom never let hers show.

Fortunately, the life insurance money we received from my dad's policy was enough to keep us going when my mom lost her job again due to company bankruptcy, and took yet another significant pay cut when she was employed again. During this time however, my mom started to pursue her years long dream of owning her own clothing store, and became a franchisee with Uptown Cheapskate in February of 2020. Then COVID-19 hit.

Her store was put on hold for months, but when we finally opened up a year later in May of 2021, business was promising! She has worked in almost every aspect of retail since her first job and was putting her expertise to use, so when we became an elite store, won franchise awards, and were confident in our growth, she decided to take the opportunity to acquire a second location; the Uptown Cheapskate location my brother and I grew up going to! Unfortunately, this store was wildly neglected and took 100x the work we thought we had to put into it. On top of the extremely high initial down payment and double the payroll needs, the store required extensive maintenance and upgrades to get the location back to franchise standard, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars and my mom needing to cut into her own life savings again. During this time our store manager had entered a new stage in her life that required needing to move back home to family, and soon after I, with no formal experience in management and coming out of an entire month of severe debilitating depression, had to step up to fill the role where my mom needed. Simultaneously, she as a small business owner was trying her best to pay employees at least close to their desired wages, and often ended up with far too high a payroll while still working in the stores upwards of 40 hours and often 7 days a week. Soon we were behind on tax payments, as my mom had prioritized trying her hardest to make sure her employees were being paid on time.

Last September both stores were at risk of being taken by the bank and my mom was at her all time lowest. I found out she hadn't been paying herself a salary the entire 4 years we had owned either store, and she had been paying for all her's, my brothers, and helping me with my own from her savings the entire time. She used the rest to pay off the businesses back taxes and return to good standing. In October 2024, our second and newest location started to return to the sales the location had been reporting before we acquired it, not making enough daily to keep up with the extremely high rent, and eventually the hard decision to sell was made. This sale in April of this year was another grueling hit to my moms confidence and finances. It came with no reimbursement of capital expenses, or the months we had put into trying to turn the store into something to take pride in. We were just barely stepping back into square one.

At some point in all of the madness this past April, our monthly mortgage payment bounced back and her account was taken off autopay. My beautiful lovely talented intelligent mother, unfortunately, does not excel in technology. She had "paperless" notifications, 1000’s of emails so sift through daily, and is also not the best at checking the mail daily, so before she knew it a final notice had been sent that the house was set for foreclosure. She called the bank to see her repayment options, but after waiting almost two weeks, on September 2nd we were told the only option was to pay the lump sum by the end of the month.

With years of financial strain from my father, student loan debt, and facing the consequences of a new business owner learning curve, we are unable to come up with the $12,581 needed to keep our home on our own. I don’t have the words to describe how important keeping this home is for my mother. My mom rarely asks for help, not because of pride, but because of her humility, altruism, and years of self-reliance. If you’ve read this far I appreciate you for listening to our story, and if you choose to help us out you’ll never know how enormously we appreciate you and your support. No matter if you're able to give, my final request is that you share this fundraiser with whoever you’re able to.

Thank you so much!

Megan, Spencer (+the fur babies), & Stacy