I am asking for your help to keep me in my house after a series of unfortunate events that have prevented me from paying certain bills that have now become dangerously past due.

I will explain briefly what your donations would be used for and then briefly (or... maybe not-so-briefly) explain how I found myself in this unfortunate situation.

The first $1,000, if received, will go to paying my longest-past-due monthly mortgage payment. The next $1,800, if received, will go to paying my way-past-due property taxes. The next $1,000 after that, if received, would go to paying an additional mortgage payment. That's $3,800 total and of course, the difference between that and this campaign's goal would go to this platform's fees.

I have experienced so much bad luck in the last year, it's hard to know where to begin or how to explain... but I'll try. Let's go back to May 2024, just over a year ago. Things were going relatively okay, although not perfectly. I was driving my beloved 2000 Volvo S70 and working as an independent contractor, driving for a popular app-based delivery service, when the Volvo suffered a catastrophic engine failure ("threw a rod") which could not be repaired, and the cost of replacing the engine was well beyond my reach.

With no working car of my own, I was unable to work and some of my household bills quickly became past due. The generosity of a few friends helped me pay the utilities and keep me fed, but nothing more. Two weeks after the Volvo died, my next-door neighbor generously loaned me his 20-year-old SUV without restriction, a beast of a tank that only got 12 mpg. With gas at around $3.00/gallon at the time, I was literally putting half of my daily earnings into its gas tank and was unable to earn enough to even keep up with, much less stay ahead of, my bills. I drove my neighbor's SUV for about two months before it, too, suffered a major mechanical breakdown, something having to do with the power steering, which rendered the vehicle inoperable. My neighbor didn't blame me for the breakdown but also wasn't in a position to have it repaired, and so it went back to him, leaving me once again without a vehicle and out of work. More bills became past due and those that already were became even more so. Then, in early August, a dear friend rescued me with the incredibly generous gift of an almost 20-year-old car that, despite its age, seemed to be in really good shape.

I was back on the road and back to work, with almost every monthly bill past due to one degree or another, including my mortgage. BUT THEN, because it's August, in addition to (*waving hands*) ALL THAT, my annual property taxes also became due, with half due in September and the other half in November. An important bill to pay, of course, but triaged behind the critical daily necessities of the electric, gas, water and cell phone bills (the latter of which, of course, was required for work). And so for the next five months, I worked and I worked and I worked as much as I could, as hard as I could, every single day that GOD allowed me to breathe, to get caught up in my bills. And believe it or not, I was actually beginning to make progress. By January of this year, I had gotten most of my monthly bills (i.e., the utilities) brought up to date. However, I was still one month past due on my mortgage and the property taxes, towards which I had paid nothing, became past due on the 1st of January. And then...

AND THEN...

On the 2nd of February, the recently gifted car suffered a catastrophic transmission failure. It just... stopped. Dead in the road. No warning. Boom. Dead. I had the car towed to the nearest repair shop and their diagnosis was severe. The car would require a new transmission at a cost of $4,000 installed, PLUS a laundry list of other mechanical repairs that pushed the total repair estimate to just over $8,000. That, of course, was nowhere near being anything close to a possibility. Once again... no car and out of work. For the third time in seven months. It was hard to believe this could actually be happening to me... again.

I spent the next two weeks trying to get a loan---ANY kind of loan---from my bank. Car loan? Unsecured installment loan? Credit card? Second mortgage? HELOC? Mortgage refi? ANYTHING? No, no, no, no, no, no and HELL no. The two major disqualifiers for every "loan product" they offered were low credit score (mine's in the high 600s; needed to be 720 minimum) and debt-to-income ratio (i.e., I don't make enough to pay my bills... DUH). I sold some stuff on eBay and a few friends donated some funds to me to keep the lights on, but the BIG money I needed to get back on the road was elusive. I was, AGAIN, out of work for two entire months and during this time, my mortgage went from being "only" one month behind to being two months behind. Anyone who's ever been behind in their mortgage payments knows that this is dangerous territory to be in.

Then, in early April, yet another friend stepped forward with a financial rescue. It wasn't an outright purchase and gift to me of a car like the previous one had been; but rather, a personal loan of a sufficient amount to buy a used car and make reasonably affordable payments. I was extremely appreciative of this person's trust; he loaned me money when literally no one else would, at a rate that absolutely no one else would. I purchased a 20-year-old car from a used car dealer that I honestly believed would last for, if not many, then at least a few years to come.

I returned to work as quickly as possible and once again worked as hard as I could as much as I could in my continuing attempts to get my financial situation as stable as possible, now with a brand new monthly car/loan payment. And so it went... for eight weeks. Until... the 3rd of June. BILLIE JOE MACALLISTER DAY!!! Almost not quite two full months. Then... THAT car died. Broken timing belt and irreparable damage to the engine.

FOUR CARS IN TWELVE MONTHS!!! WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING???

My friends on Facebook are telling me I'm cursed and it's hard to not believe them.

As I write these words, I have not yet replaced the last car but I am currently working on doing that as soon as possible. But that's not the main reason for this campaign. The main reason for this campaign is this: When the calendar flipped over to June 1, that two-months-past-due mortgage payment became three months past due, and THAT is going to trigger some REALLY bad legal procedures that could---and I'm not exaggerating here---ruin my life. It is IMPERATIVE that I pay AT LEAST one month's mortgage payment in the next few days to prevent the mortgage company from declaring the loan to be in default, which is the first procedural step towards foreclosure. If the loan is declared to be in default, the mortgage company can and will legally demand the ENTIRE three months' past due payments be paid in full immediately to avoid foreclosure. So the urgency here is simply this: pay AT LEAST one past due payment before the loan is declared to be in default. That will, at the very least, give me a little more time to get caught up on the other two past due payments.

But the past due mortgage isn't the only threat. My property taxes, which first became due last September and then became past due in January, have become so dangerously in arrears that the property is now in danger of being seized by the county for nonpayment. I do not have a "date certain" deadline for avoiding county seizure, but I'm pretty damned sure the county will not allow the tax bill to go unpaid for a full year. That means I've got to get this taken care of no later than the end of next month.

So that's why I'm asking for your help. The first thing is the longest-past-due mortgage payment; the second thing is the long-past-due property taxes; the third thing is the other two past due mortgage payments.

By now, you might be asking, WHY SHOULD I DONATE YOUR FUNDRAISER IF YOU CAN'T PAY YOUR OWN BILLS? And that's a very good question. Here's my response:

Although I had originally intended to wait until my 65th birthday to apply for Social Security benefits, it now seems clear to me that I need to apply for them to begin when I turn 64, which is in two months. (And since it takes about two months for the application to process, that's something I need to get started on NOW.) I've run all the numbers to determine if this is a smart or even practical thing to do, and while the answer isn't the most desirable result, it's at least workable and, more to the point, it's the ONLY practical option I have right now. I had hoped that when I "retire," I could FULLY retire and Social Security would be sufficient to allow me to stop working. The numbers tell me that I would have to wait until I'm at least 67 for that to happen and frankly, I'm not so sure I have that long. If I retire at 64, I will still have to work at least part-time and earn about half of what I typically earn now to make ends meet. If sometime in the next couple of years I can raise my credit score and lower my DTI ratio, I could refi the mortgage, drop the APR by several points and lower the monthly payment by hundreds. And/Or, if I can make it in this house for another 10 years, I'll have paid off the mortgage totally. Of course, whether I survive to see 74 is anybody's guess.

But to make this "retire at 64" thing happen and be successful, I need to GET there, still in my house. If the mortgage goes to foreclosure or if the property is seized by the county, it becomes a moot point. So I'm asking for your help to get these bills paid so that I can start drawing Social Security in August and be able to pay ALL my bills going forward like the responsible citizen that I'm supposed to be.

THANK YOU for anything you are able to do to help me resolve this difficult situation.