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Need help with monthly expenses, please…

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My mom is on disability without any income other than SSDI, which isn’t much at all. I am unemployed because I am her full-time caretaker. She is now immobile and mostly bedridden. The last place she worked at laid her off instead of allowing her to retire early, therefore she has no retirement nor a substantially developed 401k account. We live off a small inheritance from my grandfather which was originally designated as my mom’s retirement fund, except that has depleted dramatically due to the costs of restoring a flooded home and living at a hotel and paying for salvaged items in storage. Our home flooded in 2018 and we lost virtually everything. She liquidated her retirement in an effort to restore the house so we can sell it and buy a simple, single floor home that’s wheelchair accessible. This has been the greatest drain on her money, plus the delays caused us excessive weekly room fees at the hotel, monthly storage unit costs in a non temperature controlled unit whose fees increased regularly (not even sure if what was salvaged was done adequately), property tax on the house, plus various utilities, etc on top of normal living expenses (food, medicine, doctors,  dental, Ophthalmology). We have lived in three different hotels during this time because we have had nowhere else to go and getting a room about 35 miles away from our home was as cheap as we could do without getting ridiculously far away. Our mail, prescriptions, and groceries are delivered to the hotel and we just stay in our room and have done so since well before the pandemic was even an issue. We don’t go out to movies, concerts, amusement parks, or waste our money in any frivolous way; we try to be as thrifty and frugal as possible to make our funds last, but even on a budget we unavoidably spend more per month than the SSDI and we have to pull more money from my mom’s now nearly non-existent inheritance/retirement. We even have procrastinated on trips to the dentist for essential dental work, the ophthamologist for glasses for each of us, specialist appointments for my mom’s degenerative disc disease, and surgery for my hernia. We try to make the best of things, but over time, the money has been running out and my mom’s Social Security Disability funds only cover the room for each month. Everything else is paid via her liquidated retirement fund. As my mom’s full-time caretaker, I have to be constantly near her especially since her service dog, Pogo, whom we have had for over 17 wonderful years, was put to sleep in her arms just minutes before Valentine’s Day in 2020. He had acute renal failure and couldn’t be saved. We watched his bodily functions fail bit by bit until he faded from us altogether, although he still remains in our hearts and always will. We would love to have a new pet service dog and hope for just as special a bond as we forged with Pogo, but we just can’t afford it. I don’t have time to work anymore due to demands of my time to help my mom and the requirements of my nearness to my mom as well and my health not being the greatest anymore as I’m already 47.  I am doing my best to help my mom be happy, comfortable, and secure as well as plan and utilize ways to live as cheaply as possible, but I don’t know what we’ll do when the money is finally gone. We used to get a monthly amount from her retirement but her financial handler discontinued the process in 2019, stating that we don’t have much left and to extend our funds even further. So we keep giving up more and more things. We frequently don’t eat and go without groceries. I used to skip taking meds until my health reacted poorly to that practice. My mom was hoping that after selling our home and buying a very simple home that she could replenish her retirement account. I don’t know that much will be left, if any at all. We just sold the house, but various problems with multiple contractors and lousy realtors have cost us a net loss of over 350k. This loss was unexpected and has damaged so many of our hopes. We don’t have beds, furniture, nor appliances from our house as the flood ruined all those things so we would need to furnish a new home from scratch with the absolute bare minimum necessities. We want a simple single floor home where we don’t have to share walls with noisy neighbors like we have done most of my life, however considering housing costs, cost of furnishing, and trying to replenish her retirement, I’m not sure if we can afford our goal, which should have been a simple process. Maybe we could find a cheap apartment or condo, but cheaper  might mean going to a neighborhood with a higher crime rate than we are already in. Right now, we are struggling to make ends meet on a monthly basis. I would hope that a bare minimum of $2500 each month would make up the difference at the very least, but $6000 a month would help prevent her disability check getting absorbed by the hotel and make it available for other needs. I’m embarrassed to ask for help (financial or otherwise) partly because of pride and an incredibly low feeling of self-worth, but here I am feeling desperate about our situation and especially for my mom. She has absolutely nobody else to turn to for help. I am all she has and I wish I could give her so much more because she deserves it and has done so much for me during my life. She has suffered so much and I want to end or at least ease her financial and emotional suffering. Somebody suggested this site and after months of deliberation, I feel it’s necessary to ask for the kindness and generosity of others to help support us. Somebody else said these things almost never work no matter how well you are connected. I have seen some of the people using GoFundMe succeed in their goals and I was hoping to be one of them, however I have received only one small donation in the past five months and as generous as that was, it wasn’t enough by itself and I am losing faith in humanity. In fact, I recently had a “friend” say he hoped I wasn’t using donations to fund repairs. This effort was NEVER about funding repairs. The repairs were already paid for and this effort was ONLY ever for monthly living expenses. Even if it had been, this place is for anyone who needs help with anything and I shouldn’t have to defend myself like that. Friends should never treat one another like that. I truly hope that there are better people out there who can either afford to be financially generous or at least share my plea for help across the internet so that someone who can help will learn of our need. I know that these are challenging times more than ever. Thank you very much for your time and consideration. Any effort to assist is greatly appreciated.

Organizer

Scott Cherry
Organizer
Manassas, VA

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