Ok, so this is going to probably be one of those posts that I have to come back to later.
Because of that, I am going to keep it simple to start. Maybe I’ll just lay out the situation. Big decisions are never easy for me. I guess they aren’t for any one. For some reason I can find a bunch of different angles to justify or rebuke pretty much any big decision. Usually I’ll get stuck on something and it’ll be the one thing or maybe two or three things that I have to figure out about my life before Ill go through with something.
Here is an overly simplified version of the problem. I want to buy a Jeep. We had a Jeep that we restored when I was in high school. It was awesome. I want that again. I want to drive around with no top and no doors and feel like a badass. I’d like to do some custom work on it with my dad like we did back when I was in high school. I miss doing that, and want my son to work on projects with me and my dad. I don’t think I would want to do a full restoration on a Jeep. I realistically don’t have time for that. So we have been talking about buying one and then painting a different color. We could do that over a couple of weekends over a couple of months and I would get a lot of fulfillment doing that.
We don’t borrow money and haven’t owed anything to anyone in almost 5 years. That means we have to save up for the Jeep. Normally that would be the hard part, but this time pulling the trigger is the problem. We have between 12 and 15 thousand dollars we can spend, in cash, ready to go.
I have been talking about getting a Jeep for years and now I have the money to do it, but I’m stuck on something I need to figure out first.
We have a tenant. She is nice enough. Her kids are polite for the most part. She pays on time. So, she’s not a bad fit. There has been a few things we didn’t like and confronted her on it, and as of today, we are fine with how things are going. The only problem is she is way poor. She and her four kids are super poor. Her husband died a year or two ago, before she moved in to one of our rentals. I have seen her do some things that make me question if she makes good financial decisions, but there was a time in my life where I made terrible ones so who am I to judge.
I have been in her apartment half a dozen times in the 6 months she has lived there. I was hoping after the first time, this would change. It didn’t. She still has almost no furniture. The 5 people living there have 1 bed. They don’t share it. The older kids have a space on the floor where they sleep, so I assume the youngest gets the bed with her mom. There isn’t a couch or a dining room table. I don’t think there is a tv. I know that she wants these things, or at least that’s what she has told me but I know how much she makes and there isn’t a ton of room in her budget.
She rents the house for a fair price and must get some other assistance here and there but, 5 people living on $12 an hour full time job doesn’t get very far. We gave her a break during Covid 19 since we don’t really “need” the money, but that was to bridge the gap for her slow down in work.
I just don’t know how I feel about buying something I have always wanted but don’t necessarily need when 150 feet away from me there is a family I know with kids that have no beds. I guess I could buy the beds and still get the Jeep. But I would only be doing that because I feel guilty about buying the Jeep. While it’s a nice gesture, I’m not sure if I feel responsible for doing something.
What I really think is there are a ton of people that I could send this to that would probably feel really good about buying them beds. They would be excited to make a difference for her and her kids. That difference and then some type of sustained relationship would actually really help her. I could probably even just post something on Go Fund Me or one of those sites. Maybe those are two avenues I should try.
I’m getting stuck on this because it is important to figure out. I’m not sure what I’m going to do so I would love any advice or feedback.