Without Cash Management Contract-2014: Fill & Download for Free

I lived in a Richmond Virginia ghetto for seven years. A neighborhood listed as one of the top 10 most dangerous neighborhoods in the nation.A drug-infested, crime-ridden Federally-recognized Food Desert where I had to chase trespassing hookers out of my backyard and kids used their new Christmas BB guns to shoot the leg off my cat for fun:It was exactly the opposite of extra cash flow that I landed there. I did not want to be there, but it was all I could afford.My husband, through no fault of his own, had lost his job. Grrrrreat! We are now officially victims of the Great Recession of 2008! My husband spent the next year applying at every bank in a 500-mile radius; in the throes of the Recession, no banks were hiring. He got not one interview. Depressed and upset and angry, he stopped looking for work and sat down to become an alcoholic. While I worked 50 hours a week trying to keep up with a mortgage we couldn’t afford on my one paycheck.It took 3 years, and a great deal of hardship and sacrifice, including nine months without hot water because I couldn’t pay the gas bill, and handouts from food banks, but ultimately we foreclosed and lost the house. Our once-perfect credit was completely destroyed, and seeing the writing on the wall, I had spent a year trying to find a new address. Even if I could afford the rent on my salary alone, landlords refused to look past the ruined credit.In 2011, we were two weeks from being evicted by the bank and being homeless when I met the slumlord who overlooked the credit report and rented me a shack in “da hood.”Embarrassed, ashamed, and angry, I refused to allow my drunken unemployed husband to move to the ghetto with me. “I love you, but you need to get your shit together and get sober and employed before you can join me.” He went to live with his mother; I lived in a shack in “da hood.”For the first time in years, I could pay my bills. There wasn’t a lot left over, and I hated my new house and my new neighborhood, but I could pay my bills. And I continued to work my two jobs and scrimp and sacrifice to rebuild my savings and my credit record, because there is no way in fucking hell that this damned pit is going to be my “forever home!” There is at least one more moving van in my future!Meanwhile, my husband had no income and no bills at his mother’s house. And he decided that living with me, even with all the hardship and the anger, had been better than living with Mom. He decided to quit smoking, quit drinking, resume the job search. He decided that since the banks were not hiring, to become employed, he needed a new career. So his mother bought used textbooks and paid for certification tests and my husband landed a new job in IT.For Christmas that year, three years after I had landed in the ghetto, I gave him a key to the shack, and he moved in. My income more than doubled. Whoo hoo! I can afford to quit my second job! We can afford to move out of “da hood!”We didn't.My credit was still ruined, and I still didn’t have much in the bank. We were not ready for a mortgage. But if we continued to live as we had, my salary could continue to cover the bills at the shack, and my husband’s salary could be 100% banked into our savings account. So instead of jacking our rent and throwing away more of our money to another landlord for a better rental address, we continued to live in the ghetto and I continued to work two jobs to rebuild our credit and our savings.A year after my husband moved in, I gave $300 to the bank that agreed to open a secured credit card account for me. A $300 limit wasn’t much, but it was enough to responsibly use to pay for groceries and gasoline and pay off in full every month. I never missed a payment, and I never paid interest. And slowly, my credit improved.And every two weeks I was putting hundreds of dollars in our savings.Eventually, I was able to open a second unsecured credit account. Almost ten years after the Great Recession, a bank was willing to trust me with $500 of their money! And eventually, there was a third new unsecured rewards credit card with a $7000 credit limit and $10k in the savings account. Tentatively, we applied for a mortgage prequalification. Just before Christmas 2016, we received an acceptance letter. I wept.For a year, we were working with an agent, casually shopping Richmond real estate, and not finding anything suitable. Part of the reason for the difficulties was my Recession-induced insistence on not being overextended on our mortgage. We could realistically have afforded better properties than the ones we were shopping, but I am never going to lose the roof over my head again because someone else lost a job. Lesson learned, thank you very much!!Then two weeks before boarding a plane to Orlando for our first vacation in almost a decade, my slum landlord sent me an eviction notice. After seven years of never missing a rent payment, including during the four months in 2014 when I had no income at all because I’d broken my arm without health insurance and couldn’t work, my landlord had sold my shack and gave us 90 days to get out.The only thing holding us in Richmond was my job, and I was not confident about that since a management change. I told my husband to find a realtor in Florida who could reserve a full day for us the week we would be there.We gave up a day’s worth of prepaid theme park tickets to spend a full 15-hour day with a realtor, viewing every property available in our price range. We made two offers before returning to Orlando to continue our vacation. And a seller accepted. We signed the contract before we boarded the plane to return to Richmond and spend the next six weeks in a whirlwind packing up the ghetto shack and moving to a dream address at a Florida beach.We’ve been here just over a year now, and we are deliriously happy. I still pinch myself. There’s still a small voice in the back of my head that whispers 24/7 “OMG we live in Florida! OMG we really live in Florida!”I have a lemon tree in our backyard.When given the choice between living in a safe area with a tight budget or in a high-crime area with shootings and more cash flow, I chose the ghetto. I was burglarized not once but twice, my cat had her leg shot off, a bullet barely missed me while I was standing in my kitchen during Christmas Eve’s celebratory gunfire, my neighbors totaled my car for me while it was parked on the street,we were vandalized multiple times and I was constantly running hookers, addicts, homeless, and dealers off our property but it was all worth it. I lost UPS packages off our porch, electronics, jewelry, appliances, my car. I replaced damaged doors, window glass, our mailbox, auto glass including the $700 dollars to replace a vintage Corvette windshield, auto antennas and tires. It was worth it. I rebuilt my credit, my savings, my marriage, and secured a mortgage in a place I never dreamed I’d ever actually make it to before retirement, if ever.It was hard, and took too many years, but it’s all good. We’ve rejoined the middle class in a safe neighborhood in a tropical paradise for which other people pay thousands to vacation for a week. Now I’m on vacation 52 weeks a year. The thugs who shot my cat and hit-and-ran over my Corvette will never be able to say that.Oh, and that secured credit card? The one that was our first handhold to climbing out of the pit? The annual fee is due in January. I made the request; I received my new upgraded annual-fee-free unsecured credit card and the check returning my $300 last week.That was the last remnant of the bad times. The ghetto is officially behind us. And when we’re standing in our backyard looking at our lemon and nectarine trees and our hibiscus and pineapple bushes, facing south, the ghetto is actually behind us. About 700 miles behind us. And the ocean is three miles that way.