#Even if the rent is higher; I won’t have car payments to make

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

I wonder if I can save money on food when moving out by just getting a 30 day supply of “just add water” MREs and cutting the portions in half? The only other food items I’d get would be flour and rice (in bulk), and maybe eggs, so I could pay only around 200 dollars in food for a supply of two months or potentially longer. It would work wonders for my executive dysfunction, not having to cook much. Plus, I could save money on gas by not having to drive to the store very often. I could also grow food indoors.

[restforthe-burdenedsoul]

Financial venting/ranting/complaining ahead

I’m so tired of this.

We re-did our budgets and the only thing we have left to cut out is date nights/friend hangs. Because I can’t cut out therapy totally. And we can’t cut out melodys training. It’s been too positive of a change.

In the meantime, I still can’t afford to see any doctors or schedule my adhd assessment. I don’t know where the money goes. The only thing I see when I break down our spending is going out to eat. Like, 100$ a month. And we can’t anymore.

All my friends live hours away, can’t go see them anymore either. It’s too much in gas and they won’t make the drive to me. So I guess I don’t have friends again haha.

Just never gonna leave my house again apparently. If we get to have a house. Because right now it’s looking like we can’t afford the rent increase. We can’t afford to save for a down payment even with the assistance programs.

And I just want to give up. What did i do wrong in life to end up here? Why does having a bachelor degree make me no money? Why can’t my job give us raises so we can fucking afford to have our own place and eat. Because even groceries are getting to be too expensive. We’ve cut back a lot on what we eat. I like to cook a little fancy/multiple ingredients.

Tonight is just chicken rice and beans. We did pasta with chicken the other night. I’m trying to use up the rest of the pasta we have right now but that’s really all we’ve been eating. Which I’m thankful for. I’m just aggravated. We’re in our mid 30s and have nothing to show for it.

We are inviting M’s friend/ex over on Saturday (her wife can’t join us until like, end of May and we need to let our apartment know about our least by mid May) to ask her if we can live with them for a few months.

I hate this. I hate that as two adults with full time jobs, we have to move in with another couple to afford to have something over our heads. The plus side is that it’ll allow us to save and hopefully I will find a higher paying job in Orlando.

I’m sick to my stomach with this move. I’m so scared I won’t find a job. And we’ll have moved away from my steady job. I can’t commute from her house. It’s two hours away from my schools.

I could potentially live with my parents during the week tho. They’re the same distance, possibly closer, to my schools. But that would leave M living with his ex without me during the week.

I think we are at a good place emotionally with all that but living with her and her wife is a whole different ball game and I’m not a fan. But the other option is to renew the lease- not be able to afford anything extra (therapy, dog training. And of course the stuff we can’t afford now) and never get ahead. Like literally just never get ahead. We can’t save anything right now. We could never save for a house down payment like that. And we can’t afford the rent out there. And I can’t get a job out there without having a place secured. My car is not reliable enough right now for that kind of commute.

I just wanna crawl into a hole and never come back out. We shouldn’t be pay check to paycheck. I shouldn’t have to cancel doctor appointments and therapy appointments becsyse we can’t afford it.

I just spent 250$ for my eye exam and lenses. I don’t think I can afford to buy contacts after that. Even tho I did the contact exam too. I haven’t had the extra funds for contacts in over two years. Granted, I do prioritize things over the contacts but it shouldn’t have to be contacts or date night, contacts or melodys training, contacts or Groceries. I’m sick of it.

[rothjuje]

Met with our realtor here. The plan is to list early April and close early May. She’s going to come do a walk through in February to let us know if there’s anything to work on before they come take pictures mid March. We’re going to ask for a 30 day rent back in the listing and she says if the market stays this hot it shouldn’t be an issue.

I am ecstatic to move, really truly, I think about it constantly. But I’m also apparently sad because I had emotional whiplash after our meeting and started to cry. Justin was like, “is crying your response to every emotion?” Umm yep. Yep it is. So happy to leave, so so happy to say goodbye to Texas. So heartbroken to leave our frozen babies and all the memories and friends we’ve made.

I had some more emotional whiplash this morning. Was talking to my sister’s BFF (my close friend that moved here with us) about Halloween and she started to plan next year’s. I had to quietly remind her that we won’t be here and Oy. Just about shattered my heart. My kids are going to lose their auntie and their honorary grandma across the street.

I try not to think about it, but the truth is we don’t know anybody out there. I have a close friend about 6 hours away and Justin has some relatives I don’t remember meeting. It was so hard to move here and we both had close friends that came with.

I’m excited, really I am. But I’m also scared and emotional.

Sigh.

Anyway. We got officially pre-approved up there for an insane amount. Could easily afford a house in CA amount.

It’s crazy to think about. When we first moved here in 2014, we were too broke to afford furniture. For two weeks our only furniture was an air mattress. Yes we had his relocation package (10k but most of it was spent on a pod, the road trips over, the plane flights, and first and last months’ rent).

We lived paycheck to paycheck until after the wedding. It’s so weird that in less than a decade we’re here financially. I guess it makes sense though. We started with 9k of student loan and credit card debt. We both had car payments. Justin was making half of what he’s making now.

In 2018 we spent every penny we had on a down payment for our house. In 2019 we spent every penny we had on IVF and an embryo transfer. In 2020 we spent every penny we had on hospital and NICU bills. We’ve managed to save since then and I think we’ll be okay out there, even with the higher cost of living. We are so lucky (and very privileged).

[whumpforthewin]

The Answer - 3

“You think anyone cares about you?” Her words were like venom. “You’re a cheap whore people fuck into the mattress and leave the money on the table. You’re everyone’s bitch. The moment you forget that is the moment you lose.” The door slammed behind her. 

Jack didn’t stop himself from falling to his knees. He knew she was right. He’d forgotten himself, and it almost ruined them. She was like a mentor to him. He’d had no where to go when she took him under her wing. Lost and alone. She made sure he didn’t die. Taught him the tricks of the trade as it were. She was the closest thing to a friend he had. But she was right. 

He took a breath. He needed to get himself together. Rent was coming up and he needed a little extra this month. His landlord, or more accurately his pimp, was a prick and Jack had pissed him off so he punched a hold in the wall and was charging Jack for it. It was likely some lesson Jack had failed to learn. But all the people under him had to live in the building so he couldn’t exactly move.

Jack had tried to hold down a job but that hadn’t ended well. Apparently multiple years of torture fucks with your mental state and random things can set you off. So now he was twenty-one and just trying to make the best out of his shitty circumstances. 

He took a quick shower, fluffed his hair and put on his makeup. His rotation was in the higher end tonight. The girls pretty much ran themselves with their pimp taking a percentage. 

According to Amy, his mentor, the girls had almost unionized and had sorted everything out. That way they could keep most of the money but he got a low percentage and got to charge them rent. And to make sure each of the girls made enough to cover rent they rotated areas and would help each other out when needed. It was a good system and it worked for them. It was almost like a family. And the girls included Jack, and the two other male workers. None of them had a problem with being one of the girls. 

Every insult seemed to cut deeper that night. 

“You like that whore?”

“Such a good slut for me.”

“Oh yeah, choke you bitch.”

They weren’t particularly memorable insults but Amy’s words echoed in his mind. 

Then the car he dreaded to see pulled up. Not a word was spoken as the door was opened. Jack hesitated just a moment before climbing in. 

Mark sat across from him in the limousine. “Mark-“ Jack started but stopped himself as Mark leaned forward. They didn’t typically speak until after Jack had been moaning his name. 

Mark just raised an eyebrow.

“I can’t, I can’t do this, with you, anymore.”

That caused Mark to pause. “Why is that?” His voice was rich and calm and Jack was terrified. Normally Mark was commanding and powerful, but all he seemed now was guarded. 

“You’re developing feelings.” Jack had to push all the blame on Mark. If he didn’t… he didn’t want to think of it. 

“And that’s not allowed?” Mark said, sitting back. That gave Jack a little bit of breathing room. 

“No, this isn’t a relationship.” Jack was impressed his voice hadn’t cracked yet. 

“It could be,” Mark offered, again.

“No, I’m not, I can’t.” Jack didn’t know what to say. 

“Why not? I’ve offered to take care of you, pet.” 

Jack flinched at the nickname. 

Something in Mark’s eyes flashed but he didn’t have a chance to catch it. 

“Oh, that’s it isn’t it.” Mark moved closer once again. “You’re a whore,” the words dripped like honey, “but you’re no pet.” He grabbed Jack’s neck, using a finger to tilt his face to look him in the eyes. “That’s it isn’t it.”

Jack whimpered but didn’t fight his grip. 

“Do you think a slut like you doesn’t deserve to be a pet.” He tightened his grip just enough to cause Jack’s breath to catch. “Like you don’t deserve to be treated as nicely as a pet?” 

He pressed his lips against Jack’s harshly, Jack let Mark dominate the kiss as always. 

“Or,” he pulled back. “Do you think your ruined self is too good to be demoted to a pet. That you may be a bitch but you’re no one's pet.” 

Jack didn’t have an answer. Not one that would satisfy Mark. So he said nothing. 

“Have I been treating you too nicely whore?” He tightened his grip again and Jack’s hands went to Mark’s wrist reflexively. “Perhaps I should fuck you with no prep? Maybe I’ve been too nice. Sloppy as you are after all those men I’m sure I could fit right in. Maybe you need to be shown you would be lucky to be my pet.” He threw Jack to the floor of the limo. 

Jack almost smiled. This he understood. He was nothing more than someone to be fucked into the mattress, even if this mattress was the rough floor of a limo. Finally Mark understood that. 

“But I don’t think I will.” 

Jack froze and looked up at Mark. 

“Because despite what you think or want. I care about you. Sure, it is mostly your body, but it is also you. So, here. Your standard payment, plus tip. Plus.” He pulled something out of his pocket. “This. I refuse to watch you throw away your life. I won’t seek you out again. But if you wish to change your life, with my help, come here. Show whoever tries to stop you this card. Then go up to the floor I’ve written on here. Someone will be there to let you in.” 

Jack didn’t know what to say. He took the money with trembling hands. The business card was nice. Jack felt wrong even holding it. 

“But, if you chose to continue being a whore, I won’t stop you.” Mark didn’t make a move as Jack got to his knees and shuffled to the door. He didn’t say anything as he opened it. He wanted to say something, anything, but nothing felt right so he didn’t say anything. 

He shut the door and there was a click of finality there. He watched the limo pull away. 

He intended to throw out the card, he did. The night passed in a blur of “whore,” “slut,” and other degrading names. It wasn’t until he was back in his apartment that he realized Dark had paid him nearly triple his rate. Jack was shocked. 

He didn’t throw away the card. 

Taglist

@whumper-in-training

[mostlysignssomeportents]

QE, inflation, slave labor and a People's Bailout

The Obama administration inherited a vast economic crisis. They responded with Quantitative Easing, pumping trillions into the finance sector to rescue the banks that had knowingly gambled on bad mortgages, losing so much they were about to go under.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/24/the-fed-launched-qe-nine-years-ago--these-four-charts-show-its-impact.html

At the time, deficit hawks predicted inflation, which is a commonsense prediction: inflation is what happens when the amount of money chasing goods and services goes up faster than the supply of those goods and services, creating bidding wars.

They were right...and wrong. What we got was asset bubbles, especially in housing markets, driving up the price of putting a roof over your head rewarding speculators and landlords, especially Wall Street landlords.

And Obama's handling of the financial crisis put a lot of us under the thumbs of landlords! Obama bailed out the banks, but not the mortgage holders, kicking off waves of foreclosures.

Thanks to lax oversight, banks that had cheated to originate or service mortgages were able to cheat on foreclosures, too - stealing houses from borrowers who were up-to-date on payments or who were entitled to forebearance.

https://web.archive.org/web/20101017014628/http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101014/bs_yblog_upshot/is-david-j-stern-the-poster-boy-for-the-foreclosure-mess

I mean, literally stealing houses by the hundreds or even the thousands. The very same people who created the great financial crisis got bailed out, rather than punished, and used their new lease on life to commit even worse crimes with total impunity.

The houses that were foreclosed (and sometimes stolen) were flipped to Wall Street, who LOVE financial products based on peoples' homes. After all, people will move heaven and earth to keep shelter over their kids' heads.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/blackstone-rental-homes-bundled-derivatives/

Corporate landlords built a sturdy, three-legged stool to guarantee the flow of rents to their investors.

I. Jack up rents to consume the majority of tenants' income:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/09/wall-street-owns-main-street-literally.html

II. Cease maintenance, knowing that your tenants have no recourse if their homes are crumbling and unsafe:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-housing-invitation/

III. Perfect the eviction, heretofore an American rarity:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/wall-street-america-s-new-landlord-kicks-tenants-to-the-curb

America's housing crisis - substandard homes rented at unsustainable costs to people who had their own homes stolen from them by the same investors they're currently paying rent to - is a major legacy of QE, and it's definitely inflationary.

But it's a highly selective form of inflation. Many people won't experience it at all: if you owned your house before the crisis and weathered it, the asset bubble has made your home more valuable, while falling interest rates let you refi at rock-bottom rates. You're great.

You're paying less than ever for a home that's worth more than ever, but that's a spillover effect of the main show, which is the process by which millions of Americans were robbed of their homes and then moved into high-priced slums to the benefit of the 1%.

Both Obama and Trump have boasted of the economy's performance since QE, pointing to soaring share prices - share prices that are totally decoupled from company performance. Companies lose money and still gain value.

Indeed, predatory companies (like Grubhub, Postmates, Door Dash and Uber Eats) that destroy profitable companies (restaurants) while still losing money are booming in value.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/18/code-is-speech/#schadenpizza

Investors understand that consumers have no money, due to rising housing costs plus crashing wages, largely thanks to the "gig economy," a polite term for "worker misclassification."

Companies that get bailouts would be stupid to spend the money on jobs or new productive capacity to make stuff no one can afford to buy. Instead, they buy their own shares and declare dividends, driving up share prices.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/20/the-cadillac-of-murdermobiles/#austerity

We have seen an incredible market bull-run since the Great Financial Crisis, a run that has largely continued since the pandemic. It's the other asset bubble: a bubble in investment assets.

Corporate leaders claim responsibility for these rises, but the reality is that it's the predictable result of bailing out banks and companies rather than workers and homeowners.

Société Générale's analysts say that about half of the stock market's gains since 2008 can be attributed to QE.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/without-qe-the-s-p-500-would-be-trading-closer-to-1-800-than-3-300-says-societe-generale-11604688442

Top-down bailouts have multiplier effects. The banks are made whole, then they get to steal our houses, then they get to steal our rents, then they get to goose their share prices.

This is how the super-rich got even richer, before and after the pandemic. It's also why the tiny minority of Americans with adequate retirement savings saw them swell - it's another spillover effect of the great upward transfer of national wealth.

Why does all of this matter now? Well, between my writing my first paragraph and this one, Biden was declared, giving us what the Biden campaign signalled would be "Obama's third term."

Biden's taking office amidst a financial crisis that's far worse than 2008.

Biden has a long track-record of giving legislative gifts to the finance sector at the expense of the American people. They called him "The Senator from MNBA" for a reason.

https://www.gq.com/story/joe-biden-bankruptcy-bill

If he addresses this crisis the same way that he did in 2008 - the way that Congress and the Senate addressed the crisis in 2020 - by bailing out finance, not the public, we're seriously fucked.

Sure, the stock market will continue to rise and rise, as will house prices.

If you are in the 1%, you will get SO MUCH richer. If you're in the 10%, your retirement savings will swell, your mortgage will get cheaper, and your house's value will go up.

For everyone else: evictions, foreclosures, soaring rents, worse wages.

Last week, California voters passed Prop 22, safeguarding the right of gig economy companies to misclassify their workers as contractors and pay them sub-minimum wages, withhold benefits, evade payroll and unemployment taxes, etc.

Uber/Lyft spent $200m to secure that win.

As Prop22's promoters remind us: Gig work is the new unemployment benefit: it's a private-sector jobs guarantee, work you can get at the tap of your screen. It's a perfect labor market - workers effectively bid to offer the best price to perform servant work for others.

The more workers there are, and the more desperate their situation is, the lower the payments go. A lot of those savings are siphoned off by the (money-losing, stock-soaring) gig companies, but some of it is passed onto customers.

This is by design.

Since the Reagan years, neoliberal regulators and lawmakers have hewed to a radical anti-monopoly theory called "consumer harm." Under "consumer harm," monopolies are only a problem if they drive up prices.

Since gig companies lower prices, they are totally kosher - even if they secure monopolies through predatory pricing.

But there's an even more insidious side to "consumer harm" and the gig economy.

Misclassifying workers as independent contractors converts a brutally exploited workforce into a collection of "small businesses." If they get together and demand higher wages, THEY violate the consumer harm standard. They're a group of companies fixing prices!

We're 12 years into the QE experiment and it has demonstrated the relationship between government money-creation and inflation: inflation isn't the result of government spending, it's the result of government spending that leads to bidding wars.

Giving trillion to the rich created inflation in the things that rich people buy: our houses (out from under us) and stocks.

Now, imagine what a People's Bailout could do.

Imagine replacing the gig economy job guarantee (a workfare program with no workplace protections, job security or minimum wage) with an actual Job Guarantee as described by the economist Pavlina Tcherneva:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/05/the-hard-stuff/#jobs-guarantee

Federally funded, locally administered: good jobs at inclusive wages that served community needs proposed by community groups and approved by local governments.

Would that be inflationary? Recall that inflation is what happens when the number of buyers goes up and the supply of things they're buying doesn't keep up. Inflation is the result of bidding wars.

For a jobs guarantee to be inflationary, there would have to be a bidding war for the US workforce. That is the opposite of what we have now.

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/11/06/picture-emerges-of-a-weird-recovery-to-still-historically-awful-levels/

The reason no one wants to buy Americans' labor is that no one has any money to buy the things Americans make with their labor. The only people with money - the wealthy - primarily buy our homes out from under us, and stocks.

QE for the wealthy has made the economy incredibly perverse. Productive companies are being driven to bankruptcy by gig economy companies that lose money. Millions of workers compete to provide services for the lucky few, for dwindling wages.

Workers can't afford to buy stuff so companies have no reason to make stuff and so they become finance grifts, until they collapse, like Hertz did (after it converted itself from a car-rental company to an accountancy trick company):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/27/literal-gunhumping/#hertz-uranus

The gig economy jobs guarantee can't last. Eventually the number of workers bidding to serve the wealthy will exceed demand by such a wide margin that wages turn negative - the depreciation and payments on your gig economy car will exceed your income.

But a real, public sector, federal Jobs Guarantee? Yes please.

Paying workers good wages to do productive things that their communities need will create demand for the thing companies have decided not to make anymore.

In other words, it will enable companies to make profits again, and it will drive out the companies whose share prices soared on the expectation of losses (accompanied by dividends and buybacks). It will dampen the stock market, but improve the economy.

This will mean the end of those spillover effects - soaring house-valuations and 401ks for the lucky few - but those came at a VERY high price - vast un- and underemployment, the gutting of the productive economy, crushing debt for the majority.

America bought those house price rises and 401k gains at a steep price: it cost the nation its resilience and political stability.

If the goal of QE was to secure middle-class Americans' retirements, it was spectacularly wasteful.

A tiny fraction of QE's trillions went to middle-class retirements, while the vast majority went to making the 1% far, far richer. Most middle class Americans still don't have secure retirements - their dotage will be spent competing for gig economy jobs.

For the price of QE, the US government could simply have guaranteed the necessities of retirees: shelter, food, care. This spending would crowd out jobs, sure - the worst-paid, most precarious jobs, from fast food to gig economy "jobs."

It would make America into a country of secure and prosperous people, instead of food-delivery drivers and dog-walkers.

12 years of finance bailouts and 0 years of People's Bailouts have only exacerbated this, and the pandemic metastasised it.

When it comes to stimulus, America can't afford a third Obama term. We need to demand better of Biden - we need to demand a People's Bailout.

For almost* all our sakes.

*Offer not valid in America's richest ZIP codes.

[ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes]

Roguish Women Part 29

Summary: Kate is an American who fled to Paris to escape her past life. Now she's dancing and playing the part of a courtesan at the Moulin Rouge. There she meets Tommy Shelby who thinks she can be useful in expanding his empire. But has he been blinded?

Part 29: Kate tells her truth

            Francis Lynch was a wreck. She could barely stand or hold her head up and it had been three hours since the police had left. Three hours since one of the detectives informed her of her husband’s accident. In the wee hours of the morning, Ryan Lynch, drunk as a skunk, had fallen into the Boston Harbor and drowned.

            “What am I going to do?” She wailed from her seat at the kitchen table. Her head was in her hands.

            Her eighteen-year-old daughter was sitting on the floor, her knees tucked to her chest. “It’ll be alright, mom.” She said quietly. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her father was never the person he was meant to be. He worked twelve hours a day then spent his free time in the pub. He was never particularly loving toward his only child. After all, she was simply a mistake in his eyes. Young and reckless, he got Francis pregnant and his Catholic father guilted them into marriage.

            But Kate was still sad. She still loved him.

            “It won’t be alright!” Francis cried. “We’ll lose the apartment, we’ll lose everything!”

            “No, we won’t.” Kate stood up shakily and tried to comfort her mother. “I promise we’ll be alright.”

~~~~~ 

            “I worked to help pay the bills and to pay my neighbor for ballet lessons,” Kate explained. She sat down on the bed as she started to explain everything, she had lied to him about. “My mom worked too but my father brought in the most money.”

            Tommy wasn’t sure he expected the story to go so far back. In his experience, the farther back a story went, the more lies there were. But he tried to keep an open mind, she was being honest with him even if he was hesitant about it.

            “When my father died, we would’ve become homeless in a couple of months.”

            Tommy frowned. “You didn’t tell me your father died.” As far as the story went, or at least the one he was led to believe, Kate’s father was the reason for all of her troubles. Someone who was caught up in the American mafia, who placed all the burden on Kate.

            “Just, just listen.”

            He nodded and went to sit beside her on the bed. The last thing he wanted was for a confrontation so soon after reuniting with her. That’s why he had wanted to at least delay the truth. But he also didn’t want her to feel guilty either.

            “I’d known Frank Wallace and his brother Steve for a long time. They were already established as the Gustin Gang by that point and they controlled most of South Boston. I met Frank through my neighbor who taught me lessons. He had helped her rent and legal issues. So, I went to him after my father died.”

~~~ 

            “Girl like you shouldn’t be dealing in those sorta things, Katie,” Frank warned.

            They were at one of the bars the Wallace brothers owned. One of the places Kate’s father frequented. Kate looked around the place, wondering if this was the last place her father had been before he left and fell into the Harbor.

            “I don’t think I have a choice.” She replied quietly.

            “I’ll help you find a good job with better pay.” He assured her. “Don’t worry about your landlord either, I’ll pay him a visit if he gives you trouble ‘bout the rent.”

            To anyone else, it would’ve sounded like the perfect scenario. Having friends in gangs sometimes had its perks. But Kate shook her head. “I don’t want that, Frankie. You know how long I’ve been training to dance. I’m not going to give that up so I can work myself to death like…” She paused. “Whatever.”

            Frank tapped his knuckles on the table. “But to get into shit like bootlegging? You’re only gonna bring yourself more troubles.”

            “It’s what I want to do. I can do this and have enough money to take care of my mom. Meanwhile, I can hopefully get into a ballet company. Then over time, I might make more from dancing.”

            The older man sighed. “I know that I can’t fucking do anything to change your mind. But you need to know that this shit isn’t something you can walk away from. Not a little side job you can drop whenever you want.”

            “I know.”

~~~

            “I used my father’s identity to set it all up. I started to facilitate shipments from Europe to get liquor into Boston and then ship it all over the country. I put any debts in my father’s name and Frank helped me deal with anyone so nothing would be traced back to me.”

            Tommy wasn’t surprised that she had managed to create a bootlegging empire. Kate was certainly clever enough to get the job done. He was just unsure why she hadn’t confessed that to him when they initially met. But he wanted to hear her out so he nodded for her to continue.         

            “I was accepted into the Boston ballet company and began dancing. It became so much easier after that. I started to meet people who were higher up in the city. Rich people, people who wanted things done. Only the wealthiest knew who I really was. Everyone else thought it was my father in control.”

 ~~~

            “That was a beautiful performance, Miss Lynch.”

            “Oh, Mr. Weld,” Kate startled as she left the theatre through the backstage door. “I didn’t see you there.”

            The wealthy businessman was standing by his expensive, neatly polished car parked in the back alley. Mr. Weld was dressed in a tuxedo, demonstrating that he had seen the ballet performance that had just ended.

            “Let me drive you home.” He offered, opening the car door for her.

            “That would be kind, thank you.” Kate had no qualms about getting into his car. She was armed with a pistol and even then she doubted the man would attack her. She was far too valuable.

            “I do appreciate your work, Kathleen but I came here to voice some concerns.” Mr. Weld said as he got into the car and started it up.

            “By all means, tell me what you’re worried about.”

            The man sighed anxiously. “I understand you’ve been branching out to Chicago, selling to their bars. Word is you’ve gathered a few men there who act on your behalf.”

            “I don’t give out names of people I work with,” Kate replied calmly. “What I do in Chicago won’t affect my business with your bars, Mr. Weld. You’ll get shipments and protection as long as I’m paid.”

            “What I’m concerned about is the Chicago Outfit.” He ignored the mild threat. He’d been behind a few times with payments and had learned his lesson early on that it didn’t matter that Kate was a woman. She wasn’t someone to be messed with.

            Kate bit her tongue. The Chicago Outfit was frightening to anyone, but she didn’t show fear. “There’s no reason for concern.”

            “Pardon my insistence, but there’s been word that you’ve…you’ve been disregarding their territory lines. I would urge you to be careful or to even back out of Chicago entirely. The more you press…”

            “What?” She glanced over at him, still conveying that she wasn’t bothered even when her stomach was in knots.

            Mr. Weld’s fingers tapped nervously on the steering wheel. “The more attention you’ll call to yourself. I don’t wish to have any ties to someone who upsets them.”

            “Then pay me what I’m due and our contract will be finished,” Kate replied with a tone of finality. “You can go over to the North End and ask the Italians for help. Because you won’t get any more help from any of my allies.”

            Mr. Weld swallowed. “Just please consider your actions a bit more carefully.” He parked outside of the Lynch’s apartment building.

            “I run my business how I see fit,” Kate said, stepping out of the car. “Let me know if you want to continue our business relationship.” She closed the car door firmly.

~~~            

            “I was making money but not enough to completely stay afloat. , I branched out further to Chicago and made mistakes. I was given a warning but I didn’t listen.”

            Tommy had been in the game long enough to know the consequences of ignoring warnings. “What did they do?”

            “They took a train to Boston and kidnapped my mother. They tortured her for days but she wouldn’t tell them where I was. They ended up throwing her in the river.” Kate tucked her knees to her chest as she stared at the floor with tears in her eyes. The sight of her mother’s body being hauled out of the river would always be etched into her brain. The guilt was so unbearable she tried to pawn it off to someone else. It was the Chicago Outfit’s fault. It was the fault of whoever gave them her mother’s address. It was her father’s fault for leaving them with no income. But in the end, there was no escaping it. Kate knew it was her fault.

            Tommy, although stunned into silence by her history, he instinctually wrapped an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. His actions had led to the death of others. He knew the weight of guilt that would always rest on his soul.

            “That same night I went to Santo. I wanted him to get revenge for me. I only knew him because he left me a letter after one of my performances. He hounded me for weeks about a business relationship and then something personal. I knew he was waiting for me after the news spread about my mother.”

 ~~~

            “My condolences, Miss Lynch.” Santo poured Kate a glass of wine. They were sat together in a secluded booth at one of the North End restaurants Santo owned.

            “Thank you.” She replied quietly. It still hadn’t quite hit that her mother was dead. Yet, there she was, willing to negotiate for revenge.

            “Why is it you wanted to come to see me so soon after your mother passed?” He asked even though there was a twinkle in his eye. A sort of knowing. There was no mystery as to why she was there.

            “Because I need the bastard who killed her to pay. I want him dead.”

            He raised his eyebrows as if he hadn’t even considered that. “And why should I help you? You’ve never proposed an alliance before, why would I risk any of my men to help you? You must know that the Chicago Outfit are dangerous.”

            “Because you’re the only one in Boston who has a feud with them, you would want an opportunity to raise hell, and I would pay you.” Kate knew that talking to gang leaders was never easy. She tended to get right to the bottom line to skip all the fanfare they were so fond of.

            “I’m a wealthy man, Kate, why would I need your money?” He adjusted his cufflinks almost as an example.

            “What else would you want?”

 ~~~

            “That’s where the deal came in. He killed the man who killed my mother. But when the deadline came, I didn’t have enough money. One of my shipments fell through and I lost a lot of money. I begged Santo to give me more time but he refused.”

            Tommy couldn’t help the instinctual anger he felt when Santo’s name was brought up. It only minorly distracted him from the bewildering story Kate was telling him.

            “I left before he could get me and ended up in France.”

            “And that’s where I come in,” Tommy mumbled quietly.

            “Yeah.” Her voice was almost at a whisper. Kate was terrified of what he would say to her.

            But he didn’t speak for a long while. He kept his arm around her, absent-mindedly rubbing her shoulder.

            “Say something, please.” She begged.

            “I don’t know what to say, Kate.” He finally spoke. “I just-I don’t know if it changes anything but I don’t understand. I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell me.”

            Kate felt like breaking down and just curling into a ball. Hardly anyone knew her true story. If she trusted anyone to hear it, Tommy would be high up on that list. But it was still agonizing to open up her old wounds. “Because when I went to France, I vowed to put it all behind me. I didn’t want to be that person again not after what happened to my mother. But then you came into my life and…” She put a hand to her face. “I don’t know I just thought you might be my ticket out.”

            “I don’t understand.”

            “You made me feel safe. And if I had to go back to what I was doing before then I trusted you would be able to keep me safe. Especially if Santo ended up finding me.” She tried to explain as best she could. “But I still wanted to be rid of my past so that’s why I lied. Maybe I just didn’t want to admit what I’d done.”     

            Tommy wasn’t sure what else he could say. Perhaps she had a reason for lying to him. Maybe it was enough that she wanted to put her past behind her. Sometimes, Tommy wished he could just step away from it all and resume a new life. Start off on a clean slate without any debts. But the world didn’t work that way. Kate was now figuring that out.

            “I didn’t think I would fall in love with you. I didn’t even plan on staying in Birmingham that long. I had no problem lying because…your family was just another step in the road. But…then I-I fell in love with you and I just didn’t know how to tell you the truth. The longer I waited, the harder it got.” Weary from all the emotions she’d gone through in those past months, she slumped forward over her knees, holding her hands to her face. “I don’t want to be just another person who lied to you.”

            “C’mere.” He helped her sit upright so he could cradle her in his arms. “What we have is real, aye? It doesn’t have anything to do with what happened in America. The only thing I care about is what happens between us here.”

            Kate buried her face in the crook of his neck. She wanted him to push her away, to look at her with disgust and hatred. She wanted him to hate her for the things she’d done.

            But he held her close and kissed her hair. “It’s done, yeah? You’re coming home, you leave all of it behind.”

            “Tom, I lied to everyone. I put them at risk I-” She couldn’t say it, but she felt worse than Grace. She had lied for longer than Grace had. She had condemned Grace for lying, yet Kate had been lying all along as well.

            “Leave it behind, Kate.” He urged. “You can leave it behind.”

He looked over her shoulder, still processing everything she’d told him. Kate was right, he was blind when it came to the people, he was closest to. So distrustful of the world, but those who had his heart were above suspicion.

            They sat there for a long while, sitting with everything said and just getting used to being in each other’s company again.

            “How is the rest of the family?” Kate asked quietly, finally lifting her head, able to meet his eyes again. “Have they been alright?”

            He took a deep breath. Time for some of his own admission of guilt. “They’re all in prison and they’ve been sentenced to hang.”

//I hope this format was okay to follow. I just didn’t want it to be one huge text block of Kate explaining everything. 

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[fanficshiddles]

Caught in his web, Chapter 6

Chloe barely slept that night, she was sore and scared. She’d spent part of it in the shower again, crying.

She was also sure she went a bit delusional, as in the middle of the night she could’ve sworn that Loki entered her room and sat on her bedside, speaking softly to her while stroking her hair in a soothing manner.

‘No need to be scared, pet. I will take care of you.’ Were words that kept ringing her mind, in his voice. But she had been so tired, she couldn’t be sure if that had actually happened or not. And where did he come from? As she was almost certain it hadn’t been from the door, she’d been facing it while she lay in bed but never saw it opening when he suddenly appeared next to her.

In the morning, she was still in bed trying to get some sort of sleep when there was a knock and then the door swung open. To her horror, it was Ethan. She instantly scrambled back on the bed, dragging the blanket up with her.

Ethan smiled at her and closed the door with his foot, because he was carrying a tray.

‘Loki had the maid cook this for you for breakfast. And he wants you to take this, too.’ Ethan said, motioning to a pill that was in a small shots cup next to the plate of food.

‘What is it?’ She asked, her voice sounded small and more vulnerable than yesterday, Ethan noticed.

‘It’s the morning after pill. Loki said you must take it, one way or another. So I suggest you take it yourself, or I will have to force it down you like a dog.’ He said in warning.

Chloe didn’t feel like she had the energy to fight. And she certainly didn’t want that big brute forcing a pill down her throat.

She didn’t look at Ethan as she grabbed the pill and swallowed it quickly. It wasn’t like she wanted to get pregnant anyway. But she certainly hoped that Loki wasn’t going to take her without protection regularly, surely taking the morning after pill often wasn’t a good thing? Hell, she didn’t even want him to take her with protection.

‘Eat up.’ Ethan said and left her to it, with the tray on the bed beside her.

Chloe looked at the tray and part of her wanted to throw it at Ethan. But then, it was more Loki she was angry with. And the food did look delicious. Various fruits with a few different flavours of yogurt and fresh apple juice.

So she decided to tuck in instead of wasting it.

-

‘Did she take it?’ Loki asked Ethan when he entered his room. Loki was just putting on his suit jacket and sorting his tie, the same one he had used to restrain her wrists last night.

‘She did, without any arguments.’ Ethan nodded, waiting by the door.

‘Good. Maybe she will start to see sense today.’ Loki grinned, looking at himself in the mirror.

‘Do you want me to stay here by her door and make sure she doesn’t leave?’ Ethan offered.

‘No need. She’s not a prisoner, she can leave her room and go wherever she wants in the house. Once she has earned my trust, she will be allowed to come and go as she pleases with an escort.

Hopefully by the time her College starts in a few months she will be at that stage.’ Loki put on his leather gloves then followed Ethan out.

Nelson was waiting outside for them, he opened the car door for Loki and Ethan to pile into. Samuel was already in the car, waiting for them.

‘Is he there?’ Loki asked.

‘Yep. He has no clue why you’ve called him in for a chat.’ Samuel confirmed.

‘Excellent. The element of surprise is always the best.’ Loki grinned wickedly.

When they pulled up outside Loki’s building, he felt the usual surge of pride shoot through him. This was all his, as was a lot of the big company buildings in London. But this one, was all his and everyone knew it.

They walked in and it was bustling with energy as always. Workers going about, getting ready to start work for the day. The receptionist greeted him with the usual smile and good morning, Sir and he reciprocated with a wink, making her blush.

He continued on with Ethan and Samuel into the lift, then waited patiently while they headed up to the top floor where his office was. Of course, all the lower floors were a façade for the building. A company that dealt in selling and renting houses and other buildings. Loki quite literally owned a very high percentage of the property market in the city.

When they got into Loki’s office, there was a man waiting there for him.

‘Mr Laufeyson.’ He said nervously, putting his hand out.

‘Good to see you, Mike.’ Loki smiled, shaking his hand firmly after taking off his gloves.

Mike was shaking and Loki could feel that in his hand shake. It happened quite regularly that Loki dealt with people who were scared of him. It always gave him a bit of a rush, actually.

‘You… wanted to see me, Sir?’ Mike said as Loki went around to his side of the desk and took off his jacket, draping it over the back of his chair.

‘I did indeed. I wanted to ask why your company is behind on paying its bills?’ Loki asked firmly, sitting down on his leather chair.

Mike looked slightly shocked. ‘I… well, we haven’t been doing as well this year. Money has been a bit tight.’

‘And that is your problem. You are due money for rent, you’re in a contract that stipulates you pay monthly.’

‘I… I thought it was Mr Walsh’s company that rented out the company to me.’ Mike said, he looked over his shoulder and swallowed hard when he noticed that Ethan and Samuel were standing by the door, guarding it.

‘It is. But do you know who has recently bought his company and is now chasing up late payments?’ Loki raised an eyebrow at Mike. Whose face had dropped completely.

‘Yo… Yo… You?’

‘Correct. Now, are you able to pay me my fifteen grand by the end of today?’ Loki tapped his fingers on the desk.

‘Fifteen grand? It’s only ten grand I’m due!’ Mike said in a panic.

‘You’ve been overdue for a long time. And it will keep going up until you either pay me, or I lose my patience with you.’ Loki said calmly, staring him down.

‘There’s no way I will be able to pay that much.’

‘Is that so?’ Loki folded his arms over his chest. ‘Well, you either pay me what I am due or I will need to take something else from you.’

‘I don’t have anything else…’

‘Oh you do.’ Loki stood up and walked around his desk towards him. ‘You own Langfield college.’

Mike’s eyes widened in horror. ‘No. It… it isn’t for sale.’ He tried to sound brave, but it wasn’t working.

‘Well, if you don’t give it to me, then I will have no other option but to take it by force. And believe me, I will get what I want.’ He snarled.

Mike had bought Langfield college over ten years ago. But Loki had his eye on it for a while, for… certain reasons… and now the perfect opportunity had arisen to gain said college.

‘But… what would you want with a college? It’s not like you can earn much money from it. It’s just where people go to learn.’ Mike didn’t understand what someone like Loki would want it for.

‘I know what a college is, Mike.’ He hissed. ‘I have my reasons for wanting it. So are you going to give it to me? And all your debt will be wiped away, just like that. And, because I am a reasonable man, you can have free rent with your company for the next ten years. So as you say, you don’t earn much money from the college so why not concentrate on your company instead? I’d say that’s fair, no?’ Loki leaned back on his desk, awaiting his answer.

Mike sighed and looked down, realising he had no other option. ‘Alright. I’ll give you Langfield college. But I beg you, please don’t take away the fundings for the college.’ Mike thought Loki wanted it just to steal from the students and take all their funding.

Loki raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Oh I won’t. On the contrary, I intend to put more money into the college. The amount you’ve been putting in of late is abysmal.’

‘It’s not easy trying to pay the teachers a good sum, for all the work they do. Then there’s materials and not to mention grounds work and the living accommodations.’ Mike said in defence, but Loki didn’t believe him. He had seen the figures, he knew that Mike or someone else was fiddling with them. He was going to find out who it was, and he would make sure whoever it was, was properly seen to.

It was no secret that the college had been struggling the last few years, meaning that parents and students themselves were having to pay more for their loans. Loan repayments were way higher than they used to be, a way for the college to get more money in. But it was working because it was a really good college.

‘Well, I will soon find out just how difficult it is to own one.’ Loki said smugly, shutting him up. ‘I will have my solicitor draw up a contract, I will be in touch when it’s ready for you to come and sign over.’

Loki put his hand out towards him again and Mike hesitated before shaking hands. Sealing the deal.

-

Chloe had spent the morning moping around in the bedroom. She didn’t even try the door to see if it was unlocked, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do.

She spent some time sitting by the window, looking outside. To her surprise, it didn’t look like she had expected. He lived down a dead-end street that had a mini roundabout, with other fancy but normal houses around. Her window looked out to the house next door, there was a bit of gravel and a garage on the side of Loki’s house, then a huge fence and the next house.

She’d watched two kids playing football in their front garden for a while. Then she saw a girl about her age heading out on her own. It made her wonder if she would ever feel that kind of freedom again or not. Heck, Chloe didn’t even think she would be allowed out of this room alone.

Then her mind wandered to college, that she was supposed to start in just over two months’ time... Langfield college. When she’d went to visit, it was perfect. She had planned to live on site, her parents had been able to pay for most of it then she was going to take out a loan. But now, she had no idea what was going to happen.

She could see part of the road out her window and recognised the fancy ass car coming down the road to the house, she knew that was Loki and his goons returning…

[lieglinanan1973]

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[imagine-loki]

Caught in his web, Chapter 6

TITLE: Caught in his web CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 6 AUTHOR: fanficshiddles ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Loki is a crime lord, a very dangerous man in the city. He is owed money, but the man is unable to pay Loki back, so Loki takes his daughter as payment instead.  RATING: M

Chloe barely slept that night, she was sore and scared. She’d spent part of it in the shower again, crying. 

She was also sure she went a bit delusional, as in the middle of the night she could’ve sworn that Loki entered her room and sat on her bedside, speaking softly to her while stroking her hair in a soothing manner.

‘No need to be scared, pet. I will take care of you.’ Were words that kept ringing her mind, in his voice. But she had been so tired, she couldn’t be sure if that had actually happened or not. And where did he come from? As she was almost certain it hadn’t been from the door, she’d been facing it while she lay in bed but never saw it opening when he suddenly appeared next to her.

In the morning, she was still in bed trying to get some sort of sleep when there was a knock and then the door swung open. To her horror, it was Ethan. She instantly scrambled back on the bed, dragging the blanket up with her.

Ethan smiled at her and closed the door with his foot, because he was carrying a tray.

‘Loki had the maid cook this for you for breakfast. And he wants you to take this, too.’ Ethan said, motioning to a pill that was in a small shots cup next to the plate of food.

‘What is it?’ She asked, her voice sounded small and more vulnerable than yesterday, Ethan noticed.

‘It’s the morning after pill. Loki said you must take it, one way or another. So I suggest you take it yourself, or I will have to force it down you like a dog.’ He said in warning.

Chloe didn’t feel like she had the energy to fight. And she certainly didn’t want that big brute forcing a pill down her throat.

She didn’t look at Ethan as she grabbed the pill and swallowed it quickly. It wasn’t like she wanted to get pregnant anyway. But she certainly hoped that Loki wasn’t going to take her without protection regularly, surely taking the morning after pill often wasn’t a good thing? Hell, she didn’t even want him to take her with protection.

‘Eat up.’ Ethan said and left her to it, with the tray on the bed beside her.

Chloe looked at the tray and part of her wanted to throw it at Ethan. But then, it was more Loki she was angry with. And the food did look delicious. Various fruits with a few different flavours of yogurt and fresh apple juice.

So she decided to tuck in instead of wasting it.

-

‘Did she take it?’ Loki asked Ethan when he entered his room. Loki was just putting on his suit jacket and sorting his tie, the same one he had used to restrain her wrists last night.

‘She did, without any arguments.’ Ethan nodded, waiting by the door.

‘Good. Maybe she will start to see sense today.’ Loki grinned, looking at himself in the mirror.

‘Do you want me to stay here by her door and make sure she doesn’t leave?’ Ethan offered.

‘No need. She’s not a prisoner, she can leave her room and go wherever she wants in the house. Once she has earned my trust, she will be allowed to come and go as she pleases with an escort.

Hopefully by the time her College starts in a few months she will be at that stage.’ Loki put on his leather gloves then followed Ethan out.

Nelson was waiting outside for them, he opened the car door for Loki and Ethan to pile into. Samuel was already in the car, waiting for them.

‘Is he there?’ Loki asked.

‘Yep. He has no clue why you’ve called him in for a chat.’ Samuel confirmed.

‘Excellent. The element of surprise is always the best.’ Loki grinned wickedly.

When they pulled up outside Loki’s building, he felt the usual surge of pride shoot through him. This was all his, as was a lot of the big company buildings in London. But this one, was all his and everyone knew it.

They walked in and it was bustling with energy as always. Workers going about, getting ready to start work for the day. The receptionist greeted him with the usual smile and good morning, Sir and he reciprocated with a wink, making her blush.

He continued on with Ethan and Samuel into the lift, then waited patiently while they headed up to the top floor where his office was. Of course, all the lower floors were a façade for the building. A company that dealt in selling and renting houses and other buildings. Loki quite literally owned a very high percentage of the property market in the city.

When they got into Loki’s office, there was a man waiting there for him.

‘Mr Laufeyson.’ He said nervously, putting his hand out.

‘Good to see you, Mike.’ Loki smiled, shaking his hand firmly after taking off his gloves.

Mike was shaking and Loki could feel that in his hand shake. It happened quite regularly that Loki dealt with people who were scared of him. It always gave him a bit of a rush, actually.

‘You… wanted to see me, Sir?’ Mike said as Loki went around to his side of the desk and took off his jacket, draping it over the back of his chair.

‘I did indeed. I wanted to ask why your company is behind on paying its bills?’ Loki asked firmly, sitting down on his leather chair.

Mike looked slightly shocked. ‘I… well, we haven’t been doing as well this year. Money has been a bit tight.’

‘And that is your problem. You are due money for rent, you’re in a contract that stipulates you pay monthly.’

‘I… I thought it was Mr Walsh’s company that rented out the company to me.’ Mike said, he looked over his shoulder and swallowed hard when he noticed that Ethan and Samuel were standing by the door, guarding it.

‘It is. But do you know who has recently bought his company and is now chasing up late payments?’ Loki raised an eyebrow at Mike. Whose face had dropped completely.

‘Yo… Yo… You?’

‘Correct. Now, are you able to pay me my fifteen grand by the end of today?’ Loki tapped his fingers on the desk.

‘Fifteen grand? It’s only ten grand I’m due!’ Mike said in a panic.

‘You’ve been overdue for a long time. And it will keep going up until you either pay me, or I lose my patience with you.’ Loki said calmly, staring him down.

‘There’s no way I will be able to pay that much.’

‘Is that so?’ Loki folded his arms over his chest. ‘Well, you either pay me what I am due or I will need to take something else from you.’

‘I don’t have anything else…’

‘Oh you do.’ Loki stood up and walked around his desk towards him. ‘You own Langfield college.’

Mike’s eyes widened in horror. ‘No. It… it isn’t for sale.’ He tried to sound brave, but it wasn’t working.

‘Well, if you don’t give it to me, then I will have no other option but to take it by force. And believe me, I will get what I want.’ He snarled.

Mike had bought Langfield college over ten years ago. But Loki had his eye on it for a while, for… certain reasons… and now the perfect opportunity had arisen to gain said college.

‘But… what would you want with a college? It’s not like you can earn much money from it. It’s just where people go to learn.’ Mike didn’t understand what someone like Loki would want it for.

‘I know what a college is, Mike.’ He hissed. ‘I have my reasons for wanting it. So are you going to give it to me? And all your debt will be wiped away, just like that. And, because I am a reasonable man, you can have free rent with your company for the next ten years. So as you say, you don’t earn much money from the college so why not concentrate on your company instead? I’d say that’s fair, no?’ Loki leaned back on his desk, awaiting his answer.

Mike sighed and looked down, realising he had no other option. ‘Alright. I’ll give you Langfield college. But I beg you, please don’t take away the fundings for the college.’ Mike thought Loki wanted it just to steal from the students and take all their funding.

Loki raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Oh I won’t. On the contrary, I intend to put more money into the college. The amount you’ve been putting in of late is abysmal.’

‘It’s not easy trying to pay the teachers a good sum, for all the work they do. Then there’s materials and not to mention grounds work and the living accommodations.’ Mike said in defence, but Loki didn’t believe him. He had seen the figures, he knew that Mike or someone else was fiddling with them. He was going to find out who it was, and he would make sure whoever it was, was properly seen to.

It was no secret that the college had been struggling the last few years, meaning that parents and students themselves were having to pay more for their loans. Loan repayments were way higher than they used to be, a way for the college to get more money in. But it was working because it was a really good college.

‘Well, I will soon find out just how difficult it is to own one.’ Loki said smugly, shutting him up. ‘I will have my solicitor draw up a contract, I will be in touch when it’s ready for you to come and sign over.’

Loki put his hand out towards him again and Mike hesitated before shaking hands. Sealing the deal.

-

Chloe had spent the morning moping around in the bedroom. She didn’t even try the door to see if it was unlocked, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do.

She spent some time sitting by the window, looking outside. To her surprise, it didn’t look like she had expected. He lived down a dead-end street that had a mini roundabout, with other fancy but normal houses around. Her window looked out to the house next door, there was a bit of gravel and a garage on the side of Loki’s house, then a huge fence and the next house.

She’d watched two kids playing football in their front garden for a while. Then she saw a girl about her age heading out on her own. It made her wonder if she would ever feel that kind of freedom again or not. Heck, Chloe didn’t even think she would be allowed out of this room alone.

Then her mind wandered to college, that she was supposed to start in just over two months’ time… Langfield college. When she’d went to visit, it was perfect. She had planned to live on site, her parents had been able to pay for most of it then she was going to take out a loan. But now, she had no idea what was going to happen.

She could see part of the road out her window and recognised the fancy ass car coming down the road to the house, she knew that was Loki and his goons returning…

[healinghurtssometimes]

The Cycle (Pt. 1)

I’m not really sure where to start, so I’m going to opt for my current situation and how I got here. This blog isn’t meant for attention, but rather a way for me to get my experiences out in the open. Maybe some people will find this, relate, and somehow become my tribe. Let me tell you, I need good people. If you stick around long enough, I’m certain you’ll quickly start to see that. With that being said, I’m going to start with a very rough outline of the past 14-15 months.

For just a brief back story, I got offered the best paying job I’d ever had in January of 2017. A lot of stuff had happened (which I’ll cover another time) and I would have been stupid not to take the job when it was given to me. After 2 years, I got my Real Estate License since the company required it for all Property Managers, and I got promoted. The problem was that we were used to running our office with 3 Admins - one had been taken to fit a different role months earlier and still hadn’t been replaced, and I was the second one to be moved while the company STILL did not make an attempt to refill those roles until AFTER my promotion was finalized. I got stuck doing my job as an Admin AND my new job as a Property Manager with all training put on hold until those roles were filled, while also being expected to heavily assist in training the new Admins they hired since I had been there longer than the last Admin standing and was damn good at my job.

I then spent months filling multiple roles, being asked to train people coming into the new roles (including another Property Manager when I STILL wasn’t trained), and being asked regularly to go out of my way to do things face-to-face with/for my residents that was not being asked of my peers (many of which took up a substantial amount of time, like delivering portable AC units and having to walk through someone’s whole house with our Field Manager for maintenance complaints that I had no authority over). I BEGGED for help getting the new Admin team to fulfill the tasks I was trying to delegate to them, begged for training, begged for clarity on expectations that were never laid out. I begged for help for 6 months, and was consistently met with “we don’t have the resources,” “we aren’t properly staffed,” “there isn’t time,” etc. I was buried up to my nose from the day I took the position, and not one person agreed to help me dig myself out of the dirt. Instead, they buried me and then fired me for not being able to fulfill the role to their expectations (while the other two Property Managers weren’t expected to do ANY of the extra stuff they’d put on me to deal with). That was early September 2019. I filed for unemployment, and my now-former supervisor dug up information from my role as an Admin that had been approved by the District Manager at the time until they both got in trouble for letting me slightly stagger my schedule to make sure I could take care of my kids and be able to pay my rent after a HUGE change in the custody and child support of my children (a situation I’ll cover at another time). I didn’t get the notice letter for the unemployment appeal meeting until after it had taken place, about a week before Christmas, at which point I was VERY depressed, stressed, and couldn’t begin to fathom taking on a multi-million dollar company on my own. I now owe the state almost $900 in “overpaid unemployment benefits” that I have yet to be able to pay back.

I spent the next few months trying to find another job. Hoping to find something still in the world of Property Management, even if it wasn’t the same role or anywhere near the same pay or if it didn’t come with the same benefits. The company I worked for is well-known and very disliked by the ENTIRE property management community in the area I lived in at the time. They’re a very young company that is buying up houses left and right and helping make rent prices SOAR for those that aren’t able to buy a house (or just like renting instead of owning the home they live in for whatever reason) - they make it their goal year over year to increase renewal rates as much as they can get away with, knowing many people won’t do the research, question their numbers, or walk away from their house...they’ll just pay the rent increase and keep moving through their complaints of how high their rent is for the lack of improvements the company makes and their poor excuse of a maintenance department that’s directed to penny-and-dime every vendor and look for any reason the resident could possibly be held responsible for higher priced maintenance items. They’re in 20 different states and their maintenance department for their entire operation runs out of ONE state with a local “liaison” at each office that’s function is only for vacant homes. Hopefully they’ve changed some of this in the past year, but I don’t have any reason to believe they would have made things better for anything outside of their own bottom line. I won’t use their name because I don’t want to get sued, but if you know, you know.

I had to take the name of the company off of my resume, replaced with the word “Confidential,” in order to start getting call backs for interviews with other property management companies...all of which ended up being for apartment complexes where I was used to single-family and the two worlds are vastly different from one another. I had ONE company that actually offered me a job sometime around October/November 2019, and it turned out to be an absolutely awful situation to be in. They lied about what they offered for health insurance in my interview, treated their residents like garbage, their property manager played favorites and treated other staff like they were incompetent toddlers, leasing staff and maintenance weren’t allowed to communicate with each other outside of breaks and absolute emergencies, and operated with a LOT of drama. One situation got brought into our leasing office (while open to the public) where their outsourced IT guy and management proceeded to yell at each other in the lobby, calling each other things like “fucking liars” and just generally making a big scene, which made me incredibly uncomfortable to be around. I was already dealing with not having my much-needed anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications, and the way this company was operated was making my already spiraling mental health WORSE. So after a few weeks, I left knowing that they were not a good fit for me nor I for what they apparently needed. I applied for literally hundreds of jobs, got a few interviews, and never got offered another position.

All this time, I’m just trying to figure out how I’m going to pay my rent (my now ex-boyfriend’s parents were paying our $1500 monthly rent and all of our utilities at this point so we wouldn’t get evicted with my kids), how I’m going to pay my phone bill or my car payment, dealing with being uninsured and ashamed of the situation I was in, debt piling up all around me with no way out of it, no health insurance, battling withdrawal from my heavy dosage of SSRI drugs. I know I haven’t talked much about them here, but all of this was really starting to affect my children - who were only 5 & 7 at the time - which was really making the entire situation SO MUCH WORSE to deal with. I was self medicating with marijuana and was high 98% of the time, or in the process of getting high. While weed by itself is not an addictive drug, I developed a dependency on it like I had come to depend on my mental health medications, because it was numbing the reality of the situation I was in and helping keep me somewhat functional and kept me from falling deeper into the darkness as my world crumbled around me.

At the end of January, I finally decided that I couldn’t justify staying in the place I’d lived my whole life anymore. I had lost my job, all of my income, my health insurance...I was on the brink of losing my car, my relationship was failing due to financial strain (though I was also done with the relationship beforehand and started cheating on him before I lost my job anyway and was really only with him at that point for convenience...not a moment I’m proud of by any means), I wasn’t able to support myself or my kids and was no longer able to hide the situation from them for what it was. The only thing I was able to protect them from was KNOWING I was always high, which I’m sure from my own experience with my parents, they’ll end up figuring out when they’re older and weed is legal across the board. So I started thinking “what’s next, how do I change this situation?” 

By January 2020, I’d been back in contact with an old high school boyfriend for a number of months. Not only was he an old boyfriend, but he was also one of my best friends in the whole world. I trusted him with every fiber of my being, he is the only soul that knows me the way he does, and he has stuck by my side through all of the mud trudging I’ve gone through since I was 15 other than our own disastrously messy breakup. He was roughly 400 miles away from my hometown, and was the only viable option for me to ask for help in the form of a roof to look for work and try to get myself back up on my feet. So I took my kids to their dad (who is a very petty and ugly human) because he is/was at least financially stable, packed a few things, and went looking for work 400 miles away. 3 days in, I was offered a menial serving job...but hey, working on 6 months of no consistent job or income, it was better than what I was working with back home. I started that job the end of February. For anyone that’s been alive this year, you know what’s coming next...4 weeks later, the restaurant was shut down for COVID lockdowns, and I immediately started looking for another job to take on once those shutdowns were lifted. So now, I’m 400 miles away from my kids and my family, and I’m also unemployed.

I thought I found one doing leasing with an apartment complex. I got the job offer, the offer letter, was working on finalizing a start date even though some of their requirements were ridiculous (like not being able to how any semblance of a tattoo or piercing not in your ear and only being able to wear black and white on the job). Then I asked what they were doing to protect their employees, residents, and potential residents from COVID. I lost that opportunity for asking questions, because they were the ONLY complex locally that was not observing any pandemic-related precautions, and had referred to a colleague as a “titty baby” for simply asking them to step up their game by providing hand sanitizer and a thermometer for their offices. I opted not to go back to serving over precautions for COVID so I could still go home and see my kids again at my dad’s house, as my step-mom was dealing the return of her Breast Cancer after nearly 2 years in remission and no way of getting treatment until the doctors decided it was safe again for her to be in a hospital or cancer treatment center.

Realizing now that I’ve only gotten to sometime around April/May, I’m going to leave this post for now and come back for a Part 2. If you’re still reading this and are planning on returning for the next installment, thank you for taking this journey with me as I lay my life out one piece at a time in the hopes of healing.

[brianslist]

The absolute best 5 Key Benefits of Purchasing and Owning Investment Realty

So... You may ask yourself, why should you buy or invest in real estate property in the First Place? Because it's the IDEAL investment! Let's take a moment to handle the reasons why people should have investment real estate in the first place. The easiest alternative is a well-known acronym that addresses the key benefits for all those investment real estate. Put simply, Investment Real Estate is an IDEAL financial commitment. The IDEAL stands for: • I - Income • H - Depreciation • E - Expenses • The - Appreciation • L - Leverage Real estate will be IDEAL investment compared to all others. I'll explain each help in depth. The "I" in IDEAL stands for Income. (a. k. a. positive cash flow) Does it even earn money? Your investment property should be generating income from rental prices received each month. Of course, there will be months where you may feel a vacancy, but for the most part your investment could be producing an income. Be careful because many times beginning investors exaggerate their assumptions and don't take into account all potential costs. The particular investor should know going into the purchase that the property will surely cost money each month (otherwise known as negative cash flow). The scenario, although not ideal, may be OK, only in precise instances that we will discuss later. It boils to the risk tolerance and ability for the owner to fund plus pay for a negative producing asset. In the boom years regarding real estate, prices were sky high and the rents couldn't increase proportionately with many residential real estate investment properties. A large number of naïve investors purchased properties with the assumption that the understanding in prices would more than compensate for the fact that your high balance mortgage would be a significant negative impact on a funds each month. Be aware of this and do your best towards forecast a positive cash flow scenario, so that you can actually realize all the INCOME part of the IDEAL equation. Often times, it may require a more significant down payment (therefore lesser amount being mortgaged) so that your cash is acceptable each month. Ideally, you eventually pay off the actual mortgage so there is no question that cash flow will be coming in each month, and substantially so. This ought to be a vital aspect of one's retirement plan. Do this a few times and you won't really need to worry about money later on down the road, which is the main goal as well as reward for taking the risk in purchasing investment property from the start. The "D" in IDEAL Stands for Depreciation. With commitment real estate, you are able to utilize its depreciation for your own tax advantages. What is depreciation anyway? It's a non-cost accounting method to take into account the overall financial burden incurred through real estate investment. Look at this a second way, when you buy a brand new car, the minute you travel off the lot, that car has depreciated in appeal. When it comes to your investment real estate property, the IRS allows you to deduct this amount yearly against your taxes. Please note: Now i'm not a tax professional, so this is not meant to be a tutorial in taxation policy or to be construed as place a burden on advice. With that said, the depreciation of a real estate investment property depends on the overall value of the structure of the property and the period of time (recovery period based on the property type-either residential or commercial). If you have ever gotten a property tax bill, they usually break your property's assessed value into two categories: one for the importance of the land, and the other for the value of the arrangement. Both of these values added up equals your total "basis" for property taxation. When it comes to depreciation, you can deduct in opposition to your taxes on the original base value of the building only; the IRS doesn't allow you to depreciate land worth (because land is typically only APPRECIATING). Just like your new van driving off the lot, it's the structure on the property that may be getting less and less valuable every year as the nation's effective age gets older and older. And you can use this with your tax advantage. The best example of the benefit regarding this unique concept is through depreciation, you can actually turn a property who creates a positive cash flow into one that shows a damage (on paper) when dealing with taxes and the IRS. As well as by doing so, that (paper) loss is deductible against your wages for tax purposes. Therefore , it's a great benefit for those that are specifically looking for a "tax-shelter" of sorts for their properties investments. For example , and without getting too technical, suppose that you are able to depreciate $15, 000 a year from a $500, 000 residential investment property that you own. Let's say you're cash-flowing $1, 000 a month (meaning that after all prices, you are net-positive $1000 each month), so you have $12, 000 total annual income for the year from this property's rental income. Although you took in $12, 000, you can show through your accountancy with the depreciation of your investment real estate that you actually lost $3, 000 on paper, which is used against any income taxes that you may owe. Out of your standpoint of IRS, this property realized a loss in $3, 000 after the "expense" of the $15, 000 accounting allowance amount was taken into account. Not only are there no taxes expected on that rental income, you can utilize the paper decrease in $3, 000 against your other regular taxable cash from your day-job. Investment property at higher price details will have proportionally higher tax-shelter qualities. Investors use this in their benefit in being able to deduct as much against their taxable amount owed each year through the benefit of depreciation with their underlying investor. Although this is a vastly important benefit to owning funding real estate, the subject is not well understood. Because depreciation is actually a somewhat complicated tax subject, the above explanation was intended to be cursory in nature. When it comes to issues involving taxation's and depreciation, make sure you have a tax professional that can give you advice appropriately so you know where you stand. The "E" in RECOMMENDED is for Expenses - Generally, all expenses incurred with regards to the property are deductible when it comes to your investment property. The retail price for utilities, the cost for insurance, the mortgage, as well as interest and property taxes you pay. If you use home manager or if you're repairing or improving the property its own matters, all of this is deductible. Real estate investment comes with a lot of expenses, chores, and responsibilities to ensure the investment property itself performs in order to its highest capability. Because of this, contemporary tax law mostly allows that all of these related expenses are deductible towards the benefit of the investment real estate landowner. If you were to make sure you ever take a loss, or purposefully took a burning on a business investment or investment property, that decline (expense) can carry over for multiple years to protect against your income taxes. For some people, this is an aggressive and technological strategy. Yet it's another potential benefit of investment realty. The "A" in IDEAL is for Appreciation - Understanding means the growth of value of the underlying expenditure of money. It's one of the main reasons that we invest in the first place, and it's really a powerful way to grow your net worth. Many properties in the city of San Francisco are several million cash in today's market, but back in the 1960s, the same property was initially worth about the cost of the car you are currently operating (probably even less! ). Throughout the years, the area has become more popular and the demand that ensued caused the real residence prices in the city to grow exponentially compared to where they were a few decades ago. People that were lucky enough to recognize the, or who were just in the right place at the ideal time and continued to live in their home have recognized an investment return in the 1000's of percent. At this time that's what appreciation is all about. What other investment can make you will this kind of return without drastically increased risk? The best piece about investment real estate is that someone is forking over you to live in your property, paying off your mortgage, and making an income (positive cash flow) to you each month along the way through your course of ownership. The "L" in IDEAL would mean Leverage - A lot of people refer to this as "OPM" (other people's money). This is when you are using a small amount of your money to overpower a much more expensive asset. You are essentially leveraging your sign up and gaining control of an asset that you would ordinarily not be able to purchase without the loan itself. Leverage is substantially more acceptable in the real estate world and inherently much less risky than leverage in the stock world (where it is done through means of options or buying "on Margin"). Leverage is common in real estate. Otherwise, people may only buy property when they had 100% of the hard cash to do so. Over a third of all purchase transactions are all-cash transactions as our recovery continues. Still, about 2/3 of all purchases are done with some level of financing, to be sure the majority of buyers in the market enjoy the power that leverage generally offer when it comes to investment real estate. For example , if a real estate investor was basically to buy a house that costs $100, 000 with 10% down payment, they are leveraging the remaining 90% through the use of the attached mortgage. Let's say the local market improves by 20% covering the next year, and therefore the actual property is now worth $120, 000. When it comes to leverage, from the standpoint of this property, the value increased by 20%. But compared to the investor's precise down payment (the "skin in the game") of $10, 000- this increase in property value of 20% genuinely means the investor doubled their return on the investment decision actually made-also known as the "cash on cash" gain. In this case, that is 200%-because the $10, 000 is now reliable and entitled to a $20, 000 increase in all round value and the overall potential profit. Although leverage is viewed a benefit, like everything else, there can always be too much of an excellent. In 2007, when the real estate market took a turn for that worst, many investors were over-leveraged and fared any worst. They could not weather the storm of a lengthening economy. Exercising caution with every investment made will help to ensure that you can purchase, retain, pay-off debt, and grow your own wealth from the investment decisions made as opposed to being at the particular mercy and whim of the overall market fluctuations. For certain there will be future booms and busts as the past would certainly dictate as we continue to move forward. More planning and setting up while building net worth will help prevent getting bruised and battered by the side effects of whatever market we all find ourselves in. Many people think that investment real estate is barely about cash flow and appreciation, but it's so much more compared with that. As mentioned above, you can realize several benefits through each one real estate investment property you purchase. The challenge is to maximize the benefits by means of every investment. Furthermore, the IDEAL acronym is not just a reminder of the benefits of investment real estate; it's also here to deliver as a guide for every investment property you will consider selecting in the future. Any property you purchase should conform to all of the notes that represent the IDEAL acronym. The underlying property ought to have a good reason for not fitting all the guidelines. And on almost every case, if there is an investment you are considering that doesn't click all the guidelines, by most accounts you should probably Give it! Take for example a story of my own, regarding a home that I purchased early on in my real estate career. To this day, oahu is the biggest investment mistake that I've made, and it's really because I didn't follow the IDEAL guidelines that you are checking and learning about now. I was naïve and the experience was not yet fully developed. The property I paid for was a vacant lot in a gated community production. The property already had an HOA (a monthly care fee) because of the nice amenity facilities that were built for this, and in anticipation of would-be-built homes. There were big expectations for the future appreciation potential-but then the market turned for those worse as we headed into the great recession that lasted from 2007-2012. Can you see what parts of the IDEAL specifications I missed on completely? Let's start with "I". Typically the vacant lot made no income! Sometimes this can be ideal, if the deal is something that cannot be missed. But for one of the most part this deal was nothing special. In all honesty, I had considered selling the trees that are currently on the vacant lot to the local wood mill for some actual source of income, or putting up a camping spot ad on the localized Craigslist; but unfortunately the lumber isn't worth ample and there are better spots to camp! My expected values and desire for price appreciation blocked the rational as well as logical questions that needed to be asked. So , when the software came to the income aspect of the IDEAL guidelines for a investment, I paid no attention to it. And I paid out the price for my hubris. Furthermore, this investment did not realize the benefit of depreciation as you cannot depreciate land! So , we are zero for two so far, with the IDEAL guideline for you to real estate investing. All I can do is hope typically the land appreciates to a point where it can be sold sooner or later. Let's call it an expensive learning lesson. You at the same time will have these "learning lessons"; just try to have because few of them as possible and you will be better off.

[mvdipetsch]

Outside of London; A Guide.

Hello, friends! I think there’s a semi-substantial amount of roleplays based around England, but honestly 90% of them are in London and while that’s great, England is made up of a lot of cities and I figured I’d show some #representation. 

In this guide we cover: Housing in England, location and travel! 

Disclaimer: This is based off of my experience and the experience of those around me. Most of my knowledge is concentrated around Birmingham, as that is where I grew up, but I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Stoke-on-Trent, Blackpool and Liverpool so I feel that I have a semi-decent shot at helping out. 

If you found this guide helpful, please reblog this as it helps to show me that there is interest and I’m not just shouting into a void. If you have any suggestions or comments about things I could/should cover in these guides please let me know! Any specific questions? Shoot me an ask and I’ll do my best to help you out. 

Location, Location, Location. 

England is divided into counties. There many of them, and realistically they don’t affect anything. All it really means is that your resources (police, fire, ambulance, charities, etc.) are organised by that one area. For instance - the buses in my city are all organised by Network West Midlands. They deal with every bus service (if it’s an NXBus) in the West Midlands. Ultimately, it doesn’t really affect anything. 

From my city to my university, it’s a 3-ish hour drive. That is a long drive. I know some people regard that as nothing, but when everything is so close together, it’s a lot. It’s not really a drive that people would make a lot - this is why train transport (while not that big) tends to be used to get from city to city. 

Only really in the inner cities are things that expensive. When you move away from the main city, things can get pretty affordable, but the inner city is still often really accessible via bus, driving or even train. When I’m at my boyfriend’s I’ll get the bus into the city centre, but when I’m at my mom’s sometimes it’s quicker to just jump on a train. Train tickets are also pretty inexpensive if you’re moving within the city. It’s when you’re heading to smaller cities that the problems arise. For instance, I can get to London for under £10, and to Liverpool for not much more. However, for me to get from Birmingham (a major city) to my University (a not-so-major city of about 200k) it’s £60+ with a change. On coach, it’s £14 with a change + it takes 5-ish hours (there are direct coaches that cost £30~ which is still significantly cheaper than the train) University students will commonly take a coach to and from their university to their hometown if it’s ridiculously priced. 

The higher north you go, typically the cheaper it is. This is dependent upon where in that city you are, but the general consensus is that north = cheaper. Obviously if you’re in Manchester city centre then it’s going to be a bit more pricey, but the general cost of living / food / etc. is seen to be cheaper the more north you go. A good way to judge how expensive a place is, is by how much the bus fare is. Birmingham bus fare is £4.00 for a daysaver (one ticket, on the bus as much as you like) but when I was in Liverpool I paid something like £1.20 for an U18 ticket. That’s a big difference. (For reference - Birmingham is the smack-bang middle of England. Liverpool is about 2 hours north, near Manchester.) 

Typically, when it comes to travelling; 

Driving

Cars in the UK are predominantly manual (with a gear stick) but we can still get automatic cars. Manual cars are also cheaper than automatic and you can drive an automatic with a manual license but you cannot drive a manual with an automatic license. 

My mom lives seven minutes from her work (she timed it, she’s got no life) but there are people who live up to thirty minutes away and have to take the motorway. This means that if there’s a massive accident, you can sit there for six hours, bored out of your skull

It’s also worth saying that if you live in a/the city centre, you’re not taking your car to work. It’s ridiculously expensive and parking is so few and far between, it’s really not worth it. People can and do drive, but plenty of people will also opt for a train or bus.

Buses

If you don’t drive the bus is often a very viable option. Buses will commonly run from 6:30/7 until 11:30/12 (at least where I am) but you can get night buses or buses that run later, they’re just a bit rare. 

Students (in college or secondary school, typically) are VERY common on buses. As in public buses. Unless someone has an impairment and go to a special school suited to their needs, you make your own way. Which often means that you jump on that bus with every man and his dog. 

Sunday service is real and it’s a pain in the arse. Buses that run every 10-ish minutes during the week drop to 20 between 9 and 5 and then drop to every 30 minutes after that (sometimes even every hour.) This means that if you miss your bus... you can be waiting for a very long time. 

Trains

Train’s are far more common for longer commutes. Also trains aren’t really that common for secondary school students (they either get dropped off in a car, walk or take the bus) but college students can and do take the train. My best friend takes an hour’s train ride to and from her college every day, and a lot of my teachers will get the train to college (my college is in the city centre, so it’s pretty logical.) Regardless, trains aren’t as common. 

Housing

Houses in England are attached. It is rare that you will see detached (stand alone) houses. Most houses will share their walls with their neighbours, unless they’re the end house in which case they’re called “semi-detached” cause... only half of them is attached. That tends to mean that if your neighbours have a baby, you can hear them crying. You can hear when the tv is too loud and all that kind of stuff. 

When you move out, there tends to be a few options in terms of who actually owns where you live. The options normally are:

Council. 

You sign up on the website, the council give you a priority rating and a set amount of points. These points are determined by the people in your household and your needs. A single mother with two kids will get more points than a single person with no dependants.

There is also a ‘bedroom’ tax, which states that you have to pay a tax if you live in a council property and are seen as having more bedrooms than you need. If, for instance you have two children of opposite genders that are aged seven and three, you have to pay extra tax for that third bedroom because it’s deemed as unnecessary. However if you have two children and they’re of different genders and one of them is over the age of ten (10) then you do not have to pay the tax. If they are of the same gender, then it is until one of them is sixteen (16).

Council and Housing Associations are most beneficial to those who are receiving benefits or are not working enough to cover rent by themselves. 

Housing Association

The way a housing association works is effectively the same as a landlord and the council. You apply on the council website for the aforementioned points and begin to bid on properties. When this happens, you may bid on a property that happens to be owned by a HA. The HA then acts as your landlord. HAs are pretty okay, dependent upon the area + such. When you live in a HA, any housing benefit you receive will immediately be paid from the council to the HA. This can cause issues if your money gets fucked up (which is more common than not because the housing system in the UK is BROKEN.) 

Private Rent

Private is when you have a landlord. I mean, that’s pretty self-explanatory really. You have an issue? Call the landlord. I’ve never had a landlord so I can’t really comment much on this. I will say that most landlords likely won’t accept housing benefit as a form of payment.

Private own. 

This is just the whole mortgage, thing. You know how this goes. 

There are a few different types of housing options when it comes to England and I’d imagine that this is pretty true for up and down the city.

Blocks of flats.

Blocks of flats are huge high-rises. They’re not as common anymore but there are still quite a few knocking about. If you remember the tragedy of Grenfell Tower, that was a high-rise. 

Blocks of flats can be owned by the local council or be privately rented. I’ve never lived in a flat, so my knowledge isn’t the best. They all tend to have names and there’s normally at least two together. 

A ‘flat’ is basically an apartment. So it’s a bunch of different flats (which, in high rises, commonly have two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room and a bathroom) High rises have a lot of flats in them. Commonly there’s at least 13 floors, with between around four and six flats per floor. So you can get a lot of people in a high rise. 

Maisonette. 

A maisonette looks like a wide house. It’s normally one to two floors, with flats that have three (or more) bedrooms. Maisonettes are considerably bigger, in terms of the flats inside, and consist of maybe two flats per floor. Maisonettes can also be council, privately rented or housing association. 

Bungalow.

A bungalow is a home without any stairs. They can be council, privately rented or privately owned. Bungalows aren’t that common anymore, but they’re great for people who have difficulty with stairs and such. Also most bungalows are actually pretty decent sizes too. 

Houses.

Houses in the UK are broken down into one of three categories:

Detached

Semi-Detached

Attached

This is literally just based upon how many of your walls are shared with your neighbour. Detached houses are really uncommon in the UK and are usually found in richer areas. Semi-detached is mainly just the house at the end of your street, so semi-detached and attached are the main two. 

Also it’s pretty common that you only have windows of two of the four house walls. Even if you’re in a semi-detached house, you’ll only have front and back windows. 

Houses can be privately owned, privately rented, housing association or council.

Most houses follow a similar layout. Typically three bedrooms, with either one bathroom or a room just for the toilet + then the bathroom (with a bath + sink + such.) It’s also super common for one room to be a ‘box room’ which is normally pretty small. My room at my mom’s house is the ‘box room’ and it fits a 3/4 bed, a chest of draws, and a metal rack that I use as a bookshelf. There is not a lot of room in there. 

And there you have it! I think I covered most things regarding transport and housing in the UK, and I really hope that it was as informative as possible. Stay groovy, my dudes. 

[pippastrelle]

“A Not-So-Simple Story in Deapriffe”

Chapter One | Chapter Two | CHAPTER THREE

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Chapter Three: A Not-So-Easy Evening

[4k Words]

Kalyani wished she could have been more horrified to find Ahmed with a black eye. She was horrified. Still, at the same time, she couldn’t argue she was shocked. She wished she couldn’t have expected that from Ari and Barry. She wished she couldn’t have expected that from the company. She wished she couldn’t have expected that from the whole of Deapriffe.

She also wished she couldn’t have expected to have to convince Ahmed to get an ice pack before he returned the assembly line. As much as they needed him, Ahmed coming back from Clarke’s office with a black eye would have done nothing but stoke fires. Kalyani herself had to prepare her best ‘deferential secretary’ voice for when she returned to her office. The fierce emails and calls had already arrived for Clarke. She had to hold herself up through a whole afternoon of “Yes, Sir”s and “Mr. Clarke said”s while the four-hundred she and Ahmed needed hammered deeper and deeper inside the back of her skull.

Kalyani met Ahmed on the factory bus to head back home. It was packed with their – rightfully – furious colleagues. They protested the payments amongst themselves and to everyone else listening. She knew they deserved to. She knew everyone was just as stressed. But the noise reached into her nerves and injected her whole body with anxiety until it felt like she had a dozen vipers crawling up her back, constricting around her throat and piercing every inch of her skin. She had to keep her earphones in for the whole trip. Ahmed sat next to her. He shot her an understanding furrow of his eyebrows and lift of his lips whenever she caught his eyes while he mediated what light conversation he could with the others.

All through the bus journey, all through the stroll past Lord Way, all through the lift up to their third-floor flat, the four-thousand followed in their shadows. It festered and buzzed in their ears, until they shut the flat door and it was all the silence had.

They slipped off their shoes as usual and Kalayni hovered, only a few steps into the main room. They’d squashed the living room and kitchen into one. A low sofa and television took up one corner while a half-square of countertops ending in an oven and a fridge took up the other. They usually ate on the sofa but they had two plastic wheelie chairs propped against the kitchen counter too, which Ahmed would use to wheel around on whenever he wasn’t relying on his foot. She stared at her bedroom door. “I’ll…I’ll grab my laptop. We’ll look at the budget. See what we’ll need to do to get four-hundred.”

“Cool…I’ll go grab another ice pack before this starts getting worse again,” said Ahmed, indicating the sore cloud over his eye.

While he headed for the fridge, Kalyani forced her feet forwards. Her stomach churned, the floor a tipping ship, and the sensation didn’t let her go even after she had her laptop and was sat on the sofa. She gripped the laptop’s edge. She took deep breath after deep breath until, finally, she could turn on the screen.

“Okay. So. Since our savings aren’t enough right now to get two-hundred for either of us, the first thing we can do is take the money from our food budget. We can cut down how much we buy in a week and buy cheaper versions for the next month or two. Cut down on going out with people too. Even if it won’t get us much, it’ll get us something. We can do the same for any toiletries or clothes or things we’ll need. We’ll be fine,” she said, quite aware of her creased forehead and the hands covering her mouth failing to convince even herself.

“We’ve got four days to make up the rest of the money,” Ahmed added. “I can easily do more shifts tomorrow and Friday. That’ll get us some more.” He rose from the fridge with a bag of frozen chips pressed to his face. He’d had to put his sock between his cheek and the chips to protect his skin from the cold.

Kalyani’s eyes were boring into the digital budget. As her heartrate continued to spike, her hands shook over her keyboard and she swallowed. “I’ll– I’ll ask around the neighbours. Hopefully, they’ll have some sewing they can pay me for before Monday. I’ll work on my breaks and in the evening so I can get us a bit more before we have to also have to think about paying the rent next week which will take most of what we’ve saved right now and…”

“Kalyani, Kalyani, deep breath.” Ahmed rested a hand on her arm and joined her on the sofa. He took a deep breath with her. Kalyani nodded to herself and pulled her knees up to her chest. Ahmed offered her a bright smile through his makeshift ice pack. “We’ll be okay. We can do this. We’ve just got one tough month to get through then everything will be back to normal. We can do this.”

She nodded along. When he put the ice pack down and opened his arms for a hug, she gladly fell into them. They held each other close for a few silent ticks of her watch, willing to hide from the world in their embrace.

“I love you,” she said, the white ring on her left hand clicking against the black ring on his right.

“I love you too,” Ahmed murmured. He leant his head against Kalyani’s soft hair. He didn’t speak again. She held him closer, realising he needed her warmth as much as she needed his.

“If we can’t earn enough money by Monday, we can sell things too,” he said, his voice lowering as the held cheer slipped away. “We’ve got some decorations but…” He sighed. “It’s probably the console that’ll get us enough. Maybe the screen too.”

Kalyani glimpsed at the television and game console stacked in the corner. Games they’d been collecting longer than they’d lived together piled high in a neat, rainbow-coloured tower by its side. Selling them would certainly get them Clarke’s money. Selling their weekends of laughing and shrieking as they declared victory over the other would certainly get them Clarke’s money.

Her heart weighed her to floor. She closed her eyes with a weak, sad laugh. “It’s funny. The reason I asked you for a job at Clarke’s Motors in the first place was so I wouldn’t have to worry about the Sharks…”

Ahmed furrowed his eyebrows down at her. “You want to move?”

After a few seconds silent, she shook her head. “It’s just as bad everywhere else in Deapriffe. There wouldn’t be any point.” Her lips tightened as her eyes darkened. “It’s not like we can do anything to change it either. Not at this rate. Everyone’s used to it, and no-one’s going to be the one to get shot for a message. The police have probably been in the Sharks’ pocket since we were born. Wouldn’t be surprised if the local government too…”

Kalyani was hardly conscious of what she was saying. The anxiety built to a balloon’s pressure in head and all it could do was pour out of her mouth. Still, as always, Ahmed listened, his shining eyes unmoving from her. Kalyani shifted. “I’m best at Clarke’s. You don’t have to worry about me leaving. I know you’d never anyway.”

“No,” Ahmed agreed. He replaced the frozen chips on his eye and stared up at the ceiling. His lips twitched, but the circumstances restrained his usual smile at his thoughts. “I still remember the first time Dad let me sneak into the assembly shop with him. He was holding my hand the whole time so I wouldn’t run off but he went through how all the cars were made with me, who everyone was, and how it all worked and it was incredible. I thought it was the coolest job in the world. In school, everyone was telling me to ‘aim higher’ but being able to do it now with my own hands, I love it. I love getting those car shells and transforming them into something you see on the roads, knowing how every car’s constructed, seeing all the parts and effort that went into every one of them.”

Kalyani enjoyed the fire rising in Ahmed’s expression. It was so bright yet inviting, like a campfire, as if he couldn’t wait for the other person to get as lit up as he was. When he looked back, he offered it to her.

“I know there are things wrong with the company. I know stuff like welfare and the pay could be better. But I love the work so much. I love who I work with. I don’t want to have to give up on that if I can do anything to help it.”

Kalyani sighed and closed her eyes. “Yeah. Exactly…” She shifted against him and for a few seconds, she didn’t stir. Her chest glowed with Ahmed’s comfort yet her anxiety kept pumping her heart and turning her stomach. So, in the dark of her mind, she rummaged furiously for a solution. She pulled the whole flat into view, pricing everything in every drawer until she could find something enough for Clarke on Monday. Anything other than their precious games. And she found it. The thought dulled every sensation in her body.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back in a sec,” she said. She hugged him one last time before she left to her bedroom.

Ahmed waited. When she returned, she returned with a neat, varnished, square box. His face fell. “No.”

“I never wear it anyway. It might as well help us.”

She opened the box to reveal the beautiful necklace inside. The glittering, engraved gold was a celebration of craftmanship with its thick chain of interlocking segments and plaits and the heavy adornment in the middle that seemed carved with every flame in the sun. She’d inherited it from her grandmother. She’d never worn it, just like she never wore any jewellery, but she’d kept it for all years Ahmed had known her.

“It’s real gold. If we sell it, it’ll definitely be enough.”

Ahmed rose. He closed his hands around the necklace’s box. “Thank you. Thank you so much…I know just what we’re going to do.” He projected reassurance through every inch of his face for her. “We’re going to pawn it! They do that over at the horse races. We’ll pawn it, get the money for Clarke, then work for the rest of the month to get it back! I can do more shifts, you can do more sewing, and we can even sell some small things to help if we’re struggling by the end. We’ve got thirty days. We can do this!”

“Yeah,” Kalyani said, her voice wavering. “Yeah.”

“So we’ve got our plan! I can go to the racetracks on Sunday morning to pawn the necklace. That way we’ll have these four days and a whole month to save up to get your grandmother’s necklace back. We can do it.”

He hugged her again.

Enveloped in his arms, Kalyani murmured, “You can pawn it on Saturday afternoon instead. In case something goes wrong and we need Sunday to try something else.”

“Alright.” He broke apart so he could see her try a smile. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I love you. Thank you.”

“I love you too.” Ahmed cocked his head towards the kitchen. “Alright. Now, do you want to do the cooking together tonight or do you have some work to finish?”

“Don’t worry. Don’t worry. I can do the cooking too. I’ve got that one jumper to finish but I can do it tonight.”

“Or, how about you sit on the sofa and do that while I cook? That way we can still chat.” He poked her in the chest, pretending to be stern. “Remember? You’re going to sleep at a decent time tonight so you can have breakfast with me in the morning.”

She chuckled. “Fine.” She clutched her grandmother’s necklace box to her heart. She drummed her fingers against the old wood as her chest swirled with equal stress and relief, each cutting the other down whenever they rose. Four-hundred was still so much money to get, but they had her grandmother’s necklace to pawn, but…

Kalyani’s quiet exhale deflated her. She rested against Ahmed one more time and he held her in kind.

“Elise’s family has been really struggling since her husband’s accident,” she said.

He sighed. “Yeah.”

“And Łukasz is only nineteen.”

“Yeah…”

*

On the other side of Deapriffe, Thresher was just as miserable. For the evening, she’d found herself in the Mary Rose: its status as one of the city’s finest dining establishments evident by the mass of chandeliers, silverware, columns, and arched windows. It had the architecture of a cathedral, but one refurbished in the ‘modern’ image of square polished and glass surfaces, and the night’s guests had filled its every corner with a raucous chatter. The restaurant was a luxury most of Deapriffe’s population would never see. Still, Thresher could hardly appreciate it with loud Sharks and trembling waiters all around her.

Outside the wall of windows they had gazing out onto the city, the nearest billboard was dead. The road was in lockdown and the Mary Rose should have been as well. Except, when a procession of the Shark’s white cars pulled up outside your doors, you weren’t allowed to stay shut. A sea of black and white suits filled every gleaming table across the restaurant floor. Laughter and catch-ups washed the air, covering the few meetings beneath it. Discussions that would go on to dictate lives melted into inanity for passing ears.

Thresher sat on a central table alongside her mother and twin. She couldn’t even wear her frustration on her face. Eyes from every corner flicked to the Shark boss and her children before hurriedly moving on. Even the waiters, who looked upon the mass of Sharks with indiscriminate terror, noticed how the attention warped around the three of them. They skirted away accordingly, until a lift of a hand had one darting over to take care of anything any of them wanted.

Sandra Vaughan reclined in her seat with a wine glass in hand. She ran through the other major Sharks for her children, supplying anecdotes for how she’d dealt with each of them. Thresher played the part of an interested listener. She kept her attention on her mum, she smiled, and she recognised enough of the names to add comments of her own, each of which Vaughan worked off with a proud glint in her smile. Every one wore Thresher down further. Her moments of success hit her harder than the failures: the moments where she realised she could dress up as the perfect, cisgender, Shark son her mum wanted forever, and she did not know how to deal with that prospect.

Finley, on the other hand, made no show of anything. He didn’t bother to hide his boredom at the sound of politics. He tilted back in his chair and texted his friends across the restaurant, enjoying the sight of the waitresses. Many of the women had caught Thresher’s eye as well, the restaurant’s black uniform blouse and pencil skirt a gorgeous shape on all of them. However, she stuck her attention to their table and continued draining her glass. The attention of a musclebound Shark never came as welcome to civilian women like them.

“Clarke made a decent point about Letizia Fulgoni,” Vaughan was saying. “She’s been raking in the profits recently. Shake that down and you’ll have yourself a nice bit of extra income.”

Thresher raised an eyebrow. “‘Shake that down’?” She chuckled. “Don’t worry. We won’t even have to bother. Fulgoni’s got no history of trouble. She’s got the new location but without any real safety nets, she’s not going to risk disobeying us. There’s no need to waste the manpower threatening her.”

The lines across Vaughan’s face flattened. “Watch yourself. It’s a pit trap too many Sharks fall into. Going easy on the businesses because things are ‘comfortable’ is the surest-fire way to losing everything to whichever upstart’s nearby. The biggest mess I’ve ever had to deal with was in Wobbegong’s–”

Finley snorted loudly. “God, these names are stupid!”

“He’s a stupid man,” said Vaughan. “Wobbegong earnt his name. The only reason I didn’t kill him was because I wasn’t in the mood to deal with his brother’s inevitable revenge and lose me my best bookkeeper. Wobbegong, the pathetic bastard, had all his businesses ‘banding together and refusing to pay’. Bryson had to take over and double down on the whole road to get things back in line.”

Vaughan caught Finley’s exaggerated slump in his chair to her side.

“I understand. I understand. When I was your age, I didn’t want to have to care about all these names and faces either. People learnt their lessons through fear and all I had to consider were the drinks and the men I wanted that night.”

Finley burst into laughter. “Is that why you left Dad at home tonight?”

“Shush,” Vaughan chided – smirking. “Tonight’s for the family business family. You’re controlling your own territory now. Knowing the names and faces pays off in the long run. You’ve got to know what it takes to piss people off, what they’ll do when you have, and where you hit to hurt them the most. Sometimes, it takes a burnt-down house. Sometimes, it’s a simple punch to the gut.”

“Do we have to worry about Clarke at all?” Thresher asked.

“Please. Clarke would rather cut off his other ear than be an issue for us. He’ll stay in line. Meanwhile, you’ll get some extra cash out of it.”

Finley spun his knife between his fingers. “Shame. He looked hilarious this morning. Let’s increase the pay next month. I’d love it if he didn’t get the money.”

“So, if we don’t ruin our most useful asset,” Thresher continued, with a pointed turn away from Finley, “you’re saying we can rely on Clarke. We’ll use his decades of collaboration to our advantage. Let Fulgoni know any disobedience from her will just profit Clarke and there’ll be no risk of them banding together. This way, we get all the benefits without bothering about the extra Sharks and potentially agitating the Deapriffe police chief living in our territory.”

Vaughan’s lips twisted behind her wine glass. She set it down and flicked her hand for a new round. “James Dunn is firmly in our pocket. I make sure of that. He hasn’t done anything against the Sharks in all of Deapriffe. He’s not going to start because it’s affecting a business down the road. The only thing you’re risking by acting is a few civilians’ bones. That’s nothing in the grand scheme of things.” Her gaze settled on Thresher’s face. Thresher turned to avoid it but Vaughan ordered her back. “You know what I’ve been hearing.”

“I know.”

“Thresher…” Vaughan groaned through her teeth, caught between her care and frustration. “Listen. When you look weak, it makes me look weak.”

“I know.”

“You’ve got to start showing your backbone. You already have everything you need. If something broke out here right now, I’d trust the two of you to come out on top. All you have to do is make it so no-one’s got any doubt of that in the mind. Keep your efforts on that, then everything else they could say becomes irrelevant.”

Thresher caught Vaughan’s significant look. She raised her eyebrow. “Wondering if I’m gay again?”

Finley sniggered. Vaughan didn’t say anything.

Thresher rolled her eyes, not that it could stop the constriction of her heart. “No need to ‘worry’, Mum. Trust me. I am not interested in men.”

A stiff waitress arrived with their drinks. Vaughan took hers with an understanding gesture towards Thresher. “Take some direction from Finley. This job is all about experience. Keep getting fights under your belt and it’ll become second nature.”

“Yeah. Sure. That must be– Oh, I didn’t order a rosé.” Thresher passed her glass back to the waitress. “This must be for another table. I’ll have whatever white you’ve got.”

“Oh.” The waitress – a beautiful woman with red snuck into her uniforms in her locs and her heels – stopped. Gingerly, she collected the glass and Thresher’s face fell at the look of cold disgust piercing through her made-up eyes. Then, she cursed herself for not having expected it. The waitress attempted a civil, service worker nod before leaving to get Thresher’s drink. Vaughan’s hand snapped around her wrist. The waitress yelped.

“What do you call this service?” Vaughan demanded.

Thresher’s heart punched against her ribs. She rushed to take the rosé back. “Mum, I don’t care about this.”

Vaughan refused to loosen her hold on the waitress’s wrist. “Tell me your name.”

“…Sofia.”

“Full name.”

Sofia tested Vaughan’s grip before realising she was trapped. “Sofia Gálvez Moreno, Ma’am. I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. I’ll get him his white right now.”

Vaughan hauled Sofia’s arm forwards and Sofia crashed against the table in front of Thresher. “We’re in no rush here,” Vaughan said, as if delivering Thresher a present. “You’ve got the time to teach Sofia some respect before she goes get you the right drink.”

Sofia’s eyes snapped up, wide. “No! Please, Sir, it was an honest mistake!”

Thresher put on a scowl for her mum and brother. She leant back in her seat, as if she couldn’t care less, and growled. “Get me my order.” She raised the rosé. “I’m keeping this. Come back with my white, on the house, then stay out of my sight for the rest of the evening.”

Sofia nodded like a child’s toy pulled too many times. “Yes, Sir! Right away, Sir!”

Once again, when she attempted to leave, Vaughan refused her. Finley leant over the table towards Thresher. “Here’s some of that ‘direction’ for you. You’re not teaching nursery.” He slapped her bicep. “All that time at the gym isn’t for show. People remember a broken arm way more than any of your wittle mean words.”

“No! Please!” Sofia cried. She met Thresher’s eyes, pleadingly. “Please, you have to understand. I’m just tired! I’ve been on my feet since seven this morning and I haven’t been sleeping well for weeks now. I’ve been busy looking after my sister’s baby! My sister’s got a heart disease and she’s in hospital while her son is very young. He’s only a few months old. My sister doesn’t have any other family in Deapriffe so I’m the only one who can watch him nights and look after her and–”

The words stabbed dagger after dagger into Thresher’s heart, horror painting her face uncontainably. Meanwhile, Vaughan and Finley sank deeper into their exasperation and incredulity as they heard the next rambled sob story on a list the length of a motorway. Vaughan put her face in her hand and groaned. “Enough!” She tightened her fist. Sofia cried out in pain.

“Mum–!” Thresher started.

Vaughan uncovered her tired expression. “Just shut her up!”

“Please! Don’t hurt me!” Sofia begged.

As Thresher looked around helplessly, Finley banged his hand down on the table. “For God’s sake, Thresher. Look! It’s easy!”

Thresher’s eyes shot wide. “Finley!”

“No!” Sofia recoiled.

Finley rose.

“DON’T TOUCH HER!” Thresher roared. She wrenched Sofia out of her mum’s hand. Sofia stumbled onto her heels past Thresher and the talk in the restaurant blew out like a bulb. Thresher faced Sofia, thrusting her hand at the exit. “Get out of here! No-one is going to follow you or they’ll have me to deal with.”

Sofia needed no convincing. With a final glance to Vaughan and Finley, she fled as fast as she was able to in her heels. Thresher watched her until the fire exit door had clattered shut. Her blood pounded like gongs in her ears. Her breathing rusher in and out of her chest. Neither succeeded in disguising how quiet the Mary Rose had become.

As instantly as they had stopped, the surrounding Sharks made a point of continuing their conversations and keeping their eyes on their own tables. Vaughan and Finley, however, had nothing to distract from their rage. Finley held his fists so tight his knuckles were white. His teeth seemed ready to crack against each other. The severe lines on Vaughan’s face cut through her skin as if freshly torn.

Finley tore his eyes off Thresher, facing his mum. “I don’t need him. I can do this by myself–”

“No! We do this as a family,” Vaughan snarled. Thoughts burnt behind her eyes. She pulled her voice down into something low and even. “Finley, when I tell you, take your brother out into town. I want him back with a kill. We’re going to get through his block.” She slammed her fist against the table and levelled her finger at Thresher. “And you are going to man up!”

Thresher’s eyes fell. She didn’t move.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter One | Chapter Two

I’m only posting three chapters for now. I might post more depending on what feedback I get!

Also, guessed the film I based this off? DM me with the correct film and I’ll draw whatever character you want for free!

[nicosroom]

My Money Snapshot

[Inspired by Corporette]

Location: Ohio, small college town

Age: 29

Occupation: PhD candidate (English)/half-time instructor

Income: $16,000 before deductions

Net worth: $588 (I’m crying)

Current Debt: $12,844

Living situation: Renting with a roommate

Money Philosophy:

I grew up in the “working poor” category. My parents are divorced and my father never contributed much financially. Mom made around $21,000 per year at work and she cleaned houses “under the table” to supplement that. Somehow, we never went hungry, what we ate was relatively fresh and healthy, and she managed to put two of us through Catholic schools for a total of 14 years. I know now that mom is still paying some of those loans and credit card debts and that part of her strategy included not contributing more than the 3% that her employer matched in her 401k. Every time I complain about the financial stress I feel at my salary level, I have to remind myself how comparatively unstressful my financial life is.

I’ve always been poor and I always knew that graduate school/academia is not a lucrative career. I tell myself that if I can make things work at this pay grade, then I’m ready for just about anything. My main strategy is to have a budget, stay in the budget, and save every bit that I can.

Monthly budget

$1000-1100 for the necessities each month. Monthly spending on eating out, entertainment, shopping and other categories varies widely. I also won’t lie... dating someone who makes 4x more money than me helps... I’m fairly frugal on all of these fronts: I buy most of my clothes second hand and I tend to shop seasonally. Spikes in spending occur around the winter holidays when I’m buying gifts and when I am doing traveling. And I also have totally weak, impulsive moments - like the $3 soap sales at Bath & Body works, or that time I spent $110 on bras and underwear on a whim. Anyway:

Rent: $272.50/month

Other living expenses: $130-170/month (electric, internet, phone, renter’s insurance - lower in summer, higher in winter)

Transportation: $332/month (gas, insurance, car payment)

Healthcare: $162/month (health+dental insurance, no vision coverage)

Groceries: $120-150/month ($30/week)

Debt Picture

Student loan: $2000

Car loan: $10,488

I’m a career student & my motto for all the years I’ve been in school has been “follow the money.” I went to college on very hefty scholarships and I only had to take out the $2000 loan to cover housing costs during my first year. For the subsequent three years, I was an RA, so I never had to take loans again. I applied to graduate programs based on the research fit, and when I got my offers, money weighed heavily in the decision. I would have loved to live in Boston as a wee 22-year old, but I wasn’t about to take out loans for a year’s worth of tuition and the living expenses. And to get a PhD while living in Minneapolis, my very favorite city in the US? It would have been such a dream, but for the quite steep difference in stipends and the significant disparity in cost of living compared with Ohio. My only regret on this front is that I haven’t started paying back my tiny student loan. I’ve been able to defer it since I’m in graduate school, which was a great idea when I was a master’s student who didn’t know the first thing about budgeting. But if I had just paid $25/month from the start of grad school the balance would be $0 about the same time I graduate from this PhD program this August. Instead, I’ll be scrambling to pay off the whole balance before my 6 month grace period ends. 

The car loan is less than a year old. I finally broke down and bought a new (by which I mean used) car last summer after really pushing it with the car my parents had bought me in high school. Repairing that car put me into credit card debt more than once and I was getting so stressed about it. It was time. I have a very good credit score, so I qualified for a nice loan rate with my credit union, and to get a better rate I got my mom to co-sign my loan. It’s a popular rental fleet model so there were tons of them on the market, but average miles were high - so when I saw one that was two years old with only a years worth of miles on it at $1000 less than the average price for that make, model, and year, I jumped on it. My payments are $231/month on the 5-year plan. Currently, I’m paying that minimum, but I plan to escalate my payments as my income goes up (I’m on the academic job market now, pray for me). I folded this car payment into my existing budget by giving up solo-living and finding a roommate. When I had my own apartment, very spacious with a huge kitchen and tons of windows/natural light, I was paying about $585 for monthly rent. I hate living with people, but I hated the idea of being trapped in this college town without a car even more - one of my other mantras is “you can do anything for a year.” 

A note on credit cards: I love them. I’m one of those responsible people that charges everything and pays the balance like clockwork every month. This is the only way to make sure you’re actually taking advantage of the cash back/reward perks! Currently, I’m using Capital One’s Venture card and stockpiling airline miles for travel (it has a 40,000 mile sign-on bonus). If you’re good for it, I also recommend one card with a great balance transfer program. For me, when I get into an emergency situation, it makes me feel like I have options. It’s been about 4 years since I’ve had to use my balance transfer card to cover costs ($1400 in car repairs, summer 2015), but at my level, I can’t afford to not have back up plans. 

Savings and Investments

$5,517 Cash

$7,861 Roth IRA + employer mandated retirement account

Retirement: The biggest financial mistake I've made in grad school is that I did not opt into the retirement account offered by the university when I started my M.A. in 2012. When they ask me that “what I wish I had known before I went to grad school” question, this is near the top of the list. I did, eventually, open a Roth IRA and slowly I started to build something. This year, when my graduate funding dried up and they made me a “half-time instructor” the retirement account for public school teachers was mandatory and the contributions are high: 14% of every pay check (annoying, yes, but on the flipside, there is an equally high employer match). While I’m contributing to this, I’ve paused my contributions to the IRA. I’ll roll this money over, either into the IRA or into another state/employer retirement fund when I move on from here. 

Personal savings: I strive for a minimum of $100 per month and frequently do a little more, but each month is different and I consider it a win if I break even. Through most of grad school, I’ve taken on “second jobs” to bolster what I can save (and boost my resume). Both jobs have been through the university, so they limit me to five hours a week. When I max them out, this can be an extra $200-250 each month. 

I took up a new savings challenge this academic year to build on my “play money” savings account (a high yield savings account which my bank labels a “goal setter” account). The challenge involves tallying the “total savings” printed on my receipts each month (i.e. when the grocery store is like “you saved $6″ because of sales and coupons). So, At the end of the month, I put that running total into my goal setter account. Sometimes the total savings are like $26, but others its as much as $171. It’s an interesting challenge because it encourages me to do tedious things, like scroll through all the digital coupons on the grocery store app; but at the same time, I know that the higher that number is usually coincides with a lot of shopping which encourages some self-regulation. 

I initially set my goal at $2500 when I opened the goal setter account in 2014. When I had to dip into the account in April 2018 to pay $930 in car repairs, I finally set plans in motion to buy my car. Since I bought used, I only put 10% down on the car (just over $1200). When I sold my old car for $1000, I put that money right back into the account to start saving for new things...

What I’m saving for now:

travel: to celebrate finally finishing this PhD, I’m hoping to pull off a trip to Europe. Later this year, I’m also turning 30 around the same time that one of my regular professional conferences is meeting in Hawaii. If I can do one or both in the next year, that’d be grand. (As I mentioned, I'm saving up airline miles with my credit card program, too!)

a multicooker: think InstantPot...but more expensive because my dreams all revolve around small appliances that match my stand mixer. 

What I do to be frugal... 

I’ve been frugal my whole life, but a couple of major habits I’ve formed include:

Meal planning and home cooking (read my guide to meal prep here). The money part of that means planning what I eat around maximizing the ingredients I have to buy. I plan meals that use the same ingredients so I’m not spending on an entire bunch of celery and then throwing out 75% of it. Routinization also helps, so my grocery lists stay about the same week to week and the bill relatively predictable - for example, I eat avocado egg salad almost every day for lunch. I know, avocados are not cheap, but I also believe in spending on the things that nourish you––literally and “spiritually.” Roxane Gay once said that she never bought avocados or blueberries when she was a “poor grad student.” Once she started making money, she realized she would buy them because she could afford them, but she also threw them out all the time because she didn’t plan her meals right to actually eat them. The point is, buy the foods that you like/feel good about and build habits around them. It’s not wasted money. That said, I won’t pay more than $1.25 for an avocado!

Second hand clothes shopping, especially for my business casual (it’s amazing what people donate to the Goodwill, barely worn!)

[docsamurai]

Policy Breakdown: Elizabeth Warren’s Wealth Tax

So for those of you who follow me for my creative writing, sorry in advance if American politics don’t interest you, but I figured I could add something somewhat constructive to the discourse. Short version: I’m going to break down specific policy proposals by currently announced 2020 presidential candidates. I’m starting with Elizabeth Warren because I’m an active and vocal supporter of hers, but I’ll go ahead and do other candidates at some point. If you have a specific candidate or policy you’d like me to talk about send me a DM since I probably won’t see it in the reblogs (and I definitely won’t see it in the tags). All that said, on with the show.

So what is Elizabeth Warren’s proposal for a Wealth Tax, how would it affect people, what are the stated goals of this policy, and what are the most likely ramifications of it?

To explain it in basic terms, the Wealth Tax is a 2% tax on accumulated wealth over $50 million with an additional 1% over $1 billion. Now 50 million is a number that’s too large for most people who aren’t used to dealing with large numbers to readily comprehend so I’m going to break that down for you into what $50 million in accumulated wealth would actually mean.

The average income in America (according the SSA) is just over $48,000 and the median income (which most people say is more reflective of what the “average” person makes) is a little over $56,000. These numbers vary quite a lot depending on age, location, etc, but to simplify things I’m going to round that to $50k annual income.

So what does a budget on a $50k annual income look like for a single person in a monthly budget? Your net salary (after various taxes) is about $2800/month. Your rent (or mortgage) in a fairly average area is about $6-800. Your utilities (electric, internet, phone, water, etc) probably total around $300. Your food budget is probably around $400 Your transportation budget is anywhere from $200 to $800 depending on whether or not you’re making a car payment or not. Health insurance can vary pretty wildly so basing it off my own, you probably pay about $200 per month in premiums alone.

Though these are rough numbers (and most people have a variety of ways to save on one or more of those) your expenses are probably leaving you with very little extra room your budget. Keep in mind this budget does also not account for student loan payments, child care, credit card debt, or any kind of entertainment.

Now you might be wondering “Wait, why did we just go over income if we’re talking about a tax on accumulated wealth, I thought those were 2 different things?”. Well you’re right that those are 2 different things, but I wanted to make a point about the 50 million in accumulated wealth number and by comparing it to an average monthly budget I can better explain that point.

If I had $50 million in accumulated wealth that means that in total assets (cash in bank accounts, stocks, properties owned, etc) equal $50 million. For the simplest possible explanation, we’re going to assume that all $50M is in cash, not generating any interest or appreciating in value in any way. For comparison $50 million is literally 1000 times the average annual income. Meaning that if I previously made 50,000 and suddenly had $50M in cash that would mean that I could multiply my previous income by 10 and still have enough cash on hand to last me 100 years.

So what does a budget look like for someone living off of $500k a year, for the next 100 years look like? Your net monthly income would be $41,666.67 because you wouldn’t be paying taxes on it since it’s not earned income. Your other expenses would only increase if you decided to increase them by buying more things, moving into a more expensive home or car. Let’s assume though that with increased income you would want more a more expensive home and car, and with your increased free time (since you would no longer be working for your income) you would want to set aside more money for things like travel, hobbies, and entertainment. We could reasonably assume that with your increase in income your expenses would roughly triple, assuming that your spending habits still followed a reasonable progression. If I tripled the earlier estimates I made you would still have an additional $34,000 left per month to spend on whatever you would want. Again, there would be no point to save any of this money since you already have enough to last 100 years at this level of “income”.

So how does Elizabeth Warren’s proposed wealth tax affect this hypothetical person who has $50,000,000.00 in cash on hand?

It doesn’t.

Even if someone had four times that at $200M, it would still only affect the amount they had over $50M. The tax would only apply to $150M of their $200M and even then it would be 2% of that, so annually they would have to pay $3M in taxes which does sound like a lot of money to pay, but would decrease their net worth to “only” $197,000,000.00.

Alright. So again, in terms of direct impact this tax is only something you have to pay if you are worth at least $50,000,001. In terms of indirect impact, we come to what this tax is actually meant to do and where that money is meant to go. Now in general taxes don’t go specifically to one place. So this means that the federal budget would have extra money to work with, which means the budget could afford to pay for more things that Warren has said she would support like childcare, student loan debt forgiveness, free tuition, etc. How much money? Her campaign estimates that it would be 2.75 Trillion over 10 years. Some economists say that’s optimistic but essentially correct.

Now the stated goal of this Tax is both to address the rampant income inequality in the US and also to pay for the programs that are also meant to address the same inequality.

So what are the most likely ramifications of this? Well if this tax were to take effect we can safely assume that we will see a lot of new techniques the wealthy can (and most likely will) use for disguising their wealth. In addition, since the president doesn’t actively put legislation into law, she would require Congress to draft and approve the law for her. This will most likely mean that special interest groups and lobbyists on behalf of the wealthy will find a variety of loopholes to include in the law to help with disguising or exempting wealth. As is, we could reasonably expect that the bill would only be effective at that 2.75 Trillion number in the theoretical sense and would probably be reduced significantly.

If it were able to take effect in any significant form though, we can expect the bill to increase investment in new markets. If the majority of the “super wealthy” are suddenly having their wealth taxed at 2% (or 3% for billionaires) then most of them will seek to have greater returns on their investments to compensate for it. This will probably see a shift away from more traditionally safe investments (like oil and gas) and into newer markets with greater potential for growth (like renewable energy). Some of those markets are, of course, riskier, but the alternative would be to have their investment income grow at a slower rate.

Again this is all conjecture and speculation at this point as Elizabeth Warren is not president and has not been able to convince congress to implement her proposed policy (at the time of this writing).

Ok, that was a lot so I’m going to give you the TLDR; How does this affect you personally? If you don’t currently have $50 million in assets, it doesn’t directly. How does this affect the economy? It will probably increase the budget significantly and can pay for lots of social welfare programs that can help less advantaged people be more productive. How does this affect the rich? It will pressure them to invest in higher yield investments or to simply accept that their asset will not grow as quickly otherwise. Will the rich be able to get around this? I would frankly be astonished if there weren’t some kind of cottage industry that springs up overnight to help the wealthy hide their assets. So yeah, most likely. Is this a good thing and should we do it even if Elizabeth Warren isn’t elected? Ultimately yes. While those who would be directly affected by the tax would see a slight reduction in their total assets or a slowing of the growth of their assets through investment, they would also see a reinvigorated economy through the social welfare programs that allowed more people to better participate in the economy which would ultimately provide them with better investment opportunities in the long term. So yeah, it’s one of those rare things where everyone wins eventually (the rich just have to wait a little longer than usual to win).

So yeah, that’s the nuts and bolts of Warren’s proposed Wealth Tax. If you liked this and want to see more just let me know.

[yourkeeperoftherunners]

A Brief Commentary on Clothing Construction

I’ve seen a lot of people on here and other social media platforms discuss fashion, especially why things cost so much and why our favorite celebrities spend so much money on expensive brands or goods. I know for many people it’s shocking to see someone wearing something that can cost a month’s rent or even the down payment on a property or car for a single item, but keep in mind the following factors:

Your favorite celebrity was probably borrowing/renting the clothes for free. Luxury brands are striving to get likeable role models wearing their clothes, which in turn spurs their fans and other individuals in that age group to buy or consider their brand.

A stylist probably chose that clothing item or brand so the celebrity looks modern and pulled together. These people are paid to make celebrities look good and photo-worthy – while they may take input from their clients, they’re dressing the celebrity to fit an image.

Based on the celebrity’s profession and net worth, they may have been purchased with their funds based on their personal taste.

Regardless of the reasons, I know many balk at the price tags of things and wonder why spend so much when you can get something cheaper. Below the cut, I delve into some of my learnings from sewing and clothing construction courses I’ve taken, plus general observations I’ve made as I’ve done my own projects and information I’ve read. Please note I am not an expert in this field – these are my personal thoughts.

Back in the olden days, people either made their clothes at home (sewing was a practical skill taught at a young age) or if you had money, you paid a tailor to make you clothes based on your measurements. It wasn’t until the 20th Century when clothing that was made and ready to purchase and wear was sold in designated clothing shops and boutiques. (Ready-to-wear)

Sewing as a skill has evolved throughout the recent years – before the invention of the sewing machine, you sewed by hand, which is a tedious act that requires focus and patience. Modern sewing machines nowadays can create beautiful rows of even stitches that will stay in place with every tug, pull, and stretch that the garment goes through. (Also it requires less time to assemble pieces of fabric into something wearable.)

Rundown of Sewing Methods/Machines

Hand sewing: Takes the longest, requires a steady hand, and a lot of patience and practice to achieve. Ideal for small fixes (Ex. Loose buttons, small holes in clothes, etc.) in a pinch. Often fashions houses will employ this technique when applying a decoration or design treatment to highlight the craftsmanship. (The latter may contribute to a higher price as this cannot be achieved by a machine – often an individual or artisan is doing this one by one.)

Basic Sewing Machine: Good for the home sewer, pre-programed with basic stitches and sewing functions. Anyone from a beginner to an expert can use one. Most of the models are digital and have screens where you tap to adjust the stitch size, width, and type before using a foot pedal to make the machine start sewing. Typically these are suited for lightweight and medium fabrics – exercise caution and care if sewing with heavier duty fabrics like furniture upholstery and leather. (The latter will require special needles.)

Industrial Sewing Machine: Like the name indicates, these are for factories who produce tons of clothing on a regular basis. They are robust machines that can sew any type of garment with any fabric with few errors or issues. There are a few available for regular home sewing purposes, but keep in mind these are going to be bigger and may require more space.

Serger: If you’ve ever seen the hem on a t-shirt and turned it up to see a complex network of threads intertwined in the back, while 2 parallel lines are visible on top, this was done on a serger machine. Often these are in factories and they create finished seams in garments, creating a cleaner look inside the garment. (Also they reinforce the areas where pieces were sewed together – the complex network of threads helps to keep those areas sewed together.) There are home versions of these machines, but smaller.  

Reasons for Higher Cost

Where was this made? Every garment has a tag that states where your clothing was made. If your clothes were made in a first or second world country, chances are the costs are higher to produce that garment, based on wages for the workers, conditions, etc. Third world countries have different labor laws and it’s cheaper to outsource goods – this is why many people will see Made in China/Vietnam/Thailand/etc. on cheaper clothing.

What materials were used to make this? Synthetics like polyester, nylon, and some viscose blends are manmade and they’re cheaper to manufacture. Natural fibers like cotton, silk, and wool came from plants and animals – depending on a variety of factors including weather and conditions where the fiber was produced, the cost of natural fibers can fluctuate based on demand and availability of raw materials.

How was it constructed? Study the seams and the decoration application. One of the basic things they taught me in clothing construction was a variety of seams, from zigzag to French seams. Flat fell seams and French seams require more time to complete and finish than a zigzag seam. The high end designers tend to use these last two seams, along with serger finishing for a clean look. If you’re a woman/identify as one, you may notice some rounded seams in the chest areas of dresses, blouses, and other fitted apparel – these are called princess seams and they’re added to help the fabric lie/drape around your chest in a flattering way. (They can be tricky to construct but they can elevate and improve the fit in a garment – another detail you may find in designer clothing.) If you notice that something is lined (inside of a jacket, inside of an evening dress, etc.), that may be a contributing factor to the cost. Essentially, you’re making a thinner/lighter “shell” of the item to put inside the main garment to give it a more professional finish and feel. In many cases for jackets, linings hide seams and the person wearing it will have something softer against their skin. (Ex. Sports letterman jackets are usually made of wool/wool blend , but the main body of the jacket is lined with a satin or silk fabric so it’s gentler on the wearer’s body and makes it easier for them to slip their arms into it.)

Misc

Leather can be difficult to work with. Based on the animal your hide came from, how old it is, and the treatment done to the leather, prices can vary on leather goods. Those who work in the material tend to make a draft version in a cheaper fabric (a muslin) before they start sewing because once you put a hole in leather, it cannot be removed/disappear like a knit or a woven. No two hides are the same and every single one will have imperfections, unless the designer cuts or treats the leather in a way that hides those imperfections. The trade off with this material is that it is very durable and with proper TLC can last for a long time. (You’ll often see it for motorcycle and biker apparel because it will protect the wearer if they fell from their bike and not rip open.) Doc Martens are known for being made of very stiff leather that requires patience (and pain in many cases) to break in and mold to your feet – the original intention of these shoes was a practical, long-lasting utilitarian shoe for the worker that would protect their feet while working.

Modern clothes are colored with synthetic dyes, which is how you can achieve vibrant colors in a broad spectrum of shades. Anything made with a natural dye (from plants) will have a less vibrant shade, unless the garment has been dyed multiple times to get a deeper/richer hue. Often the natural dyes will be in more neutral colors and the dye job may look uneven, depending on the treatment/process. (Ex. BTS’s RM wears a lot of clothing from Visvim, many of which were dyed using veggie and plant-based dyes, which are gentler on the earth.)

Denim has changed, due to material availability and a broad range of body types in consumers. Previously denim was 100% cotton and was stiff – often it required many wears to soften the denim and mold it to fit your body well. With people being different shapes and sizes, majority of denim seen in regular retailers will have higher percentages of elastic and synthetic fibers that are stretchy to accommodate different wearers. The elastic and synthetics are more forgiving to those with curvier figures and they won’t be as stiff to wear off the rack. (Most Western brands utilize this material composition as it allows them to sell their pairs to a wide range of consumers.) In contrast, Japanese selvage denim is constructed with a higher cotton content and minimal elastic/stretch and in some cases is dyed with real indigo plant dyes. (Western brands are rarely utilizing true indigo dye and rely on a manmade version to achieve the denim blue color.) Japanese selvage denim will have a stiffer feel and will take time to break in, but the pairs may last you longer as there’s less elastic fiber content. (Over time, elastic stretches out and with frequent washing and drying at high temperatures, fibers snap and break, often resulting in the jeans losing their shape and looking baggy.)