Hunting The Muse

Feeling stressed or depressed

Feeling stressed or depressed today. One of those two. I got my notice of rental increase today - if I stayed here as month-to-month, my rent would go up $260/month. The alternative is signing another year lease for another $40/month but I've already decided I can't afford this price for another year. So I got my notice form and will be turning it in tomorrow.

So that basically makes it official that I'm moving, which is sort of frightening because of some other factors. First, I'll be entering into another lease when my income isn't exactly stable right now. I'm thinking that $800/month is reasonable given my sense of my income potential. If I go down to $600/month (which is getting down pretty low for living alone with a vehicle) then that's really saving only $1200 for a year, which is what I can get for landing one minor project that I could complete in less than a week. So I'm mostly going by feel. I've been at "pricey" and I want to get to "reasonable".

However, I learned today that qualifying for even $800/month is a lot more complicated than it used to be. The property managers don't have anyone to call to verify my income. My clients are sporadic so it isn't appropriate to call them. Checking my bank account isn't ideal because my accounts receivable wouldn't be up to date (right now only half of the billable hours I've accumulated are present in my bank account as cash). And on top of that, my average earnings (since when - since January? Since I started?) aren't quite triple the monthly rent as they'd require. Averaged over the last six weeks they are, comfortably, but not since I started - so "how to look at it" is totally up to me and it's hard for them to gauge.

So I just made sure to turn on the charm - I met two of the property managers and they seem to like me a lot - it turns out they need help with their website, also, although I wouldn't be a good fit - but at least I was able to talk intelligently about it. I gave them copies of invoices, a letter of explanation, etc. I pointed out that I have excellent credit and NO DEBT. (Well, almost - more on that later.) And I gave them sample paystubs of my paychecks at my last two salaried jobs, which should hopefully help them feel more comfortable. So I've got finger-crossing going on here.

The other complicated thing is that I had to list the landlord of the house I rented in Eugene. This is the guy that was totally nice about everything and laid-back about everything up until AFTER we moved out, when he freaked out about the house and the yard (this was after we had done a walkthrough together and he mentioned things looked fine). He ended up keeping almost all of my deposit. And they're going to call him. Since it was really his wife that freaked out and not him, I decided to forego giving them a warning/explanation beforehand and just chance it. I always paid my rent on time, so hopefully it will turn out okay. And the manager of my current place should give me a great rec.

As for jobs - one prospect that was doubtful closed the door today. Another that I had hopes for told me to check back in two more weeks. I have one other prospect but it is dicey. On the other hand, my best client told me today that a new project is "coming shortly". So that should at least keep me steady for a bit longer. And I asked more questions and did more math about unemployment, and feel less complicated about working for this cheapie client right now - as long as it's not a huge number of hours per week. Posted by Curt at April 29, 2002 05:59 PM