Jack of Harts

You all know the story. Obamacare ended health care as we knew it. It ended my 100 dollar a month health care plan, and graciously offered me a 700 dollar a month plan that covered less than the old plan. I could not afford to pay for Obamacare, so when my appendix exploded four years ago I got a bill for around 40,000 dollars. The Mayo Clinic linked me up with various charities and hardship services that dropped the bill to around 10,000 dollars, but that was still more than I could pay.

So I took out every loan I could get, and sold my retirement home up in Northern Minnesota. The real estate agent I was working with up there negotiated a Contract for Deed with a buyer he found, and the 200 dollars a month I got for the next two years was often the difference between solvency and not. But the buyer transferred the Contract over to their cousin, and then their cousin stopped paying me anything at all in January of 2019.

In the nearly two years since, they squatted in my house without giving me any money. 200 dollars a month for nearly two years comes out to approximately 4,000 dollars in mortgage payments they have declined to send me. The Contract also called for them to pay me the amount of property taxes and insurance on the house. They have not. So we can add around 1,500 dollars in property taxes for 2018 (which they never reimbursed me), 2019, and 2020. Insurance runs approximately 200 every three months, so around 1,600 for two years.

Then there are the utilities. I happen to know that they have been playing fast and loose with the local utility company, often pushing balances of up to 2,000 dollars in fees without paying before the company would cut them off until they paid up. They have been doing this for years. This spring, they had pushed the balance up to 2,000 dollars again, and then the governor’s Stay At Home order came into effect. It ended all evictions, like the one I had just gotten approved, and ordered all utilities to provide utilities for people regardless of whether or not they chose to pay. Even those who had already been a problem. So while squatting in my house, they racked up another 2,000 dollars in utilities. Which debt goes to the property, and to me.

Rough math shows that they cost me well in excess of 10,000 dollars in the last two years, through a combination of them not paying me what they were legally contracted to pay me, or by simply racking up utility bills they never intended to pay. Aided and abetted by the Governor of my State who said I could not evict them after going through ALL of the legal steps to get them evicted.

I love to laugh and make jokes about these matters, that does not reduce the cost of living in the modern crazy.