My name is Ashe, and I'm the 21 year old wife to Aaron, and mother to three beautiful children- Adrian, Jared, and Hailey. Our story is probably just like every other one out there, but I feel the need to share it anyway.
I met my husband, Aaron, when I was 16 and he was 18. We dated for a year before I became pregnant, at which point we got married. At the time of our wedding, I was 17 and he was 19.
In September of 2000, just 4 months after we were married, 2 very important things happened to us. On Sept. 11, 2000 we were in a car wreck that totalled our car, leaving us with nothing. We had the clothes on our backs, and a few small personal things (such as Aaron's stereo) and that was it. We were already living with his parents, so we didn't even have a house. On Sept. 27, 2000 that changed. We bought our first "home" for the mere price of $10,000- or $20,000 by the time you add in all the interest we paid (which was at 16%) We bought a 1985 singlewide trailor, of which we are still living in today. We bought this trailor and we got burned badly on it. It is tiny, very tiny. At just 14x48 with 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom, we have a grand total of 656 sq ft of living space.
Since the purchase of our trailor, we have since had two more children. We didn't plan things that way, but things happened that were out of our control. And when we tried to purchase a bigger house (or even a doublewide) we were denied that chance. In the summer of 2003, shortly after finding out we were pregnant with our third child, we tried to purchase a doublewide. Unfortunately, we were denied. Not because of our credit, but because my husband's parents wouldn't sell us the land that we had intended to put the doublewide on, and without the land we couldn't afford to buy the doublewide. (Payments would have been $270 a month with the land, and $404 a month without... and with a family living on just one income $404 was a lot of money) We struggled with the decision, and in the end decided to stick things out where we currently are.
Three weeks ago, we made the decision that just sticking it out was no longer possible. With three growing and very active children, sticking things out keeps getting harder and harder to do. But we are faced with difficulties. We still owe on our singlewide- $8,100 to be exact. We contacted several different mobile home dealers trying to find a doublewide, and they have all told us that they want nothing to do with this singlewide- because it is too old and too small for them to re-sell. While I can understand where they are coming from, it still pains me to know that we can't get rid of this trailor. If we are forced to continue living here, we will make the final payment on it in September 2007. That's three years from now... and by that time, we will have a 7 year old, a 5 year old, and a 4 year old. We don't want to wait until 2007, because even with our children being so little now (3.5 years, 2 years, and 9 months) the lack of living space is becoming difficult to cope with.
Another problem we are now faced with is our credit. While we don't necessarily have bad credit, it's not good either. We've got $2,300 worth of collections on our credit report on top of $1,117 that have not yet been reported to the bureaus. We are working really hard on getting our credit paid off so that we can own a home really soon. That is our dream. We want a home with proper living space to raise our children in. I don't think that's asking too much.
What I'm asking from anyone out there that reads this is to help us. Please donate to help us achieve our dream. Donate, if you are able- be it $1 or be it $100. Anything that is donated to us will go straight into our "house fund" and any donators will be recognized and earn a special spot on our Gratitude page... not to mention they will most certainly hold a special spot in our hearts for being so kind. If you cannot donate, we understand. At this point in time we can't donate to others either. If you would like to help, but can't afford to monetarily donate, check out my eBay™ auctions. You might find something on there that you can use or want. All proceeds from my eBay™ auctions will go to our "House Fund."