LogFAQs > #974842003

About a year ago my brother and I both were fed up with dealing with shitty roommates and decided to move in together. He'd just had a kid with his GF and was ready for some stability and I was stuck in an apartment with a bunch of deadbeats because I couldn't save up money to get out when I was paying literally all the bills (and had no way to legally evict them). Seemed like a great idea at the time. We had a solid plan. The three of us work solid for a year and with 3 incomes try to put a down payment on a house.

Problems started almost immediately. For no reason I can understand instead of going for a job in his chosen field he instead decided to work at my aunt's restaurant, a $10/hour pay cut. He also couldn't find reliable child care so his GF was unable to work at all. Sympathetic I agreed to split the bills 2 ways instead of 3 until they could do better. He could manage those bills but just barely. Sometimes I'd need to let him borrow money between paychecks but he always managed to pay it back in a reasonable time. When slow season hit in the winter I encouraged him to try to go back to doing "real" work but he said he felt obligated to our aunt for helping him out. Cue me pretty much carrying all the bills for 2 months until work picked back up. He was able to pay me back for it all but it was tight for both of us, eating into my savings.

We've just coasted along for months now, no progress, until in the last few weeks his GF just kinda got fed up with his shit. She was tired of being stuck at home all the time (at one point both our cars fucking died at the same time and we were basically functioning with a loaner for like a month), she was tired of being stuck with the kid all the time, and she was tired of being broke. They forgot to re-apply for food stamps so they've been even tighter with having to spend the limited expendable income on food and I can only help so much (I mostly eat TV dinners). So last week she moved 200 miles away, in with her brother, and took the kid. And now it looks like he's probably going to go with her. I've tried to convince him to get his shit together here where we've already got a start, that she'd come back if he quit fucking around, but he seems to think that'd be harder than trying to restart from zero, 200 miles away from his support network when he already has no car.

That leaves me in a shitty position. I can't afford the house we're renting on my own, especially when I just had to take out a loan to get a car because the transmission fucked off on my old one. I was *already* looking at getting a second job to manage the increase in bills, I cannot manage the household expenses literally doubling. Worse, the time frame is so short I also don't have time to save up anything for deposits on a cheaper place, assuming I can find one in time. I'm just kinda fucked. /blogfaqs