Publish: | 2024-08-14 09:25:09 |
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Categories: | life |
Day 7 - Tuesday - Let's End This Already
Tuesday morning. Another night at the rest area.
I had a final set of places to check out Tuesday morning, and planned on applying to a place by noon.
I found Plymouth, Michigan, which sits a little further North. The commute would be be 30+ minutes on good days. Plymouth seems trendy (though a bit hipster) and had a very, very cool downtown vibe. I also found a mediocre apartment out there that is affordable and was... umm... it was, OK? Meh? It wasn't great, not by any means... but it wasn't terrible.
But I did like Plymouth enough to add the apartment to my list. But also, while there, the leasing agent was super friendly and talkative, and also just moved to Michigan a year or so ago. By the end of our chat I decided to check out Taylor, MI and Southfield, MI.... both much closer to Deaborn but were supposed to be less sketchy.
By the time I finished looking at the Taylor apartment it was 3 o'clock. I really wanted to get something sorted and applied to today. I still have shit to get done for school, I still have to move, I still have to get a driver's license, register my car, and so on. Life is calling.
So I went over to IKEA, which had become my unofficial office these last few days.
I don't know. I don't have a single great choice.
But, there is one that stood out the most: Fairlane Wood. Of course, it's among the priciest of places I looked at. I'll cover costs a little more in a future post, but when I was originally budgeting this grad school craziness, I used the rental prices I found on apartments.com. I had seen nice one-bedrooms as low as $1,000-$1,200/mth. But that was in neighborhoods I now realize I don't want to be in.
The trust is, every decent apartment I looked at here (and many shitty ones) were pricier than I had planned on. So I was likely going to end up breaking the "budget" either way. Fairlane Wood is like $150/mth more than my 2nd choice. So more, but not astronomical.
The location? Minutes from campus (like Fairlane Meadow) and in a very non-sketchy little bubble (like Fairlane Meadow).
So... OK, let's do it. At 4:30 today, I drove over to Fairlane Wood. Ready to apply.
If You Tighten Your Stomach Muscles, The Punch Hurts Less
I'm at Fairlane Wood. I'm on my laptop inside the leasing office. I fill out the application.
They use a verification service, like the other apartments did. I'll go through it, and I'll fail. We discussed it ahead of time. After I fail the income verification (but pass the credit history and criminal history shit), then the plan is to email Jessica, from the leasing office, my bank statements.
It's all going as plan. I finish up the verification. I pay the non-refundable fee.
"You're going to hate me a little.", I warn Jessica, "I have my cash spread over 6 different bank accounts. So I'll have to send you 3 months of statements from each one."
Jessica's face gets a little more stern, "It all has to be in one account, we can't accept multiple account statements."
What. The. Fuck.
I don't know what to say. I smile. The laptop, held upright in my hand, lowers with the rest of my arm.
What. The. Fuck.
I didn't know what to say, but I guess my face said it all. Because alongside me and Jessica, was Nicole, another leasing agent. "Don't worry", she tells me, "we can get it figured out."
I keep smiling and just turn away, walking back to my backpack. I place the laptop down.
"No really, we can work with the numbers a little. Maybe change the lease length so the total needed is lower."
I still haven't said anything as I turn back to them. I give a little shrug. I looked at Nicole, still though, I wasn't sure what to say. Work with the numbers a little? What does that even mean?
"Do you have one account with most of the money?", Nicole asks.
"I do, but even still that's about half of the total cash across all the accounts."
Nicole and Jessica retreat for a bit. Then come back, and whip out a calculator, and punch some numbers in my face. So here's the skinny: If I look at my single biggest account, based on their minimum requirements... I have enough by like $3,000.
Enough.
So... according to the plan, I should get denied. Then Jessica will take my bank statements to her manager. If all goes well, the manager checks off, and I get a phone call telling me my application has been accepted.
If all does not go well... then the apartment story continues.
That's where we're at. It's Tuesday. It's 8:30 at night. I'm in a coffee shop, typing away. I'm tired. I'm not enjoying this. I'll be sleeping in my car again tonight.
Hopefully this works out. And if so, I've got a place to live... although I'll have to wait another week and a half before I able to move in. So, yeah, that's also ass.
There's more I want to share. More details, more thoughts... but I think most of it will remain lost. Trying to bang out these posts before I forget them, while also kinda miserable, isn't making for the best blogging, I know. Sorry. For now, this is where things are.
I still have a ton of shit to do for school before it gets started... including registering for another class.
I hoped this would've been smoother. It has not been.