Okay, I’ve been dreading writing this one for a bit, but let’s get down to brass tacks:
Facing a $2,925 hotel bill for myself and my 81-year-old Aunt Annie to head to Traverse City, to cover the Red Wings’ prospect tournament, a mysterious benefactor has been the main force behind our GoFundMe for the hotel bill reaching the $2,550 mark, out of a projected $3,500 in total to get us up to Traverse City.
That’s out of a $3,500 goal, and as we attempt to “get up the road,” the daunting cost of car repairs for my 2006 Chrysler Pacifica (see: steering, right rear brake, oil change, hood latch) has made reaching that $3,500 goal soon a necessity.
And, for better or worse, I don’t think that it’s going to happen before the trip starts with our drive up to TC next Tuesday, September 12th. Hell, I don’t think that we’re going to end up raising enough funds to totally cover the hotel bill before the trip starts.
Right now, we’re raising about $50 per fundraising post, which is great, don’t get me wrong, but not ideal in terms of rectifying the deficit in terms of our overall expenses. I’m trying to limit these posts to one a day, but I may have to amp up the frequency thereof and be a bit of a pain in the butt to generate more funds.
And they are fundraising funds, not revenues. We don’t really make any money from this trip–the goal here is to break even–and we’re basically going to have to exhaust what little financial reserves our low-income family has to get up to TC and get the hotel bill paid.
That means that our ability to plain old pay our bills and buy food will have to come from whatever we can raise for overall expenses. With about $2,200 in the bank from the GoFundMe (GoFundMe is very slow in terms of getting funds from fundraiser to bank account)…
And whatever’s in PayPal is going to be blown through like a hurricane in order to at least partially pay down automotive repairs, leaving very, very little money in order to actually get up to TC, leaving us actually up there and attempting to both pay for groceries and survive on “out food” on our own, at least for a while.
That’s a bit scary, and I guess I would use the words “discouraging” and “frustrating in terms of the situation.”
I’m not upset at all toward the wonderful folks who’ve donated, nor the rest of our TMR readers–I’m incredibly grateful toward you all. It’s just been a real pain in the ass to fundraise this fall, and we haven’t met expectations yet.
It’s been a hard, muddy ride, and things are getting to the point where we really need to raise some significant fundage really soon.
So we’re scared, nervous, a little desperate and a little frustrated at the fact that we’re struggling to raise money. Aunt Annie and I will do our best to get up to Traverse City no matter how the fundraising goes…
But it’s going to be tight at best, and we’re going to be effectively raising money to just pay our electric, gas, cable/internet and phone bills, as well as our “in town” expenses, while we’re up there.
That’s taking a big leap of faith on our parts, and it’s just scary and uncomfortable.
Long story long, if you’ve been “on the fence” about donating now or donating later, we really need your help right now, and if the repairing Pacifica provides any surprises, it’s going to be…Very worrisome.
So that is where we’re at.
If you can lend a hand with our overall expenses, we have an old-fashioned GoFundMe here https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-george-annie-attend-prospect-tournament, you can use PayPal at https://paypal.me/TheMalikReport, Venmo at https://venmo.com/george-malik-2, Giftly by using my email, rtxg@yahoo.com, at https://www.giftly.com. And you can contact me via email if you want to send me a paper check. I’m also on Cash App under “georgeums.”
Thank you for your time, support and readership.
