REI may have to take the backseat. Help needed!

[Justin Young]

Aloha BP!

I'm unsure of whether I should go forward with my decision but I figured that I would post it here on BP because I value the opinions and feedback from the BP members here tremendously. So here is my story.

My wife was informed last week Thursday that she was hired for a job that she was interested in and they'd like her to start on Thursday 9/29. She's been a stay at home mother for about 10 months tending to our two younger children (2 years old and 7 month old). While she is very excited to get back into the workforce, I couldn't help but imagine the extra income that she would be bringing in to help fund our real estate portfolio but then I took a step back and thought that in order for her to do that, we would need a babysitter. So we posted on social media that we were looking for a babysitter and would like to schedule interviews to help us with choosing one.

Long story short, we really liked one babysitter who lives near us but her monthly costs were slightly higher than our previous babysitter whom we haven't used since last year. So I told my wife to give our former babysitter a call to see if she has any openings for 2 children. As my wife called her, our former babysitter told my wife that she was actually just thinking about my wife and our 2 older children (she babysitted them before). My wife and her have kept in touch for awhile now and we've always had a great relationship with her. Come to find out, our former babysitter (lets just call her "FB" for short) is stuck in a bind. One of her clients begged her to watch their newborn full-time but she told them she couldn't because she had too many children to watch full-time but luckily, one of her FT kids moved down to PT so it freed up a slot. This was the biggest mistake she could ever make. The father of the newborn child has blamed his child having a rash, which our FB actually helped alleviate through organic methods. He also blamed her for a scratch that our FB actually informed him of as soon as she saw it so that he wouldn't blame her for it. But not only did he blame her for it, he called the cops and ambulance.

For the past 3 months she has been under investigation by the state. Everything so far has checked out fine but she will need more insurance and will need to get re-licensed as a babysitter. Because of the added expenses, she would have to increase here babysitter costs by almost double her original amount. I'm almost definite that if she increases it by that much, she will not have many customers that will use her services. Living in Hawaii, there are many babysitters that cost an arm and a leg so our FB original costs were very, very reasonable. Some of the parents have been going to her for over 7 years or more. This is where I need the BP community to help me.

I have a substantial amount of money in cash reserves that I planned to use to build my SFH/MFH portfolio either through turnkey properties or the like but feel that I should help our FB through her situation. She has been nothing but kind to us and has been very lenient towards our payments in the past allowing our expenses to be pro-rated if we didn't bring our children to her a day or two during some weeks. All in all, she is a great person and I feel compelled to help her. I'm thinking this is His way of telling me to think about others before I think about myself. I'm not sure there are many followers of Christ here on the forums but I'm hoping members here can chime in with their ideas. My plan is to loan her the money somehow, similar to how a private money lender would, so that she could still keep her monthly costs down. But I'm not trying to make a quick buck with this. All I want to do is maybe "loan" her money upfront that would cover our monthly babysitter costs for, lets say, 6 months. She could use that money to pay down her insurance premiums, pay for her license and any other expenses, and our children could be watched for 6 months at no cost. Another option would be to loan her money, we pay the full amount, then she pays us back monthly with interest. I don't really care for the latter because I'm not trying to make money here, I really want to help her.

This probably isn't a common situation but I would greatly appreciate any and everyone's feedback. Like I said before, I really wanted to continue with building up my portfolio which I'm actually closing my first TK this week but I feel like He is telling me to put someone else's concerns before mine. Investing will always be there but knowing that you were able to contribute to someone else's livelihood/career would mean so much more in the end. What would everyone else do? How would you structure this? Do I need to draft a promissory note or deposit the money into an account (for example: escrow)? I've never done something like this and I'm really not sure how to do it but I feel like I need to do it.

If you've gotten this far, thank you.

Aloha,

Justin

[Jonathan Watson]

Hi Justin,

Really sounds like she could use help right now... not just in finances, but in prayer and emotional support.  I know others who've been falsely accused, and had to go through long processes of organizational valdiation before getting back on their feet--it's a demeaning, disheartening, and tiring experience (not to mention it seems like it's a guilty-until-proven-innocent process).

I think it's great you're trying to help her out--and if you're confident that she'll be exonerated by the state, helping her get back on her feet can be the right thing to do. But I'd caution you against any expectation that you'll get your money back.  You need to be able to emotionally let go of the money and realize you may never see it again. Certainly, you can put in a process by which she can repay the funds, but the position of your heart needs to face the possible reality that you'll never see any of it back.

If helping her out is the right thing to do, it's the right the to do whether or not you get money again.

... I do speak from a similar-ish experience too.  We were able to help someone out, and established a repayment plan of sorts for this person.  But we realized that the position of our heart toward this person turned when it became a business transaction.  My wife and I were soon led to tell the person that what we did was a gift to them because of how much we'd been blessed.  And that, someday, when they're back on their feet, they should do the same for someone else.  For us, it was the right emotional and spiritual move to make.