I can’t pay the rent but I’m f-ing gorgeous!
Welcome back honey!I have a real problem with money. It’s not that I dislike it or anything. The problem I have with money is that I can never keep it for very long. It feels like the moment I cash my pay check, all my money just somehow evaporates into thin air. And that lack of money can be a real problem when it comes to paying bills and stuff. One bill in particular that I dislike the most is rent.
That’s why today on A Good Excuse Blog, we’re talking about reasons that “I can’t pay the rent”. Now, if you live in an apartment or are renting a house, there’s a good chance you have a landlord who collects your rent checks. At first, you might think this person is your mortal enemy. “The nerve of him asking for money again, I just paid him last month!”
The truth is, having a landlord you can actually talk to in person is a very good thing when it comes to giving excuses. It’s much harder to be mean to someone when you’re standing right in front of them. Since landlords are people, just like you and me (most of the time), you can play to their sympathies. Try to find an excuse subject they’re sensitive to. If your landlord went to college, tell them your student loan hasn’t been disbursed yet. If your landlord has kids, tell them you’ve had to stay home from work lately because your son, or daugher, or niece or nephew has been sick. If you find a subject that resonates with them, your landlord is much more likely to let you slide on paying the rent.
If you are the landlord’s only tenant, that’s even better. Since evicting tenants is such a legal hassle (and takes months to do) they’d much rather keep you there and have you pay at least some of the rent. Plus, even when they do evict you, the landlord will have to re-list their place and spend even more time trying to find new tenants. Landlords can lose up to three whole months of rent in the process of evicting a tenant and finding a new one.
Unfortunately, if you live in a big apartment complex, you’re a lot less likely to find a sympathetic ear to hurl excuses at. Those kinds of apartments are just as happy to evict you because they know they can fill your empty space back up right away. And even if they don’t fill it immediately, they still have 99 other units who ARE paying rent, so a few months vacancy isn’t a financial hardship for them. The only good excuses that big corporate apartment complexes might believe are ones involving maintenance and personal safety. On the last day of the month, tell them that your dishwasher has a bad connection and you think it's unsafe to use and you aren’t going to pay the rent until it’s fixed.
So, to recap, if you are going to give your landlord an excuse, do it face-to-face, bend your excuse toward a subject they’re sympathetic to and if you live in a large apartment complex, try to use an excuse involving maintenance and personal safety.
Hold On: My job is withholding my most recent paycheck for two weeks because of a computer payroll error. They’re working to fix it but I wont have the rent until next month.
Held Up: I got mugged yesterday and they took all the money from the paycheck I had just cashed. I filled out a police report but the cops told me there’s almost no chance of me getting my money back.
Carded: My ATM card was stolen Tuesday and 600 dollars was taken out of my account. My bank won’t cover the loss since I didn’t report the card missing until after the money was withdrawn.
In the end, it’s unlikely that there’s any excuse that will let you completely get out of paying a month’s rent. It’ll just let you put off paying it for a few weeks or a month. But hey, in that time, maybe you’ll win the lottery! Ah, that wouldn’t matter. Rich people hate paying the rent too.
