Tuesday, August 31, 2010

You Can't Buy Trust

Well...what can I say? We're boring. ...really boring...
I'm not sure what happened with the month of August. It came and went before I had a chance to realize it. I had 2 weeks off at some point, but filled it with babysitting. Scotty has been working his patooty off at Arvest and has been working with the teens. And that's our life.
Some drama happened 2 days ago with my brother, though. Not a lot of drama happens in the Treadway house so when the you-know-what hits the fan it makes for an interesting day. Justin has been looking into buying a house. He has been pre-approved and has already been out looking. The whole family--even Justin's girlfriend, Katie--HOLLA! was at my parents for lunch. Justin got on his online bank account to check things out. He's been at camp for the past 3 months and hasn't had the chance to look. Well, he started noticing some strange charges to his account. That's always scary. He did a little investigating and realized it was his roommate that made some charges. See, Justin lives with 3 other guys. He's known these guys for a long time and they're all friends. And they are all in charge of rent and certain utilities. One is in charge of gas the other electric, etc. Well, these charges were for utilities that Justin wasn't suppose to pay for. So clearly, one of his roomies did a no no. Justin immediately calls the roommate to confront him about it, no answer. While he was doing that Katie looked a little further and saw that this roommate had stolen a book of checks and wrote some checks to himself, forging Justin's name. You could see Justin's heart sink. This was his friend. And this friend committed a felony. ..Kind of a big deal... The roommate took about $1000 of Justin's money. And this happened while Justin was out at camp. Well, as you can imagine, Justin wanted to move out ASAP. So my parents, myself, and Katie (Scotty had to be with the teens) drove to his house and packed him up in about 2 hours. Eventually the roommate called back and they set up a meeting. Justin, being Justin just wanted the money back and then forget the whole thing. He has such a soft, kind heart he didn't want to do what he knew he HAD to do. Which was press charges. Monday, Justin ran around town talking to the bank, the utility company, the police, etc. and had the gut wrenching meeting with the roommate. Justin said his roommate was emotional and really felt guilty for betraying him. Rightfully so. Justin made him sign a contract saying how much was owed and when it needed to be paid back. Justin also explained that he had to press charges. That's an awkward and uncomfortable conversation to have. Well, as the day progressed Justin got a call from his roommate wanting to meet again. When they did meet, this roommate paid Justin back in full. He put his car down for collateral and sold all of his guitar gear (he's in a band). Justin is so relieved that he got his money but, honestly, there's not enough money in the world that can fix broken trust. The bank said since all the money was returned there wasn't a need to press charges. That's good, but at the same time, who's to say this roommate isn't going to do it to someone else or a place of business? I don't know that I'd be so forgiving. But in the mean time Justin is living with our parents till he finds a house.

And on a happier note....well, I'm going to brag a little bit. Me and Scotty are ALL about saving money (because we have none) and we made some super awesome purchases yesterday!! I say "purchases" but we really didn't spend any money at all. Academy sports just opened up in town and they had a $10 off coupon in the paper for shoes and another one for apparel. We checked it out last night and I found some cute Capri pants, which were only $5 with the coupon and Scotty found a pack of underwear FOR FREE! They were only $9 dollars to begin with and when you throw a $10 off coupon in...FREE! And then for dinner we ate some FREE pizza thanks to 101.1 KLRC. Scotty won a contest on the radio and they gave us a coupon for a free pizza. So we saved over $30 yesterday! That's what I call a good day!! Oh...and by the way....I did the math and come January of next year we will be half way done with our loans! Praise the Lord because I don't know how much sanity I have left!

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