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Last updated 5/14/26, 10:09 PM CST
Budget breakdown
Once we’ve actually spent the money for any of these items, we’ll
adjust the total donation goal based on what we really spent on
the item in question. For example, if we get lucky and obtain the
first apartment we apply for, we’ll probably only pay about $100
in application fees, and if we did only pay $100 in application
fees to get a place we would then deduct $1,900 from the donation
goal ($2,000 - what we actually paid).
- $2,500: First month’s rent, deposit, cat fees
- Based on the postings we’ve seen and the viewings we’ve
already gone on, this is around how much we expect to pay to
sign a lease once the application is approved.
- $2,000: Application fees
- Our prior landlord oddly surprised us with a spurious
eviction case against us a few weeks before the end of our
lease on April 1st, 2026. We successfully defended ourselves
in the initial hearing, and she withdrew afterwards, without
us paying her anything or moving out early.
Although
this was obviously a good outcome, it occurred in
Pennsylvania, which never seals eviction records for any
reason. A 2024 University of Michigan study as reported on
in the articles “Eviction filings can destabilize tenants’
lives – even when they win their
case”
and “How Does an Eviction Affect Your
Record?”
found that individual Pennsylvania renters in a position like
ours had to pay an average of $650 in application fees
($1,300 for us) before they got approved for a lease, and as
much as $2,000 ($4,000 for us). (We have to pay double because
there’s two of us, so we always have to fill out separate
applications for the same place.) We’re hoping that things
will work out better in Minneapolis, but based both on that
study and our own experience, we will not be surprised if we
have to spend $1,000 each in application fees before we get
signed, and it could even come out to more than that.
- $1,700: Getting our belongings from our storage unit in
Pittsburgh
- This covers getting one of us and someone to drive out to
Pittsburgh, the cost of renting the truck, and hotels.
- $500: Replacing things we had to get rid of or leave behind
when we came to Minneapolis
- When we move out of our hotel room and into a place, we’ll
have basically nothing aside from our computers themselves,
a couple changes of clothes, our most vital pieces of audio
equipment, and a drawing tablet—nothing to put the computers
on, nothing to sit on, nothing to eat at, no dishes or
silverware, and nothing to sleep on. $500 might be a little
low honestly, even if we’re as frugal as we can be…we’ve
already spent about $200 on food since we arrived in
Minneapolis because we couldn’t take any of our food with us
either.
- We’re paying $600/week at our current hotel, and if we don’t
manage to move in anywhere in the next 5 days we’ll have to pay
another $600 (or more if the hotel ups their rates). If that
happens we may add the amount on to the fundraiser since it
cuts directly into the money we need to use to sign a lease.
- If we have anything left over after paying for all of the
above, we’ll put it towards our rent. We’ve been surviving for
a long time on short-term freelance work, having taken on over
50 assignments in the last couple years, in order to make ends
meet every month. That’s cut deeply into time we would
otherwise spend making a new large game. We want space in our
lives to bring a new large game to fruition, and having a few
months of our rent covered would help immensely with that. I’m
not really counting on it, but just for the record, that’s what
we’ll do with any extra.