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[MUSIC PLAYING] Brought to you by the Every Dollar App. Start budgeting for free today. So I go to Michigan State University, and I had a question about leasing. Last year, about October, my current apartment kind of got us in a chokehold and said that we had to sign a lease for next year within about $6 or else we won't get the apartment, and we can't live there. Now their lease is about almost about $250 cheaper, and we can't get any cheaper rate at all because we already signed. OK. And how can we help? So I was wondering on what would be a good plan to go. I don't know if that's something that you could get a lawyer involved, or if it's something that I should just try to get out of, like, get a sub-leaser, or what I should do because-- Why do you want to get out of the lease? A lot of money. Why do you want to get out of the lease? Because it's about $1,015 a month, and then the new lease that they're offering is $7.99 a month, and that would be like a lot different. No, they're not. But they're not-- you signed up for $1,000 originally, and you knew that when you're signed up. So the only thing that's pissing you off is they now rent the same apartment cheaper. Yeah, it sounds the right. OK. Isn't that-- I don't know why you get a lawyer. It sounds like you just-- There's no lawyer can help you do. They're not doing anything wrong. Well, I was wondering more on the part of where they told me that I had to sign it within six hours, or that I won't be able to live there at all. Well, that's not illegal. You can put a deadline on a negotiation and say, I'm going to offer you this for six hours. And after that, I can't promise you you can stay here. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just-- if you felt like that that was undue pressure or unreasonable, just don't sign it at the time, that would have been a possibility. And if you feel like you're being mistreated, go somewhere else, in other words. But I think the only way they rip you off is if they said, you all sign it for $1,000, and they charge you for $1,300. Yeah, they tried to charge you more than you signed up off. Now, what I would do is this, rather than going in with the attitude that they did something wrong, I would just go into the manager's office in person and say, hey, man, I'm a broke college student. This is a lot of money to me. Would you guys show us some mercy and reduce our existing lease to what you're currently selling for? Man, that would be a huge help, because the difference is a big deal. And gosh, when we signed it last year, we had no idea of course we could get it for this or we would have waited. But man, can you help us out here? But don't go in there acting like they did something wrong, because, Brendan, honestly, I don't think they did anything wrong. So we actually did do that because it's me and three-mile roommates. And we did go in there and we talked to somebody. They told us in person. They said, yeah, we can actually get it down to that rate. And then they gave us a call back, the general manager gave us a call back about a half hour later. And it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Actually, we can't do that. You guys already signed this other one for this rate. And it was just like a regular employee we talked about at the beginning. So I don't know if his word has any weight to it. - No, no, he just misspoke. - He just misspoke? - No. - Okay. - And there's three of you splitting this $250 overcharge? - No, no, no, it's 1,015 per person. - Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, so it was a $750 reduction you were asking for. - Yeah, sounds about right overall. Total for the whole apartment. - Yeah. There's three people, right? - Four people. - Oh, so it's a thousand dollars, a thousand dollars a month that you were asking them to cut it. Okay, yeah, I can imagine I can do that. - Yeah. - But just imagine. - So if the marketplace, let's just pretend that they weren't crooks and they weren't trying to screw you, that they just simply thought, hey, we have a really hot property here and we're gonna get people signed up. And if you wanna do it, we're gonna put it on the market. If you don't wanna sign, you've got six hours to do that. And then they discover that they can't rent these apartments and they have to drop the prices on them in order to get them rented. Instead of thinking maybe this was the plan all along. That's a possibility, actually. - I've worked in college housing for a long time and the number of students who would say, yeah, we're signing up, we're signing up, we're signing up and then you start to see the attrition rates throughout the summer. Like what he's talking about happens all the time in college housing, like plans change, students don't come back and suddenly you're faced with a bunch of empty beds that you weren't expecting and you gotta figure it out right wise 'cause you can't have an empty bed. I've just experienced this buying a car and then you look on an ad three months later and the car's cheaper, I can't go back to the dealer and get mad at him, it just is what it is what it is. I think what you had to say, Dave, is the only thing you can control here is your attitude, man. And if you wanna walk around looking how everybody's ripping you off and instead of going, oh man, those guys who waited are gonna get a great deal maybe next time I might consider waiting, which by the way, then it's gonna sell out the concert, you're gonna wait for tickets the last day and the concert gonna sell out. So it's just kind of the way life works sometimes. - Yeah, but no, Brendan, an attorney can't help you 'cause nothing was done wrong here. I hate that you guys are paying more than market but nothing was done wrong. Create your free every dollar budget today, the simplest way to budget for your life.
