Holly Harper has formed a family since she started renting out the rooms in her home with girls who were raising their children alone. Now the children spend their afternoons playing together like siblings.
It is well known that most of the time, after a divorce, it’s the women who raise the children, sometimes without financial support from the fathers. This is exactly what Holly Harper went through after the end of her marriage, but she came up with the ideal way to reduce expenses and maintain her quality of life.
Holly Harper
When Holly Harper divorced her husband, she never thought that supporting her son financially would be so difficult. Within her first year of divorce, she had to spend more than $2,000 on rent alone, not to mention everything she had to pay for utilities, food, and her son’s education. The world was an uphill battle for her, until she had a brilliant idea.
After starting a legal battle in her divorce, the woman was able to obtain a significant sum of money, which she decided to invest. Holly bought an old house from 1927, which she remodeled and later leased, but to be shared.
Holly thought that, like her, there were many single mothers who had to take full responsibility for their children. So the woman wanted to find these other mothers and offer them to live with her in her new home in order to share the expenses involved in a house.
Surprisingly, Harper found three women with children who agreed to the deal and moved in with her. From that day on, Holly and her son acquired a second family.
Holly Harper
Today, the mothers christened the house The Mermaid House. There, the four single mothers share expenses and their day-to-day life. When something goes wrong, such as the heating, they all pitch in to fix it. The mortgage is shared by all of them, as well as the food. Thanks to their system, Holly has been able to save $30,000 in just one year, which she would have spent on rent alone.
Jen, one of the tenants, is a sports teacher. She herself created a kind of gym in the backyard of the home, where the four mothers practice activities every afternoon and the children play on the trampoline. The women even joined together to create an “emergency fund” to be used if someone in the home were to fall ill in the hospital.
Holly Harper