Jane and Chelsea shared their story as part of MECEP’s State of Working Maine 2025 report. Click here to read the full report.
Jane and her daughter Chelsea live in Hope and co-own Just Ask Jane, a property management service. Together, they manage 54 properties between Northport and St. George.
Jane
“If you want to work in Camden, there’s really nowhere to live. There are plenty of winter rentals because we’re so seasonal, but the people who work here need housing in the summer, too. But there just isn’t any. All these houses that rent during the summer jack up their nightly and weekly prices so high, because they know they can get it and that’s when they make their money. During COVID, a lot of people came in and bought up a lot of our houses, using them as second, third, and fourth homes. We call them ‘dark houses’ — four-season housing that’s not being used year-round.
Over the last few years, we’ve had to morph our company as needed. We shifted from cleaning to property management, and now we also do some interior painting. We shop for some clients. We’ve fixed furniture. We try to find whatever it is that can fill that niche so we can continue to make money and serve more people.
Because of tariffs, we now make guestimates instead of estimates. It’s just too hard to make an estimate for anything, and materials take such a long time to get here, that by the time we get something in it could cost the client 10 to 20% more. It’s exhausting. It costs us work and it makes us shy away from bigger projects. People said all our supply chain issues were supposed to get better once COVID ended. We haven’t seen any difference, except that costs keep going higher and higher.
My husband and I buy our own health insurance through the marketplace. The cost is going up 10% next year. It’s very stressful. I just don’t know how I’m going to figure that out. It’s tough when you work so hard, to be paying all that money into a system that you don’t know if you are even going to use. It just doesn’t make any sense that I have to pay so much out of pocket before they’ll even start paying for anything we’ve had done. They’re making a lot of money. It’s just wrong. We have to keep stepping things up in a way that never gives us a break because we’re always having to make more money to pay this stupid new health insurance bill.
Do our lawmakers understand what’s really going on? Do they personally understand it? Or are they just going with the flow, and thinking that’s just the way it is. Because we need to think outside the box. What are they going to do to help us?”
Chelsea
“The biggest challenge of being a small business owner in a rural place is the inconsistency. We don’t know what projects are going to be on our horizon from year to year. Material costs change constantly, so creating cost estimates for our clients is really hard. Our slogan is ‘making your life easier, one task at a time.’ But there are some weeks where every day is a Monday. That’s what it feels like.
Running a small business is a way of life around here. There are so many of us who try to be creative and try to make it work, but a small business is not the same as a large corporation. The small business is working 90 times harder than that corporation. The Maine way is to have more than one job. We are hardworking individuals. People from away always joke, ‘everyone’s so busy here.’ Yeah, we are!
Turning 26 and having to pay for my own health insurance was really scary. You don’t think about health care until you’re the one who has to pay for it. I went a few years without health insurance because it was just too expensive. Last year I didn’t qualify for MaineCare so I didn’t have insurance, but this year I did. It’s hard, because we never know what we’re going to make year to year. So when I do qualify, I go see all the doctors! When those Medicaid rules change, I’m not sure how I will prove that I’m eligible. I work full time, but I don’t get a pay stub.
In my age group, I have maybe two friends who own houses. And that’s because they’re married and have partners to share the cost with. It’s hard to find any rental opportunities, but money-wise and location-wise, it’s even harder here. The cost of living is just so high. There are not many people here in my age group, or even people I graduated with. Everyone moves away, and to even be able to afford housing they’re going to the Carolinas or Florida and other places. It’s pretty sad.
People my age look at the wealth of the older generations and wonder how they’ll ever get there. Even when those people were in their 30s and 40s, they were much farther along financially than my generation is at that age. It seems much harder to advance now.”