The last few years have been ones of big change! Despite it all, we were growing apart–the trials and grind of everyday life was getting in the way of life itself. We were both desk jockeys in a high-cost area. Effectively, what that meant was that our life revolved around a grind. We were hostages to our income and to our bills that that income needed to finance.
I’m sure you all know the drill. Staggered schedules. One rushing off to work while the other takes care of drop-off. Rush to finish up at work to get to daycare on time and not be the loser parent that picks up their kid last. The other working late and getting home just before bedtime. Rushing home to get dinner cooking. Finding time to feed the dogs. Clean the house. Do Laundry. And somewhere in there manage to spend quality time together.
It wasn’t working… Despite all of our best efforts, we rarely had time to spend good quality time together. We were physically together each day, but we were both so exhausted, overwhelmed, cranky, tired, crabby, and quick to be set off… It wasn’t shaping up to be the life we’d always dreamed of despite the fact that we were doing pretty well on paper.
After some serious soul searching, we decided that maintaining huge house payments and an equally large cost of living with daycare, food, gas, commute, and other expenses just wasn’t going to be sustainable–and certainly not in a way that would afford a higher quality of life. We had always dreamed of getting up to San Luis Obispo for retirement, so we started asking ourselves: “why do we need to wait until we’re in our 60s?”
Being the data nerd that I am, I started to question why we couldn’t just do it now. Nadia wanted to quit her job, and my work was open to the ide of me commuting in from a longer distance, so I started building a spreadsheet to see how do-able it actually was. We called the spreadsheet “Vision 2017” and started with a baseline of what our current income and expenses were. From there, we superimposed all of our changes that we were considering.
Nadia’s income was gone, so that had to be factored in, but then we’d be able to drop all of our child care expenses. I’d have to AirBNB a few nights a week, so that’s an added expense, but the homes in SLO are so much cheaper than in LA that we offset a ton there. Our home in LA had appreciated significantly since we purchased in, so that gave us some potential profits to throw into the mix as well.
Ultimately, we were able to sell our home, clear out all of our car and student loan debts, have Nadia quit her job and spend most of her time with the kids, and get a home that is 10X better than the one we got rid of at just 60% of the cost. So far, we haven’t looked back and have been surprised that it is even better than we ever could have dreamed! Our dogs are living the dream, we’ve got chickens laying eggs for us (or they will be soon), and our kids are as happy and healthy up there as we could have hoped.
However, moving to the country is only Step 1 in our journey to live, experience, and appreciate the time that we’re given. Step 2 was to purchase the RV, and we’ll cover that in our next post. Step 3 was and continues to be consciously keeping your eye on the prize by having a plan to keep #WhyWeWork top of mind. We’ll share our 12-month plan with you as Step 3. We’ll end the series with Step 4 – reflections on how we motivate ourselves to stay positive in the face of challenge and adversity and the normal daily grind.
Hopefully these rants help you focus on what’s important to you, but it’s been helpful for us to be able to share our journey and keep the mission front and center. Stay tuned!