This has been on my mind for days. I hesitated posting becuase it's a bit.... personal. Please note that this is NOT a pity party, boohoo post, but more of a "Let's get it all out in writing to see if I'm actually crazy or not" and "hey wouldn't this be cool to know in 50 years" kind of post.
Today I'm talking about the monies.
Background: Husband and I got married in 2002. We were poor college students living in a little college town. We only stayed for one school year and then moved in with my parents in California to have Xander (and to use the summer to figure out what we were doing for the rest of our lives). Roger worked hard labor all summer long for $8/hr.
As summer ended, we knew that the next step for us was to move back to Utah, get an apartment, and Roger decided to go to ITT Tech. We found an apartment in a pretty ghetto part of West Valley, but it was close to the school. Roger also worked as a flower deliveryman (to date one of his favorite jobs) making minimum wage- which at the time was $6.55. I was at home with Xander and also babysat a few kids to help ends meet. I don't think it occurred to me how poor we were until my visiting teacher came over one day while I was pregnant with Juliana and asked if we had food. I was like, "Yeah! We have food! I have a half of loaf of bread, some potatoes, and sour cream, we're good!" and then she insisted we get a food order.
We only lived in that apartment for a year. I can't remember why Roger switched from flower delivery to the deli at Harmon's. There he made $8 an hour, but didn't love it quite so much. In that year we were in the apartment, my parents bought a house in Utah. My family helped renovate it and get it ready for my parents to move in, which they did in 2005. After being there for a few months, they were called on a mission to Florida. Timing was good because they'd be leaving about the time our lease was up. We moved into the house and then my dad had a little procedure that pushed back the mission a little bit. I was grateful they were there when we had Juliana.
Sometime in that year, Roger switched jobs again to Albertson's- this time cleaning the backs of trucks for $10 an hour. He was absolutely miserable there. He finished ITT and graduated. Around the time he graduated, he got a call from Ensign Engineering. He started there at $11 an hour and we have been there ever since (minus a 3 month attempt working at a firm out here).
Through the years, I did what I could help financially. We bought a house in 2007 in Tooele with a USDA Rural Housing Loan- our house payment was $500 a month or something similar. The catch with that is that we filled out paperwork each year and they would adjust the payment amount based on our income. years we had babies, the payment went down. years we got raises, the payment went up, but we were always in the same boat. Roger always made enough for the house payment and our regular bills, but anything else was up to me. I babysat, sold jewelry, edited photos, did display set ups, and then eventually photography.
In 2008, when things were bad for everyone and gas was $4/gallon in Utah and we had one car and Roger was commuting to Salt Lake every day- we saw miracles. The Tooele office opened. Roger could walk or bike to work. I ad steady extra gigs. It was hard. There was not any extra. But we were ok.
I stopped babysitting about the time I had Abraham in 2014. At that point, we were in the exact same financial boat as we always had been because although Roger's income had doubled, so had our house payment and the amount of kids had more than doubled. We did have 2 cars at that point, which was really nice since I had kids in school and all my side gigs. I started doing photography as full time as I could, while still editing photos and other stuff.
Here's an ADHD thing- any hobby that I wanted to try, I had to monetize. I still am that way. I'm getting better, but if I wanted to try painting, I had to make a business about it. If I wanted to try crochet, I had to try to sell some of my wares. It's how I could justify to myself that it was worth the time, effort, and especially any money. I even did MLM for a minute, selling Lia Sophia jewelry. I don't know if any of my little things like that ever actually helped financially- until the hymn paintings.
Anyway. Somewhere around 2018ish, we were tired of being in the exact same financial boat as we had been with the house and we finally refinanced. It felt so good to have that little bit of freedom, knowing that any income growth would finally be income growth.
During Covid, we were very blessed that Roger could work still.
In 2020, the housing market in Utah was INSANE. We decided to sell. We had a 1900 square foot house, fenced in yard (with no surviving grass). It needed all kinds of repairs. The AC was about to go out, the cupboards had no doors, the floors needed help.... It had just been very, very lived in. And we couldn't afford to fix it up. Plus, we had so outgrown it. There were 4 actual rooms and we had converted the basement into our master bedroom. It was just very crowded. We sold the house for $255,000. It had only been on the market for 4 days.
We lived in a 3rd floor apartment in Tooele for 6 months. We originally had dreams to build, but that was going nowhere. Then, we started having thoughts of Elsewhere. We considered Texas, Kentucky, and Indiana. Roger got a job offer in Texas and we felt very bad about it. We dropped TX from the list quickly. Roger was never really sold on the Indiana idea, but we were both intrigued by Kentucky. We had friends who lived in Richmond KY and they loved it. All the pictures were so green and land was not crazy expensive. We had been feeling strongly about having a garden. It's a little silly since none of us garden, but I felt like we needed to anyway.
We found a piece of land in Alexandria KY that was perfect. 2 acres. $30,000. Ready to build. Roger flew out and looked at it, felt good about it, and so we bought it. I flew out a couple of months later to see it, fell in love, and then we made plans.
Originally, we were going to move during summer. Our lease would be up about then, kids would be out of school, we'd have time to do all the goodbye things. The Spirit said otherwise. I would wake up in the mornings almost in a panic "GET OUT OF HERE" were some of the thoughts. "GO NOW"- but not scary thoughts. And they didn't start out that way. They started as "What if?" "What if we went before our lease was up?" "What would it take to go sooner?" and "Why are we still here?" (for real, 3rd floor with 6 kids was a bad, bad idea). I told Roger I'd been feeling this way, and he admitted he had as well. It was surprisingly easy to get out of our lease early. We found a rental that looked good on paper. Everything aligned. So we packed up our entire lives into a 16' Penske Truck and drove 1700 miles.
The rental wasn't quite ready when we got here, so we stayed in a hotel the first couple of nights (another reason Robyn should not be the one making reservations for anything- I swear up and down the hotel said "pet friendly" and then when we got there..... it was a no pets hotel. We had a tender mercy and were able to keep Winnie with us for 2 nights). We had someone in our new ward willing to watch the Kitties until we were in the rental. After the first 2 nights, we found a hotel in Lexington that was pet friendly and a good price, so we reserved 5 days there. It was cheap because it was nasty, old, and the day we left, the Terminex guy was there, so there you go.
We settled into the rental- which was fabulous, by the way. Things were good and we started working on plans for building the house. Then we met with the builder. It was going to be more than 3x our budget and work couldn't start for over a year. To say that I was upset was an understatement. A lot of prep work, spiritual and otherwise, had gone into these plans. And there was no way in the universe we'd ever be able to afford to make it happen.
Then we found this house. After a couple of miracles, we got it for $333,000. This place is big!! It fits ALL of us. It still technically only has 4 bedrooms, but they are big enough to fit all of us. Plus there is space all throughout the house for people to be. We are so happy here. It's also 2 acres, though they are downhill and mostly wooded. We were able to sell the property for the $30,000 we bought it for, but the timing didn't match up quite right and we ended up using the 401k to put the down payment on this house.
Here's the thing. Moving is expensive. However expensive we thought it was going to be, it was double. Plus some. So when we got the money for the property, we did not put it back in the 401k. Instead, we payed off the debts that moving had incurred and also furnished our house. Not extravagantly, but the basics, anyway.
Husband, trying to be responsible and get us out of debt as quickly as possible, set it up to repay the 401k in 5 years. Roughly half of his paycheck goes towards 401k. So I got a full time job to help keep us caught up on the house payment. We had a couple of water damage incidents in the house, however, that needed the insurance to help. You know, the insurance that is supposed to cover what you can't afford, even though it has a $1000 deductible? Yeah, that's the one. So we used it. Might as well, since we were paying for it anyway. Well...... between those 2 times we used the insurance and the taxes in this beautiful area, our house payment jumped 33%.
I don't know if you've shopped for groceries lately, but it's not what it used to be. Here is the snippet of what groceries are right now- September 9, 2023
Loaf of bread: $1.32
Gallon of whole milk: $2.33
1 lb of ground beef: $4.96
1 red pepper: $1.48
12 pack of store brand toilet paper: $11.98
Ok, you get the idea. I have 6 kids at home right now (Xander is off in the Navy, but we have an amazing exchange student from Brazil). We don't qualify for free or reduced lunch, so if I have the kids eat breakfast at lunch at school, it would cost me $25 a day (Paisley eats free). We make home lunches. Shopping for lunch stuff looks like this:
Capri Suns (30 per week) - $8.50
Chips (12 units a week)- $6
Pretzels (1 big bag a week)- $2
Clementines (24 per week)- $6
Sandwiches (bread, meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato) (twice per week)- [2 loaves of bread $2.64, 2 kinds of meat $9, presliced cheese $5, 1 head lettuce $1.50, 3 tomatoes appx $3] $21ish
Pierogies or pizza rolls or chimichangas (once per week) $5 average
Leftovers (once a week)- $0
Apples (once a week) $4.50
Chicken Salad Sandwiches/Lasagna/Mac and cheese, etc (once per week) Appx $10-$15 in supplies
Nuggies (once a week) $9
So I guess I'm saving $10 a day by making lunches. YAY.
But here's the thing. We still owe over $900 in student fees from last year/this year combined. So that's cool. Plus $500 for Marching band last year. And Paisley just got accepted into a choir group that costs $100.
I'm just saying, life is SO expensive that even though husband and I both make really good money- we only see half of his paycheck and inflation is eating the rest. I know we're not alone in this boat. I hope this post helped someone. Here's your hope, though. As long as we have paid our tithing- we have NEVER been without a home. NEVER been without food. We have seen SO many miracles that I couldn't ever get them all recorded. We are happy. We are alright. And if money is the big challenge in our lives and we're always in this boat- THAT IS OK!!! I have so much gratitude for all of our blessings- and we have SO many blessings. There's not enough blog space in the world to count them.
Also, inflation sucks. LOL.
