our new life starts in about a month. i graduate next week, and soon after that we move to a new city several states away. i am getting this business in line.

first order of business: income.
my income is about $11k more than my present graduate stipend. this isn't great, but considering the state of the economy and the industry i was looking to work in, i am happy to have a paying job in the first place. i also won't be paying taxes on those astronomical tuition forgiveness benefits anymore.
my husband is working on finding a job, too. but doing this from a distance isn't recommended. i think once he gets that lined up in the new city, he'll probably make about the same amount of money that i do.
two real incomes will do wonders for us, but we've downsized our lives enough that we can live on one.

next: housing.
i found us a nice little duplex in the quiet part of town, near shopping, etc. 18 minute commute for me, about the same to the major metro hospital for his eventual commute. (presently i commute 15-20 minutes.) rent is under 30% of my projected take-home income. compare to the upper 40% range in our present tiny apartment in a safe neighborhood.

and then: moving.
we are not driving a rental truck again. that was miserable. we are hiring a u-pack/we-move service of good repute. this will still cost us in the $1000-$1200 range. (frankly, the cost of renting a truck is more than this, when you add in gas costs.)
we are buying a hitch and will rent a little trailer for the car to carry the critical stuff with us. we have pets that will occupy the car with us, or we wouldn't bother with the trailer.
we're going to pay as much of this in cash as possible, the rest is coming out of our general savings. husband is working odd jobs to earn cash.

so far that's all i've got. more to come as things develop.

Are you going to be closer to me?? hee hee.

Congrats on your future plans and getting a job and all that good stuff. I'm so excited for both of you.
You are going to be so rich once you have two incomes. Don't fall for the lifestyle inflation trick. J/K. You deserve to fall for it for a little while.

I'm looking forward to the update once you get moved and settled.

What Peachy said.

I hope the move goes well, and the settling in is smooth. Post an update when you can!

Sandi

progress in saving for the move:

1. husband made enough cash to pay for hitch, trailer, and gas money.
2. i got reimbursement for travel i paid for outright. this is going toward the move.
3. we are waiting on reimbursement for medical we have paid outright. also going toward the move.
4. my teaching assistant pay hasn't come through yet, but i'm hoping that will also come in time to move.
this leaves us about $300 shy of paying for the move outright, as we stand right now.

i graduated on monday. with the last few weeks being a haze of no sleep, excessive work, and crushing stress, we've been spending more on food because i haven't been cooking. i had some family in town earlier in the week, and we spent money as a result of that, too. (dinners out, etc.)

i feel bad about this, but my friend reminded me how good my husband and i have been for so long. i've slipped a little bit in the name of convenience and time saving lately, but i have to remind myself this is not the end of the world. nobody finishes a phd without having to let some things go for a little while at the end.

we're getting back to basics until we move. i have time to cook again.

btw, peachy, we're going to be farther away from you!

I already knew the answer. I was just HOPING that for some reason you might be closer.
Be careful packing your OK mug when you move. I wouldn't want that gem to break.

Huge congratulations on graduation. Get some sleep and enjoy being Dr. Galactic. *big hugs*

extreme example of "you get what you pay for" follows:

back in 2001, we bought a nice little sony dvd player for about $120. it lasted us through 8 years of heavy use, and gave out on us 3 days ago. it cost us 4 cents per day.

since we are moving in 2 weeks, we thought we would buy some cheap thing to last us until we could get another nice player. dear husband bought one for $35 3 days ago. it died today. at that lifespan, it would cost us $11.66 per day. (not really, because i'm taking it back.)

ugh.

...and got stiffed. pretty much all hope of seeing a penny of that is gone. that's a major flaw in cash-paying jobs...



still have this, at least



haven't seen this yet... and will be going to pay uninsured cost of DH's meds this month. (who would have guessed a generic could cost $150?!!!)



nope. i have no idea when i will see this. the frustrating part is that my job duties ended in MAY, and almost 4 months later i'm still waiting for payment. ugh.



we currently have $650 on the credit card, and we haven't even paid for the moving service yet >:(

my last graduate school stipend check is deposited on tuesday, and then i go 5 weeks until the next pay day. there is a slight rent increase for the new apartment, 5 weeks rent are due on lease signing tuesday (last week of august, then all of september). i will be writing a check for about $200 more. this is going to be a rough month.

apparently the $600 payment i was waiting for was just enough to keep me afloat when the university decided to totally screw me over one last time. so that's pretty much gone. thanks, university. i still owe them $274, too. i have to pay that before the end of the month to clear my accounts. ugh.

as you might have guessed by now, we're here in the new state. between husband's one uninsured month of medical costs (over $1000- oof) + moving costs (about $2000, $1050 of which was the actual shipping) + some unexpected troubles (husband's car's radiator popped, blown tire, bent wheel, etc totalling over $1000) + misc expenses... we're deeper in debt than i had hoped.

i will say that for $1050, ABF U-pack moving was the best deal we could have gotten. we loaded the containers, they brought them to the new place. no driving a big truck through the mountains, no gas costs, no driver costs. a flat $1050 and that was that. U-Haul wanted something like $850 + we paid gas costs + we had to drive it through the mountains. we will use ABF again if we do this kind of move again.

we ended up renting a small tow-behind trailer from U-Haul. and furniture pads. we bought a bunch of moving supplies like a hand truck, 2 furniture dollies, furniture wrap, etc. and of course towing a trailer makes for crappier gas mileage. and more toll charges.

but we're here, and my paycheck at the end of this month will be the biggest one ever. and hubby can start his job search. nobody would take him seriously until he actually lived here. (really. they would tell him to call back when he lived here. that's just the industry, i think. other places he applied to in the old state explicitly stated applicants must live within 30 miles from the job site at the time of application. strange.)

so things are going to get better. it's a matter of time until we get there. we're working on it.

debt in order of priority:

(*)hubby's student loan: due before 11/9/09 to avoid 6.8% interest accumulation.
i have the full balance ready to send in, earning us some interest. it is, in essence, already gone.

(*)credit card: fixed @3.49%, contains (tax-deductible) moving expenses and some opportunity expenses.
will work as hard as we can to pay this off by spring. sending all extra cash to this monthly.

(*)g's student loan: in grace, interest free, repayment @6.8% begins sometime in march.
leaving this alone until it's not free money anymore, then hitting it hard.

consolidation loans would be awesome, except we took out loans between 7/1/06 and 6/30/08. loans taken out during this period are fixed @6.8%. (prior to 7/06, they were variable at really low rates. ughhh.) federal consolidation loans take the weighted average of all your loans and round UP, so we would be paying MORE in interest by consolidating. needless to say, this irritates me.

savings goals:

once the first 2 debts above are paid off, we're going to split priority between paying off my loans and saving. we have to identify those savings goals, but it will probably be retirement and putting together another slush fund. (like the one i'm draining to pay off that student loan...)

it's FINALLY payday!! with 5 weeks and a cross-country move between paydays, i really couldn't wait for this one.

so the credit card debt got a lot heavier than anticipated... sadly. i'm taking the damn thing away from husband, who apparently has been using it for cases of soda and cigarettes and other want items we couldn't really afford. (yes, he is back on the same old expensive habits again, grr.) at least the interest rate isn't adding insult to injury on that one, but i'm not happy we have the balance laying around.

hubby has been having a rough time with the job search here. he had a phone interview last week, so we're hoping that gets him a shot at a face-to-face interview. next week he is going to mercilessly hit the pavement, he really needs to find work, if anything for his mental health.

we're keeping afloat on the month-to-month expenses, my income is definitely better and the insurance is much cheaper. and i could feasibly pay off most of the credit card by spring on my income alone if we were to continue eating spaghetti and rice. but we have far more earning potential than my one income, and i'm so tired of fighting so hard and lacking security.

Isn't payday great??
Keep on keepin' on. And yes, tell your husband that you can't afford his bad habits right now, especially soda. I can understand that cigs are pretty much a need (depending on the person, and how it affects you, since you have to deal with him having withdrawals (ha ha)), but he can do without the sodas.

Hopefully October will be better for both of you. How is the new location?

he tends to fall back on those habits when he's stressed out. it's his coping mechanism. and right now, with his job search held up for 3 months while i finished grad school, dealing with his wife writing a dissertation, and now starting over in a different part of the country, he has been stressed. and it's thanks to him putting my career moves first, so... i'm being sympathetic.

so far the location is alright. we need to winterize, though!

it's been another rough month. i guess i can't complain too much, with only having had one paycheck so far, and the usual startup expenses associated with moving. but i am really hoping the next month will be better.

we did spend some money on winterizing the duplex- the first chilly night made it clear this place is horribly insulated. 99% of the items we bought can come with us when we leave, and we're noticing a big difference already in how long the heater runs.

my husband is going to need hernia surgery soon. i am hoping it will be ok until january, so the out of pocket costs go further on next year's insurance plan. but that is up to him and how he feels. he also needs another pain management procedure. we do have much better health insurance now, so at least that is a relief.

i guess the worst of the moving-related expenses are behind us now, and it's just recovery. his student loans are out of grace in under 2 weeks. i am debating how to handle that with our credit card debt. the credit card company jacked up our rate from a low 3.x to 12.99%, and refuses to lower it. i am debating paying it all off and saying hell with it. that would leave us with only a $1000 emergency cushion, which makes me uncomfortable. i want at least 1 month's income.

anyway, i am waiting on that decision until after tomorrow. husband had a promising phone interview on friday, and an onsite interview tomorrow first thing. i am hoping they offer him a job, and a second income (even at the lowest advertised hourly pay rate) would wildly improve our circumstances.

we STILL only have one job between the two of us. i don't know why i bother to even mention this anymore, it seems almost hopeless. i feel like i should just plan on living on one income and making zero real financial progress for the indefinite future.

sigh... so discouraging. i was hoping we could save for retirement, save for a down payment on a house, save for a baby, you know- start making progress toward all the stuff we've been hoping and dreaming for in the future as we sacrificed heavily for 8 long years. now we're fortunate to break freaking even.

lacking other usable leads (retail, management, service, random maintenance, basically anything he was physically capable of doing), he went in to a temporary labor service the other day, just to have something to do with himself. they assigned him to a landfill, where he essentially spent the day vomiting. for $7/hour. and it was an hour commute plus the trip to the assignment office, so we essentially lost money on the deal in gas alone. i am just lost for what to tell him. his field is supposedly experiencing major growth. i guess we have to go to a major city and deal with the major cost of living in order to encounter some of this "major growth"...

I don't have any good advise, but feel your pain and wish you better news soon.