i am loathe to announce that the job offer was rescinded pending some stuff that needs to be cleared up on husband's end. it was supposed to be taken care of before his start date, so all would be ok. it was not taken care of in time, and we suspect they found someone else to fill the position. however, once he gets the letter stating all is clear, he will be eligible for hire and hopefully they will have something for him to do soon.

the issue should be cleared up in about 2 weeks. who would have guessed all these requirements to work for a hospital.

until we've gotten that worked out, he is still at the factory, still third shift, we still barely see each other. heard from a recent contact about a potential good job here in town, so he will be pursuing that as well.

i have an interview in a major east coast city at the end of the month to potentially get out of here. should that pan out, i would want to eliminate as much of the debt as possible while our cost of living is so cheap here. it costs quite a bit more to live in that major city.

the debt attack is going swimmingly. i have 1/8 of the loan balance in savings to throw at the loan at the end of the month. there may be some expense associated with the paperwork that husband will be dealing with in 2 weeks, so i don't want to throw this chunk of cash at the loan until the end of this month. after that, it is ON.

it will feel good to have all that behind us.

i am remembering how i handled the finances when we had one monthly and one weekly paycheck before. monthly paycheck is much larger, of course, so the regular bills get paid and the rest is paid to savings. weekly paychecks take care of the gas, groceries, incidentals and the rest is paid to savings. as long as i remove the money from the checking account once we have the things we need, it doesn't get spent. if i leave it there, it magically disappears. (magic = husband fritters away money very easily. fortunately for him, i love him dearly despite this )

i am back on the learning curve for this stuff again... whew.

has been a while, but a productive while.

i landed the interview back on the east coast solidly, and with my new boss i developed a big funding proposal and submitted it. with the sponsorship and the fantastic ideas we've put forth relative to the goals of the organization, everyone is very confident it will be funded. now that i've gotten that gigantic gob of work out of the way, it's time to focus on making plans to move this fall!

i had made the decision to leave my current job at the end of this contract term a while ago i guess, formalized it with this new opportunity at my avail. but making the announcement (to be courteous, there is a big conference this week and i wanted to allow them the recruiting opportunity) was... painful. they were severely unhappy. yes, i realize i haven't gotten the funding letter from the new job yet. and that little bit of uncertainty is a little unnerving. but the plan is to leave, i can't really be persuaded to stay here. it's not going out on a branch very far.

we've had some several-hundred-dollar medical and dental bills in the last couple of months. unfortunately that's taken a chunk out of our student loan progress. but that remains the only debt, and it has decreased some.

my salary is doubling while the cost of living is less than doubling, and the tax implications of this salary source are advantageous. husband is taking his professional exams on saturday and that should make him a much stronger candidate for jobs out there. he is still working in the factory, unhappy. so opportunities abound, we just have to get there.

the legal bills are done. plowed through most of the remaining medical and dental bills with this paycheck. i am using up my FSA contributions to cover the last of it, since i'll be leaving this job in about 2 months. my travel reimbursement went to pay off my travel expenses for my interview last month, so we are back to just the student loan debt once this medical stuff is out of the way.

whew... has been a rough detour. i do have a move to plan for, but the expense is covered by the new job. tomorrow, i am going to try to wrangle my way out of our current lease early. and we do have to save for a security deposit and the bump up in first month's rent in the more-expensive new area, compared to our current place.

we're making a trip to see our families next weekend, and the following weekend is (finally) my grad school commencement ceremony. we have places to stay for both trips, so the cost is gas and tolls. we've got a prepaid toll transponder, so i think we're in good shape there.

but i'm still trying to hit the student loans as hard as possible while we're here. this is getting increasingly frustrating...

This has been quite a year, hasn't it? I'm happy to hear about new opportunities for you and to hear that you are going to graduation ceremonies. Good luck winding things down in your current situation and transitioning to the new. Looking forward to hearing about it.

i'm not doing the greatest with this version of the journal, am i?

we found a place to live in the new city, but it's sure not cheap. i have to get the application in and everything, but i'm sure it will go through. i have excellent credit and the rent is ~28% of my income. this is actually a much better rent:income ratio than we had when i was a graduate student and my husband was in college.

so far he hasn't landed a job out there, but the field is weird about selecting local people for interviews and such. there are a lot of opportunities out there for him in the big metro area where we will be living. any income he brings in will just put us in better shape, i don't think we've ever had a 28% rent:income ratio and more income just helps us out with our goals.

right now it's a struggle, because my job is becoming more awful by the day. my husband was let go from his crappy 3rd shift job, but he is more relieved than anything and we are doing much better with having time together. he's going to do freelance mechanic work for the ~5 weeks before we move.

we've got some stuff to pay off before we leave, but i think we're on track to get that done. what a whirlwind! i will be glad when this is all said and done. again.

I need some freelance car work done! hee hee.
I'm glad you guys found a place that's within your budget. Sucky that your husband got laid off, but at least the end of the tunnel is in sight.

I'm excited for you to start your new adventure. Maybe you'll stick around for a while this time. My fingers are crossed.

whew... so i've lost track of the numbers game here. i feel like i've made zero progress on this student loan. but really, that's not true- i've been beating the interest, which i guess is something.

the medical and legal are gone gone gone.

i'm now focusing on paying off the trip expenses for our little graduation/apartment searching trip. hotels in the new city aren't cheap either, and we decided to just bite the bullet and do it all in one extended trip. so we're a little behind on that.

we're selling a number of things to fit back into apartment style living. this isn't too horrible, it will save us some moving effort and earn a couple bucks in cash.

husband passed his big certifying exam. this is a big deal for his job search! but i still suspect he will need to be local before they'll consider him for a local position. so frustrating.

small bits of progress here and there. i've got about 3 weeks left at my job. i can't wait to move.

time for a quick update!

we're on the tail end of the pre-move preparation. we identified a bunch of stuff that we didn't need to take with us in order to downsize our moving burden. we sold what we could at some local businesses. then we held a garage sale- in the end we parted with a lot of stuff we didn't use and came away with a pretty nice sum for it. we still have a few things left for the last day of the garage sale tomorrow.

most of the belongings that are coming with us are sorted and packed. we have a little bit left to go through there, but considering the disaster that was our last move, major progress has been made.

new address and moving logistics are lined up. we're outta here by the end of the week. moving expenses will be reimbursed! yay!

the big thing i'm focused on right now is the huge step-up in living expenses. i am paid monthly (as is typical for my field). i will get my last paycheck from my former employer at the end of this month, and it will be barely sufficient to cover rent + deposit for our new apartment. then we have to live on next to nothing until my first paycheck comes in from my new job, at the end of august. there is enough of a surplus in my new salary that we'll be caught up after that. it's the time between now and then that our budget will be on a string.

but- nothing ventured, nothing gained. so here we go.

I'm so excited moving day is almost here!
You have my number, so call me if you need anything once you get to your new place.

One more day of th grage sale..you can do it! Best of luck on the move.

looks like we survived our first lean month in the new place without too much trouble. i got my first paycheck and it was sufficient to pay back what we spent out of our savings account, put some extra money away, and even buy me some new work clothes.

i'm finding that cost of living increases here are mostly due to housing expenses. our rent is pretty high, as is electric and water and such. but beyond that, most everything else isn't astronomical compared to our former place. in fact, some of the taxes are even lower. go figure. the net result is more money left at the end of the month to pay off some student loans. so i'm hoping i can get back to knocking those down now. i got the balance down by $1700 (>10% of principal) even at that stupid interest rate i'm stuck with, so i can't complain too bitterly about my progress on that. also, now i owe less than 3 months' salary in loans!

the big focus has been on finding a job for my husband, now that we're in a big metro area. in fact, we just filled out a ton of paperwork in response to an offer of employment! i'm not saying anything more about this just yet- he needs to get the security clearance to secure the job for sure, and we're going to wait on that before we go out and celebrate.

once he's employed, we really need to
(1) get started on retirement savings
(2) replace his car already
(3) save for a down payment on a home??

more once we hear back from his job offer and do a little more planning/organizing based on that outcome.

well folks, we're finally there. two career incomes. for the first time ever. my husband started his new job last week, and it's about the most amazing job he could have found.

it took nine solid years of uphill climbing to put us here.

we have good health insurance through my job; life, disability, dental and vision through his. he is contributing up to his company's 401k match (4%) and rIRAs for us both. this is security the likes of which we have never seen before.

i've done a solid job managing the finances during our trek. we have no debt except my student loans. and i have knocked about 15% off the principal in the 7 months since the loan went into repayment. we haven't seen his first paycheck yet of course, but i expect we can knock the remaining student loan balance out in 5-6 months.

we are also starting to look for a replacement for his car, as we've been limping it along for a lot longer than we expected.

once the student loans are gone, the next plan is to beef up the emergency fund by $10k to reflect the higher cost of living, add $5k for medical expenses savings, and save $25k toward a down payment on a house. it'll be a while before we meet all these goals. but it feels good to have these plans rather than feeling as if we're fighting to keep above water.

Congrats, sounds like things are going well!

I also find myself going over my immediate/short/long-term financial plans because it feels really good to 1) have them 2) be confident in my ability to do them.

thanks, peaceofmind. it's about damn time things started to go well.

i'm re-evaluating our financial services, which i think is a prudent thing to do now and again. i knew soon after the fact that we got ripped off having a 5.5% front load sales charge when we rolled over hubby's work 401k into a roth. but we were in kinda desperate shoes at the time. we came out ok in the long run, minus sunk costs, but i think it's time to transfer that roth to vanguard.

i'm debating transferring our regular accounts from our current bank. i am not dissatisfied with their services, but there are better deals to be had. and less obnoxious online banking websites. i just got us a membership at a credit union affiliated with our workplaces, they have very high rankings. i haven't made the final call on this yet though.

vanguard transfer initiated. looking over old fund statements since about 2008 is pretty depressing. oh well. we're starting over, essentially.

just reanalyzed all of our assets and liabilities...

result:
Net worth 762.01

holy crap, for the first time ever, there's no negative sign!