Monday, September 29, 2014

Less is more

Today, I am feeling way less stressed.  WAY less stressed!  After posting about deciding not to go, how we were stuck in a situation that even finances couldn't fix, I was feeling down.  Really down.  I was trying to be accepting of it and trying to tell myself that it doesn't have to be right this minute, but I was depressed over it.  Mostly because it seems like we have been working towards our goal of moving for so long and then YET AGAIN, we've had to hold back.  Once again, we were having to just wait it out and hope that something became clear.  Am I rambling?  Am I making sense?  Did I even explain why it wouldn't work and why we were all tore up?

I'm pretty sure that I explained that the hubby has been unable to find work.  The hubby is an Engineer.  Electrical and Electronic with experience in Nuclear and Industrial.  So, we have been rather shocked at the lack of response since he has military experience AND civilian experience.  So, it made sense when several people said that our issue was location.  Companies don't want to pay to ship someone down there because if it doesn't work out... well, then you are just SOL (shit outta luck).  SO, we had that issue.  Then there was the fact that it's mid school year and we have one child in school (with another at home).  And last but not least, we have pets.  And not like, one.  But... SIX.  Yup.  2 dogs and 4 cats.  At one point, we did try to re-home but it never worked out.  Plus... have you ever tried to re-home animals you've had for a long time?  Even if they are assholes?  It's hard.  VERY hard.  I think we could re-home maybe 2 if we absolutely had to.  I don't know about the others.  Maybe one cat and one dog but then the other doggie would be lonely.  They are glued together so I would feel like if one went, both would need to.  And let me tell ya folks.  People aren't taking pets.  When people can't even feed themselves, it's hard to take on one pet.  Much less two.  Cats are a bit easier, except there are so many right now that people and shelters are FLOODED with them.  So sad.  :(  Back to my point, if our house happened to sell quickly, we have NO WHERE to go.  No place here would rent to us with that many pets and no place there would.  We have no family or friends who can take them for us even for a short period of time.  Our only real option would be to kennel them and well... that price alone was unreal.  UN. REAL.  For 6 pets, it was like $1000.  Not doable.  At all.  Another option was for the hubby to go down alone and stay at like, a hotel or microtel.  But... that still doesn't get us a physical address or get us as a family somewhere to go if the house sold.  We were literally in a corner with no where to go.  We need to sell this house so all of our ties are broken here, but we also needed somewhere to live.  And we didn't want to start a lease here just to move and have to pay a small fortune to break lease.  No matter how we looked at it or tried to find an option, we were backed, hard, into that corner. 

I was really at a loss.  I didn't know where to go from there or what to do because no amount of money was going to lead us out.  Well, no REASONABLE amount of money.  I'm sure we could've blown a couple of grand on a kennel and we could've just hoped and prayed.  But... I think God gave us brains to use so while having faith we were doing what was right and God had our back, we decided that after looking things over, our best course of action was to buy.  You read that right.  We are jumping in with both feet and buying another house.  In PCB.  With no job and while still owning a house here.  OY.  But we are.  We got the approval today!  And once again, our excitement level has jumped back up!  LOL  I'm sure there will be more low's and high's as we go.  It's just how it is.

Now before you go thinking we are crazy, we have a tentative plan.  We know that crap happens, so this is the rough idea, mind you.  What we have done is get the pre-approval first, so we knew what our max purchase price was based on what monthly payment we felt comfortable with.  Having that moves us to the next step.  Honestly, I didn't think we would get a pre-approval that fast... but we did.  It was maybe 30mins.!  Anyways, now we have an amount to go to the Realtor with.  We've been looking on Zillow, but we also want to talk to a Realtor about properties.  Zillow is suppose to have all the listings, but I've heard that they don't always.  Sneaky realtors!  So, we are going to go to them with what we are looking for and go from there.  Also, since we have only been to a few areas there, it would be nice to be able to work with someone who knows the areas really well and can let us know which ones are good and which ones should be avoided.  I know they can't flat out say, "You don't want to live there", but they can point us in the direction of where there are good schools, low crime, less traffic, and real estate holds value.

We spoke with a guy while we were there on vacay, so hopefully he can help us or point us to someone who can.  So, we are going to look for either a small house, townhouse, or condo.  We're not leaning towards a condo just because there can be SO many loopholes with those.  Although we've found a couple that would work really well.  Anyways, we hope to find one that doesn't need a ton of work, bid on it, and be done.  We have a good idea of what we would like, so hopefully that works out.  If it does need some work, that is ok.  We can do SOME work.  How much we are willing to do, I'm not sure... we will see.  But if it needed work... a lot of work... we'd have to find a way to get some of the work done before we moved in because I am NOT willing to live through remodeling like we have here.  We may see if we can roll it into our loan.  I'm not sure.  Or maybe an equity line.  We will see.  So many things.  Anyways, hopefully we can do this.  Hopefully we can find a place, not wait forever to find out, get a local address, and go from there.  Slowly but surely.  If we do find a place and we do get it, the plan will roughly be to make a couple of trips down.  Once to take a few things and maybe do some work.  The next would be the final move.  I'm sure there could be more trips.  LOL  Just never know in these situations!

So, that is what is going on here today along with doing all the normal stuff.  I feel so excited, nervous, scared, happy.... you name it.  It's really only a tiny step and our plans could still change.  But it feels like we're going in the right direction.  :) 

1 comment:

  1. Ok, so you're looking for a house in Panama City Beach, and not Tampa? Quit it with the flip flopping, lady. It's hard to keep track, and remember stuff when I'm all knocked up.
    I think you guys are definitely on the right track. Shoot, we moved down here fueled by hope and prayers, and neither one of us had a job lined up. People might think you are nuts, but if it feels right to both of you DO IT. Once we were able to move into our place, and Chris started looking, he found a job in a week. Sure, it was temporary, and there was a three month trial period, but he's getting hired on after only five weeks. Everything really fell into place. The job he found opened up literally a day after he decided to go to a temp agency, and he had exactly the experience they were looking for. Intuition, and things "feeling" right work out, in my opinion.
    It's going to be scary. It's going to be stressful. Picture yourself there though. You'll know that everything is right, and you've made the right choices. That's where I'm at right now, and it's fabulous!!!!

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