Part Two: Should we Stay or Should we go?

(Part One is here.)

Ok. So, should we stay or should we go? Chicago or California?

We started making a list of the things we would need in order to live in the jungle they call Illinois. A new home in Chicago, plus we’d need to get bought out for the one we already had here. Winter wardrobe for all 4 of us. A new car for me with 4 wheel drive. An increase in salary for The Agent that would offset my lack of salary and benefits. Three trips back home for all four of us each year. The list went on and on.

And, it’s just a mom and pop company. What if we moved and the company went under the next year? How would we get back to California?

But, if we stayed in California, The Agent wouldn’t have a job. And his job is so specialized, it’s not like they have another weird-engineering-firm-that-builds-machines-for-factories at every street corner. California in general, and my city in particular, is really feeling the effects of the economic crisis. We thought it was very unlikely that he could find another job making the same salary around here.

But he didn’t need to. I have a good job, we have no debt, our trailer makes vacationing much cheaper, our family lives close by, we have very little extra expenses. We could live on just my salary, and The Agent could be a stay at home dad.

Except for our house. That Damn mortgage.

We moved into our house 8 years ago. It’s a 4 bedroom, 2 bath, in an ok neighborhood. We got it for a reasonable price back then. And we were so excited in the two years following our purchase to see the market spike up the way it did. Our home doubled in value almost over night. We felt very fortunate to have bought when we did.

Of course, no one expected the housing market to crash so bad. Our house would sell today for about $125K less than what we paid for it. We’re still underwater. We couldn’t sell. And the mortgage was too much for me to pay it on my own. Not if we wanted to eat more than Top Ramen for dinner at night.

And we didn’t want to live in this house anymore, anyway. This was our first house, we never expected to be here more than 5 years. The neighborhood had gone downhill, and we hadn’t make any improvements on the house itself because we always thought we would eventually move.

It was time to move to the house the kids were going to grow up in.

The problem was, the company was closing. They had already sold the property, but were leasing it back for a year. It was April, and we had a year left before The Agent would be out of a job. We began looking.

We looked in the country, which was The Agent’s dream. I wanted something closer to my parents, so they could watch the kids more often. The Agent wanted RV access to store our trailer. I was hoping for a pool.

I didn’t get my pool, but we ended up with a nice house, that’s remodeled exactly the way we want it, and that I can pay for with just my salary, and in a nicer neighborhood. I’m very pleased with our decision.

Now we have to deal with the aftermath

(to be continued.... again)