Light. Oncoming train?

Well we made it through the year.  Early last year (2009) Teresa and I set our goals on bringing me home by 2010.  We would save up the money, get the finances ready because we knew I’d have to take an enormous paycut to do that.  They pay us well for living on the road…  And suddenly, as if by magick, divine intervention, dumb luck or manifestation of will, the job fell in my lap and I came home; A FULL YEAR EARLIER than expected.

Be careful what you wish for, you might get it right?  I was selfish and jumped at the chance to come home and be with my family.  BUT, we were not financially prepared for just HOW much less I would make.  I still make a very decent salary (obscene money considering how often I’m home before 3pm) but the money and perks on the road were just THAT much greater.

With all the financial burdens and the fact that we had moved out to the middle of nowhere, we had effectively exiled ourselves.  We were so broke that even paying for the gasoline to travel across the bridge to simply “hang out” was too expensive.  It was a crushing year.  All we heard, all year long, was “wait until January.”  What a shitty mantra.  If we could make it through to January, we’d be okay.  January turned to February and now we’re into March.  But there is a light.

We’re the dumbasses that use our tax return as a forced savings account.  We KNOW that if we have it all year long, we’ll spend it all year long, probably on crap like McDonald’s…  But we overpay all year and when tax time comes, we get a small pile back.  Not the best financial exercise but the most practical one for us.

And that pile has arrived.  We splurged a bit.  We went out to dinner once and we bought some shelving units for the garage.  But this is our last chance.  If we screw up now, we’ll sink.  We’ll take the money, pay off the remaining bills, roll those payments back into the other bills and by this time next year, be free and clear of the debt that is hanging us up by our toes.  We’ll still have the house payment and utilities and such, but all the biting little loans and credit cards will be gone.  If we go out and buy that nice television I’ve been planning on mounting in the living room for the last two years, we won’t get those bills paid off and we’ll be back in the same boat, waiting on January again.

Teresa is making the attempt to thin out her responsibilities (although I think she’s getting talked back into a few of them dammit!!!) and by June, we should be back to normal (whatever “normal” is).  We’ll be free to go where we want and we’ll be able to afford to go.  Trying to fly at the speed of light between all these events and obligations is kind of like trying to successfully navigate an asteroid field (odds 3720:1) but its a lot more fun when those events and obligations are things we actually WANT to do.

I think that even though we can’t get that TV, we might be able to (through sheer necessity and emotional exhaustion) take a small break.  Maybe go for a trip, a long weekend somewhere.  Put our toes in the sand and put a drink in our hand…  An overnight trip somewhere may not sound like much to the rest of you but a full weekend away from the house, away from scouts, away from work and school…  It’s about the best we can hope for right now and honestly, it sounds like paradise.  So enjoy your week-long vacations, your regular getaways, your big televisions and your new toys, we’re just hoping for 48hours of peace before we have to climb back into the machine and push on for another year.  Maybe next year we’ll get back to going on real vacations.  For now, if we get those 48hours, we’ll be happy.