a different kind of american dream

We're moving on down... to the east side... to a mediocre apartment... on the first floor. It doesn't quite sound as celebratory as the theme song from "The Jeffersons," but at this point I can't be picky. 


Yes, we are moving. Selling the old homestead. Now for the lengthy explanation. 


I'll start by saying that if you are in the market for buying a house, please, please learn from our mistakes!! Wide-eyed, with a bank account full of new money from a sale on Chaz's flipped store (Lenny's), we embarked on our adventure. We were the only couple in our close group of friends that weren't homeowners, and we let that play with our emotions (mistake #1). On our first day of house-hunting, we fell in love with a little country house on Country Glen. I loved it as soon as we walked in the door. Hardwood floors in the living room, vaulted ceiling, big windows, and a little Tiffany light fixture hanging from the wood-paneled ceiling under the loft. LOVE! It had character, like us. 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths and room for the 2.5 kids we planned to have. Perfect. And the back yard... don't get me started. I'm not even going to write about it. 


Oh, there's more. 2 car payments. Loads on student loans. Not enough to make that 20% down payment (this was 2008 when they were handing out loans like Air Heads, pun intended)...(oh, and mistake #2). But let's think logically here--we were making an investment! Our apartment (fancy shmancy, by the way) was about to go up on rent. We'd be cramped and paying only a couple hundred less than a mortgage. On the other hand, we could have a whole house for our animals to run around in. Hello?? Where's the problem?


Well, the problem was that we simply didn't plan ahead. Even though we had talked about me being a stay-at-home mom someday, we weren't thinking about it. I definitely wasn't in the mindset of becoming pregnant, and I loved my job. Chaz's five-year plan was gaining traction. We were really making it. But our biggest mistake was that we didn't plan on one important thing. LIFE. It happens. Chaz lost his job, career, five-year plan. I began to loathe going to work each day and wondered what I was supposed to do. 


We know now. That thing we had talked about even before we were married--me staying home with our kids--is happening. I can't imagine doing anything else. And I will advocate that it CAN be done! Naysayers will argue that you can't have a decent lifestyle on one income. I argue that you can as long as you plan on it. So now we are backtracking on the typical American dream. We're ditching the perfect house on the perfect cul-de-sac for a 2 bedroom apartment in order to dig ourselves out of debt. I grew up living on a "month-to-month" income. I can remember times when we didn't know where we were going to live. I remember going to the food pantry. It's not the life I wanted for my kids. So we are making this sacrifice now, saving the moolah on our mortgage and rolling it all toward our smallest debt so we can attack it with gazelle-like intensity. Then in three to four years we will be able to pursue home ownership again. 


You see, my American dream has to change. Racking up tons of debt and living from month-to-month so we can have something we can't afford anymore isn't working for us. Paranoia is not a peaceful state of mind. Sure, my going back to work would solve some of our financial woes. But like I said in my last post, I know God has called me to stay at home with my child. And really we could have solved our financial woes long ago by heeding the Proverb "the rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender" (22:7). There's more like that in the Bible. Why didn't we look at the ultimate instruction manual? Maybe we just didn't want to. 


What we are doing is nothing heroic. We are just trying to make up for the poor decisions we made. And when I look at my little Savannah, I know it is and will always be worth it.