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| Photo by Flickr user Teuobk |
Over the past few weeks, I've been letting you guys behind the curtain of my life, so to speak, with a series of posts called When Life Karate Kick You in the Face. If you need to get caught up on the first three volumes, click HERE.
The short synopsis is this:
- I was laid off from my job of six years.
- My wife is 30-plus weeks pregnant.
- My wife recently quit her job.
That's about the shape of things.
To this point, I've been positive. I've tried to share motivational words and blog posts that will encourage you if you are or ever find yourself in a similar position. But encouraging words only go so far. Eventually, you need to come up with a gameplan:
What I'm about to share with you guys is not a genius scheme. In fact, if I'm being truthful, I don't even know if it's going to work yet.
I may eventually write a blog post or a book about how stupid I was, and how I would do things differently if I could go back.
Only time will tell.
But for now, I don't have the privilege of hindsight. I'm in the "now," and these are a few conclusions Kim and I have come to:
- We want Kim to be home right now. We don't want her to have to work or to worry about contributing financially right now, at all. She's very pregnant. I want her to enjoy this last part of the journey. She's under enough stress without having to worry about anything else.
- We'd like Kim to stay home with the baby for good, if that's possible. We don't judge mothers who choose not to stay at home. For some, it's not a choice. But for us, we want to work as hard as we can to make that a reality.
- I am not interested in teaching for a while. I need a year off, at least. I got burned pretty bad. I was hurt. It will take a while to totally get over that.
- I also want to re-examine the professional work structure and how I fit into that. I'm tired of depending on other people for my financial stability. That seemed safe. It wasn't. It isn't. I want to work for myself.
And so, when you stand back from all of that, it probably looks like a pipe dream. It did to us for a long time. But we needed a major life crisis to make us kick things into high gear.
I'm a HUGE proponent of Jon Acuff's best-selling book, Quitter: Closing the Gap between Your Day Job and Your Dream Job.
In Jon's book, he strongly recommends that you prolong quitting your day job for as long as possible. His reasons are solid, but everyone's circumstance is different.
What about when your job quits on you?
That's what happened, and so we needed God's blessing and leading.
We got that.
When I first started teaching in 2006, I was given the opportunity to have part of my paycheck withheld each month to put towards a 403b retirement fund. Praise God, I took advantage of that, and did so faithfully for six years.
I never wanted to use that money for anything other than retirement, but money comes and it goes. When the rain comes, you have to use your umbrella.
So we did.
We were able to withdraw a good deal of my 403b, due to a financial hardship clause. That money will take care of about two months of bills, on its own.
I'll be getting paychecks from the school through the end of August. That will help a lot.
My wife will get her last paycheck on Friday. It will only be partial because of when she quit, but it will help.
I've also been blessed to have had other opportunities to make money since my lay-off.
Every other week, I've been leading worship at my friend Rob's church. They've blessed us by giving me a stipend for doing that. It helps.
I've been busting my butt doing freelance work. I edited a romance/thriller novel. It was interesting. The money helped.
I created a website for a local consignment business and was paid for doing so. It helped.
Right as I was almost done with the consignment website, I had a chance interaction with one of Kim's aunts who works at a dentist's office. Apparently, they need a website. She wants me to create the site for them.
That will help.
Since my last day as a teacher, we haven't had one gap. Not one unpaid bill. Not one break in the action. God has been good. He's been very, very good.
We're also looking at the possibility of selling my car. It would make us a one-car family, but if we're both going to be staying home, we can make that work. We should be able to make a little extra on top of what we owe on it, and it will mean one less bill we have to pay every month.
Again, that helps.
When it's all said and done, at this point in time, we have enough money to pay our bills through the end of September. If we're able to sell the car, we'll probably have enough to pay our bills through the end of October.
All of that is if we don't make a penny more until then, and I don't see that as a possibility.
If the freelance work keeps coming in, we'll be able to keep padding our savings. Every little bit puts us closer to having one more month of bills paid.
So we're going to keep plugging along. If God wants me to leave the home and find another "9 to 5," I believe He will show me an opportunity that makes me pay attention. We feel called to this path. We've prayed about it. We've talked ad nauseum about it. This is what we're doing.
Some of our friends and family are not going to get it and may not be supportive. That's okay. This is our life and, hopefully, they'll come around eventually.
I didn't get to enjoy the first seven months of our first pregnancy. I'm going to enjoy the last two.
Some of you have asked about our insurance situation, which is a fair question.
We will be on my company insurance until July 30. Aidan is due August 12. Truthfully, we hope he comes early. It'd make life a lot easier. But we're also planning for the event that he may not.
We've applied for Medicaid and have no real reason to think we won't get it. One way or the other, Kim and the baby will be covered. We'll just have to figure something out for me and my personal healthcare in August. We'll figure it out, but I'm not going to let that stress or pressure me into taking a job I hate.
So that's where we're at. It isn't concrete, and its not super longterm. But we're happy. We're happier than we've been for a long time.
I hope that sharing our experience has helped you, or maybe will help you in the future.
If you'd like to help as we move forward, here are a few ways:
1) You can pray for us. It sounds like the Christian-ese cliche answer, but I believe in the power of prayer. It's not a cop-out. It may be the most powerful thing you can do for us.
2) You can direct work my way. If you or someone you know needs to hire a freelance author, editor or graphic/web designer, it'd humble me if you'd consider using me for that project.
3) You can donate. I'm not begging. I won't spam you about it. But at last count, TheIsleOfMan.Net receives roughly 6,500 unique pageviews per month. If everyone who stops by gives $1 per month, we'd be able to pay our bills on that alone. I'm not naive enough to believe that will happen, but I do believe that some of you are very generous, and if you feel led to donate to us, our family and what we're doing right now, you can click HERE.
This will be the last volume of this series for a while, because it catches you up on where we are currently. I'm sure there will be more to come, and I'm excited to keep sharing with you all as we keep learning and receiving God's blessings!
Random Question: What's Your Favorite Flavor of Ice Cream?
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