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And so it begins...

Ummm... Testing? Testing? Hello, is this thing on?

I'm not sure still whether to begin this or, having begun it, whether to continue. Sometimes it seems like a dreadful idea to invite people into my world: what about the loss of privacy? shoot, what if no one accepts the invitation? Both are terrible. But sometimes it seems like it would be helpful to share what we're trying to get through, trying to accomplish, trying to get to.  So. Hence, a blog. Yessir.

"We" is me, plus Spouse, plus Caterwaul, our feline penance. (I kid. Mostly.) The to we're trying to accomplish, to achieve, is Retirement, of the Exceedingly Comfortable variety. We have a vision: a college town several states away from where we are now, chock-a-block with theaters and restaurants and other tasty cultural tidbits; a house -- a dream-ish house -- with a view, room for a dog and guests, space to host and cook and work and veg; and enough money to fund these, plus (because we're greedy) enough to cover trips away and the inevitable medical costs of aging.

There was a time, a few years ago, when I thought we were making good progress on the road to that place. Our incomes were solid, we were living in cheap digs, we had six months of expenses saved up and were socking money away into our retirement funds regularly. Our next planned large expense was to buy a car in 4 years, and we were saving to pay cash for it.

The road has been bumpier and more winding these last few years. We suffered a grievous and sudden loss, in a string of other, just-lesser losses. For multiple reasons, these losses melted away our six-month emergency fund and our car-replacement account. We inherited a property, which seemed like a financial trade-off though not a fair one, only to discover it had been routinely neglected and even vandalized; over 18 months, we spent more than $130,000 to make it livable, and need to spend another $20,000 to finish the work. Since we didn't have $130,000, we also acquired $90,000 in debt in a line of credit against the property.

Grief and good judgment seldom go together. Craving consolation, unable to function at my usual levels, and with the emergency fund exhausted, I overspent in other ways as I muddled my way to my New Normal, adding a tidy $10,000 of consumer debt to the total. Some combination of time and financial anxiety finally broke through my fog about a year ago, and I was determined to try to fix our situation. I started paying down the debt, and left my job for a new one that promised to be both more lucrative and more rewarding.

But despite my determination, the road got bumpier. The new job was nothing like the promises I'd received, and I felt like every effort I made to understand what management was looking for was rebuffed more coldly and less instructively than the last. I was apparently helpless to stop the situation from deteriorating further and wholly demoralized at the mess -- I'm the achiever, the gold-star employee, the ever-reliable and self-managing one! -- and was unsurprised when my new employers informed  me they no longer required my services.

During the same time, Spouse's company fell on hard times -- fell so hard, in fact, that we knew the job couldn't last. A month after I lost my job, Spouse was laid off. The company had no other choice, but to cushion the blow, generously added severance and six months of COBRA payments, for which we're very grateful.

And that's where we are now. We're both still looking for full-time work. The severance is running out soon and we will need to cover COBRA ourselves; fortunately, we had managed to save enough to cover another 6 months. Between unemployment and short-term contract work, I've brought in another $20,000 or so, though that's gross, not net. I'm anxious about what we'll ultimately owe in taxes --  we're used to our income being net of our 401k and HSA accounts, but we're not able to contribute to them now. I suppose I should have squinted harder at the writing on the wall, and doubled our contributions last January so we'd max out by June. What a useful thing to recognize now.

Good lord, this was supposed to be motivating...




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