Luckily, I made my biggest money mistake when I was quite young. I was 8 or 9. As we did every year, we headed to Tillamook for our annual family reunion.
I spent a great deal of time at my great aunt’s house and she had an amazing doll collection. I wanted to be just like her in a lot of ways, but I had no fancy dolls. I had an American Girl Doll (Molly, if you were wondering), but nothing shelf-worthy like my great aunt.
The Liebster Award is a small blogger award that gets passed around to recognize smallish or newish blogs that deserve to be recognized. We are honored to have been nominated for the award by Try A Simple Life. I’ve read around and the rules are different with all nominations, it seems. (Is it like a big blogging game of “Telephone?”) Here are the rules as given to me:
Every 4th of July my large extended family meets at the Oregon Coast for a big family reunion. The kids perform, the adults chat, and everybody eats. A lot. The dessert table is spread as full as the food table. It’s a glorious occasion that has been happening for about seventy years. The event begins with a parade through the room of the kids with tiny American flags while we sing patriotic songs. Because of this tradition, the 4th of July has always been an important holiday to me. It is a celebration of family, freedom, and the country in which we enjoy those things.
This year, I thought about this early retirement journey we just embarked upon, and how these blessings in our lives allow us to do that. The reality is that early retirement is not attainable for a lot of people.
After ten months of unemployment during the Great Recession and feeling like failures for having to move “home” with our one-year-old, Mr. T applied for a job in Alaska. I had a cousin that lived there and she recommended applying in the state since there was no sign of a recession there. Mr. T applied for one job. Within a week of applying, he had his second interview in ten months (this time over the phone), and within two weeks of applying, he had an offer. They asked him when he could start. Since “yesterday” wasn’t an option, the start date was in two weeks. The same day we got the job offer, my cousin walked through a house with a realtor. It was the only house on the market in our price range in a decent area of town (there’s a housing shortage in Alaska). She sent us pictures of its hideous interior (ugly paint colors, low hanging ceiling fans, and oddly-placed bead board make for a great deal!) and told us it was “seven minutes and two moose” away from her own house. We made an offer. All in one day, we got a job offer and bought a house. I had been to Alaska once, but only to a remote island when I was eleven to visit my relative who worked as the local masseuse. Mr. T had never been in the state. Ready to finally live the “American Dream,” we were gifted a snow suit for Penny, and we boarded a plane to move to Alaska just before winter started.
It is summer 2009, and Mr. T, Penny and I are waiting in line for three hours to get into a job fair in the Seattle area. We finally get inside and take a look around at our options: the military, Tupperware, Mary Kay. At this moment, we realize this is some strange, historic time through which we’re living. It was still way too early for anyone official to admit it was actually a recession, and “The Great Recession” didn’t become a thing until awhile later. But now, when you say “The Great Recession,” I’m right back in that job fair deciding whether to talk to Tupperware or head home for Penny’s nap.
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