Welcome back! Here is part 3 of our story, if you missed part 1 or part 2, go read them first to make this make more sense.
Our house finally sold in April 2017 and my husband graduated MSU in May. We were free from our financial obligations with both of those and with knowing that we didn't want to stay long term in Bozeman, we began praying about the next step. I was so homesick. Bozeman was overwhelming for me and never fully felt like home. I missed my little house and eastern Montana. I felt so displaced. We had all these things at our fingertips and I realized that none of those things were priorities for us. We didn't shop much so having lots of stores right there didn't mean much to us. I had continued to minimize our things living in the apartment and I didn't want to bring more in! My husband wasn't very happy in his job and we just knew overall that change was coming sooner or later. This just wasn't us or where we belonged, we knew that much.
In June of 2017 my mother remarried. We made the trek back to Virginia for the wedding and then went to West Virginia to see my husband's family and be there for his brother's wedding in July. The children had a blast running and playing outside to their hearts content and my Mama heart just ached making them go back to that apartment with no play space. We enjoyed time with family and my homesick heart felt soothed. I wanted so much to have a place that felt like home again. During that trip my father in law asked my husband if he would consider moving there and taking over a part of the family business. Could this be the door we were looking for? We had never considered living anywhere but Montana ever since we had moved to the state and we had never thought we would get to live close to family. It was an interesting twist and one we were not expecting at all. We weighed everything and prayed. We felt that this was the right move to make. We hadn't been able to save much over the last year because of our cost of living. We wanted to own a home again and I wanted to be settled. We ran all the numbers. Cost of living was low in West Virginia. We were told that we should expect to be able to pull a salary of $50,000/yr from the business. We were already paying our own health insurance. My husband would look at alternative ways to save for retirement. We found a house for $30,000 down the road from his parents. We found out we were pregnant with our 3rd child. We sold our vehicle and bought a minivan in cash. We would be able to put $10,000 down on the house, get a loan for the remaining $20,000, and cash flow the move and repairs on the house and leave an emergency of $6,000. It all looked so good! I was so excited, and even though we were so sad to leave Montana, we were not sad to leave Bozeman and we were very excited at the prospect of being settled, the children having grandparents close for the first time, and my husband getting to run his own business.
I had run all the numbers and made a $2,000/mo budget to live on. We thought we had looked at it from every angle and we felt we had researched and planned for everything. We didn't. We did not verify the financial records for the business and just trusted what we were told. BIG MISTAKE! We also had bought our home sight unseen and my in laws had gone and looked at it. We had just taken their word for the condition it was in. Turns out it needed a LOT more work than we anticipated. Like a lot. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. We moved to West Virginia in September 2017 with our minivan and a uhaul trailer with everything we owned. The house needed major cleaning and renovations. We thought we would clean and paint and move in but we ended up needing to completely tear out the bathroom, redo the floors, paint, redo the kitchen counters and sink, buy new appliances, re-do the electrical and plumbing, put insulation in and put a heat source in. I was 11 weeks pregnant with our 3rd and exhausted from the travel and move and as relieved as I was to be there and to think we were settled finally, the tasks ahead seemed daunting. We ended up wiping out our savings except for $1,000 in order to make necessary repairs on the house. I consoled myself with the fact that we would be here longterm and we should be able to build our savings back up fairly quickly.
It did not take us long to figure out that things were not as we were told and we should have asked for more paperwork before agreeing to take over the business. Thus began our 14 months of living on $18,500 from September 2017 to November 2018. I had to put those budgeting skills to the test for real and there was no nice paycheck or savings to count on. I had to prepare for our 3rd baby and furnish our home and take care of and feed our family on very little. Living on $1,800/mo because we wanted to and saving the other half of our income was very different from living on $1,500/mo because we had to with no savings. I learned a lot about NEEDS and WANTS. I learned so much about the simple things in life and giving thanks for every little blessing. I learned more about a richness and happiness that has nothing to do with money. I cried a lot of tears that year and felt a lot of fear that we would not be able to provide for our children adequately. I learned how to stretch our pennies farther than I ever thought possible. I thought I knew about living frugally and I thought we had lived with very little before, but raising and providing for a family of 5 on that little was a different ballgame than when we just had one tiny baby.
I remember the summer when all I could afford for the children were flip flops from Walmart for their summer shoes. I remember agonizing over spending even $5. If there was any money leftover from our grocery shopping, I put it in a jar towards hospitality so we could have people over for dinner. I learned a lot about opening up my home and sharing what we had with others even when we didn't have much. I learned so much about sacrificial giving and giving even when we didn't feel like we had enough for ourselves. I remember saving $5 each week to buy my son a $35 comforter set for his room. It took almost 2 months but I was elated when I was able to bring it home for him from town! I remember finding special things to do for the holidays. I remember when our youngest was born and how I felt like the richest person alive to be able to be home with my children. We cooked and cleaned our little fixer upper, we did school and walked to the river, we visited the grandparents down the road, and we hosted bbq's by our fire pit in our yard. The children played in the yard and mud to their hearts content and they thought it was the best thing ever!
For all the wonderful lessons and memories, we knew that it was not sustainable to live on that income long term. The business just wasn't making anywhere near enough money to support the amount of costs it had. We personally didn't feel like we could take government assistance (no judgement if you do) and we knew we were just one step away from disaster. We hadn't been able to build our savings back up like we thought and our home still needed a lot of repairs. We just weren't sure what to do. The answer came when an opportunity to go to the coast of NC for a temporary job came up. It was a 4 month contract. We shut our house up and packed clothes and necessities and rented a fully furnished house a few blocks from the ocean. It was a healing time, but also an unsettling time. We knew it wasn't permanent but we didn't know what would come after it. We didn't know if we would go back to WV or move somewhere else. We had a house in WV but no job. Those 4 months were a good break from the stress but also very unsettling. We had thought WV was long term, we had thought this business was long term and now we were faced with a very uncertain future and for the first time in a long time, we had no idea what direction we were heading in life. It was very hard.
When the contract was over, we headed back to WV, mostly because we weren't sure what else to do. We prayed and sought direction but we had no idea what we were to do. We didn't have a job lined up and it was scary to look at having no income. We had saved enough to live on for a couple of months but we had also had to get major car repairs done during our time at the coast and those went on a credit card. It was the first time since being debt free that we had consumer debt again and I felt like a failure. I was happy to be going back to somewhere that was ours and familiar but it was very scary not knowing what we were going to do for income. We prayed and my husband applied to tons of jobs. While WV has very low cost of living, they also have very low wages. After a couple months, my husband was hired as the manager of a farm and retreat center just a few miles down the road from us. They hired him with a salary of $50,000/year. We were floored as we were expecting about half of that given what wages were in the area. This was April 2019.
Most of you that began following me on instagram found me shortly after this. I started my Instagram in November 2019. This next part of the story may be be more familiar to some of you. I look forward to meeting up with you next time to finish this story!
To be continued ...