(no subject)
Vermont, eh?
J's had a phone interview for a job there and they're trying to set up a second soon. It's in Burlington, a college town. I already know that a college town environment would likely suit me very well.
In the plus column, he has few other local prospects and he's going to have to start paying back his student loans next month. His current job just gets less secure all the time, and they've cut several shifts entirely, so he will have a very sudden shift change in the next couple weeks, which will likely be for the worse. Vermont looks beautiful, I love that it's only 1.5 hours from Montreal and to travel between here and there it would be much faster to cut through Canada. And it's allegedly the most liberal state in the union, from what I've been reading. I love all of that.
But in the negative column: I don't want to move anymore, or at least I'm very afraid of it. I don't want to give up home ownership by moving, because I think it would probably be a very long time before we could buy another house, if ever, given the state of both our student loans. Don't want to uproot the kids, especially since Logan has a very tight foursome of friends that have been together since first grade. The job he's interviewing for does not pay much better than what's he making now, and the cost of living in Vermont is considerably higher than here (though it is actually a "staff accountant" job, which he went to school for, and a couple years in such a position could really benefit him in the end.)
If I stay here it may be a lifetime of continued struggle. He isn't having any luck at all applying for accounting jobs in our area, as the few local employers looking for that want either a CPA, a college GPA above 3.0 and/or internships while in school. He doesn't have any of that going for him. His current job is super sucky, wages have been frozen for the entire 3 years he's worked there and the benefits costs keep going up.
Does home ownership matter that much? Not really, but the kids have lived here for as long as they can remember (Dylan was just 2 when we moved in and Logan was 7), so this is home. It's also the longest I've lived anywhere in my adult life. I like to think of myself as a gypsy or nomad but the truth is that I am settled and I like that. I fear I'm turning into people like my parents who have no desire to move, which I never wanted to happen. I know we're not doing well here overall. But I don't know if we'd do any better anywhere else either. We could, but we also could lose big. There's a million what-ifs associated with moving, whereas staying here feels like more of a certainty. Even though there are almost as many what-ifs about being here, too. At this point the biggest reason I want to stay here is to keep the kids in their current schools and I often think maybe we'd move once they all graduate, but that's an awful long time to stay here, especially if we'd be better off somewhere else.
Probably nothing will come of it anyway - the last time he had two job interviews with the same company, nothing came of that either. At this point I'm really discouraged with his job search and not expecting much from it. I'm sure we'd be okay if he gets this one, just as I'm sure we'd be okay if he didn't. It's hard to get excited about job prospects anymore since they never seem to pan out.
J's had a phone interview for a job there and they're trying to set up a second soon. It's in Burlington, a college town. I already know that a college town environment would likely suit me very well.
In the plus column, he has few other local prospects and he's going to have to start paying back his student loans next month. His current job just gets less secure all the time, and they've cut several shifts entirely, so he will have a very sudden shift change in the next couple weeks, which will likely be for the worse. Vermont looks beautiful, I love that it's only 1.5 hours from Montreal and to travel between here and there it would be much faster to cut through Canada. And it's allegedly the most liberal state in the union, from what I've been reading. I love all of that.
But in the negative column: I don't want to move anymore, or at least I'm very afraid of it. I don't want to give up home ownership by moving, because I think it would probably be a very long time before we could buy another house, if ever, given the state of both our student loans. Don't want to uproot the kids, especially since Logan has a very tight foursome of friends that have been together since first grade. The job he's interviewing for does not pay much better than what's he making now, and the cost of living in Vermont is considerably higher than here (though it is actually a "staff accountant" job, which he went to school for, and a couple years in such a position could really benefit him in the end.)
If I stay here it may be a lifetime of continued struggle. He isn't having any luck at all applying for accounting jobs in our area, as the few local employers looking for that want either a CPA, a college GPA above 3.0 and/or internships while in school. He doesn't have any of that going for him. His current job is super sucky, wages have been frozen for the entire 3 years he's worked there and the benefits costs keep going up.
Does home ownership matter that much? Not really, but the kids have lived here for as long as they can remember (Dylan was just 2 when we moved in and Logan was 7), so this is home. It's also the longest I've lived anywhere in my adult life. I like to think of myself as a gypsy or nomad but the truth is that I am settled and I like that. I fear I'm turning into people like my parents who have no desire to move, which I never wanted to happen. I know we're not doing well here overall. But I don't know if we'd do any better anywhere else either. We could, but we also could lose big. There's a million what-ifs associated with moving, whereas staying here feels like more of a certainty. Even though there are almost as many what-ifs about being here, too. At this point the biggest reason I want to stay here is to keep the kids in their current schools and I often think maybe we'd move once they all graduate, but that's an awful long time to stay here, especially if we'd be better off somewhere else.
Probably nothing will come of it anyway - the last time he had two job interviews with the same company, nothing came of that either. At this point I'm really discouraged with his job search and not expecting much from it. I'm sure we'd be okay if he gets this one, just as I'm sure we'd be okay if he didn't. It's hard to get excited about job prospects anymore since they never seem to pan out.