Moving to The Country

While a lot of things have changed for the SSC family in the last few months, there are some things that haven’t. We are starting to get our new schedule established, and responsibilities are getting divvied up accordingly. A new plan of attack is being worked up for this Lifestyle so we can make sure we don’t screw things up budget wise. For those that haven’t followed along much on Twitter, here’s a final update before I get down to brass tacks next week discussing all new meaty PF stuff like these topics. “What the F is the budget going to look like? Where is my sense of purpose going to come from when I quit my remote work assignment at the end of October? What is our new plan? We were successful building, working towards and implementing our Lifestyle Change, but now what?! Life moves on and we can’t just sit around watching it go by, so what are we going to start planning for next?” Stay tuned for all these discussions and more! Until then, here’s a final update on where we are.

Real Estate STILL Sucks…

Between our last update on the Houston home sale and now, our buyers credit score dropped enough that they lost financing. How does that happen you ask?! Yes, we wanted to know too, and not trusting these buyers requested proof before we would release their security deposit. Basically, they got pre-approval with a credit score around the upper 500’s and a fair amount of delinquencies and late payments on their account. Between then, and the final approval even more late payments showed up along with some other delinquencies not quite discovered or disclosed and their credit score dropped to just above 500. Guess who lost financing? Our buyers…

So where does that leave us? With the house back on the market. Fortunately, we lost out on the final month of summer before school started thanks to these asshats. Glad we went thru all that negotiation just for you not to be able to even close the deal… We’ll keep making mortgage payments, vacant house insurance, and hoping another buyer comes along. So annoying.

Our New House

Since we relocated to Oklahoma, we’ve run into some funny issues “moving to the country”. Between ticks, spiders, and scorpions, we had a bit of a rough start, but not to worry, it’s all handled and we have reclaimed the house. Well, as much as you can when you’re surrounded by 2 heavily wooded acres.

Found this guy walking on the couch arm one night… Yes, that’s a scorpion!

We’re about 8 miles from the closest anything which has taken some getting used to. You can’t just pop into Home Depot or the grocery like before when it was literally 5 minutes away.

Everything’s so close when you’re living in the ‘burbs.

Now everything is ~10-15 minutes to get there, which is fine, just different.

I love the sounds and peace of being out here. Watching hummingbirds at the hibiscus bush, deer in the yard, hearing rain on the leaves when it rains, and the kids love having lots of bugs around to catch, study, etc… I cleared out the last bit of our fenced in backyard and the front yard between the house and the street. It took a lot of work, but was definitely worth it.

Goodbye Green Wall of Doom!

We had an issue with ticks when we first got here, but after getting the dogs on Advantix, and clearing out all that underbrush they’ve become a non-issue. Whew…

From the front sidewalk looking at the street
From the driveway
There’s 1 more pile of brush not pictured. SO much work…

In the first 4 weeks being here, we had playdates with 3 different families with kids, and have met 10 of our other neighbors. Our next door neighbor brought us brownies when we were moving in, and others have left cards in the mailbox or stopped by to welcome us to the neighborhood and introduce themselves. It’s been a great neighborhood so far with nice people and a fair amount of kids around our kids age.

New Job(s)

Mrs. SSC is starting her new job and figuring out the ropes, rankings, getting students, and all the fun stuff that comes along with teaching at a larger University. She’ll have her hands full for the first year or so getting a schedule established and getting comfortable with the switch to full-time work again. Fortunately, it seems like the department politics are minimal to null and everyone seems to be more collaborative than selfish. The former president of the university did a good job bleeding down the surplus and extra cash, so the new president is a business minded ex-CEO type and it’s funny hearing how he is approaching running the university. Reminds me of megacorps in some ways, and just being practical in others. We’ll see how it goes but it sounds like they’re headed in the right direction anyway.

I am taking over as the “default parent” with the kids and Stay At Home Dad (SAHD) role and it’s been okay so far. Only a few little bumps in the transition. I haven’t exactly established a schedule yet for things like kids laundry, groceries, and more but I’m getting there. It’s difficult when I’m still “working” as well.

Old Jobs

When I first mentioned I was going to be leaving my company in August, I mentioned the idea of a remote work transition and my supervisor wasn’t a fan. He said, “Well, remote work gigs rarely work out well, and I’d rather just have a hard transition and be done with it. No offense to you.” Well, fast forward 2 months and he starts floating the idea of me working remotely for 1 month. That led to 2 months, and by the time I signed the contract it was a 3 month remote work extension. I got them to buy 2 new 27” monitors for my office and upstairs has an area with a built in bookcase, desk and another wall of built-in bookcases that has worked out nicely as my home office area.

New Office! So many built-ins!

While this has an end date, it is fortunate to have 3 more months of paychecks coming in. Things like septic system maintenance/repairs, AC cleaning, carpet cleaning, AC system checkup and tweak, Terminix pest control (lol), multiple tools for clearing the brush, new shower heads all around, and other “new home” sorts of purchases have hit the monthly spending quite hard.

This cleared out all the brush and trees in the pics. So badass!

We’re ramping spending down and going back to “do we want this or need this” mindset and not just 1-click shopping with everything that comes up as a maybe. Don’t worry, this will get its own post, but for now, it’s nice having the income to help smooth the transition to a single income family.

Small Town Life

So far, I’m digging the transition to small town life. I can get into town without getting on any main road. There is a back road to get to our place whether we’re in OKC or just out and about in other places. Traffic is light, always, everywhere… People are nice, always everywhere. It was kind of surprising dealing with nice people again. Everyone asks how you are, and then actually listen when you respond. Amazing, I know! I can’t wait until Fall and the leaves change, and college football starts up. Not for me really as my universities aren’t big football schools. Well, CU may be getting back to being relevant again but I doubt it. School of Mines is well, not a big football school, or in the same division of any schools anyone cares about. It should be fun around here though since it’s like LA and the Southeast where college football is religion. I’ll have to pay attention to make sure I have something to talk about whenever it gets brought up.

Also, recycling is a big change. Since we’re in the country, we don’t have curbside recycling anymore. Yeah, wtf?! So now we have 4 bins around the kitchen area to sort out recyclables and we have to deliver them to the drop off centers ourselves. Seriously, a mega pain in the ass. I get why people just stop when you have to go thru this much hassle for it. And is it really that big of a deal to expand it to some rural areas? Evidently. Okay, rant over…

Summary

That’s about it on updates. Moving to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches… Anyone? Anyone? Actually, we have been eating a lot of peaches as they are on point this year with juiciness and sweetness. Not much else is different really. Kids are liking school, the Boy Scouts are WAY more involved with weekly meetings, 6 campouts per year, and way more cool stuff than our last troop. Seriously, those guys just phoned it in. Plus, our daughter is going to try it out, so hopefully that will be cool for her too.  Until next week, that’s it from around here.