$cary Thought$

This past year, Cody and I were able to carve out a decent living for ourselves financially.  Of course, this was primarily due to the fact that I live with Mom and Dad and have very few bills, but be that as it may, Cody and I have been able to take a vacation, eat at restaurants, and still put a small amount of money into savings.  We are incredibly fortunate and realize how truly blessed we are to both have jobs that can sustain us.

So why do I feel the need to talk about money?

Cody and I are nearing the close of our time as LATers.  We can see the cohabitational light at the end of the tunnel and are ecstatic about it--except that we are also scared to death because we still have no idea what that means.  With no word back from the school to which Cody applied as a PhD candidate, there are still two cities on the table as potential nesting sites, and they are on opposite ends of the state.  This also means a lack of security with regard to employment for me.  In both cases, Cody knows what he will be doing; he will either stay at his current job as a psych tech and finish his Master's or be a PhD student with some form of research or teaching assistant position.  My employment, however, is a little more iffy than that.

Will I end up staying at my small, rural high school for another year where I know what I will be making, what my hours will be, and that I will be provided with insurance and a retirement account?  In this scenario, which is what Cody and I are hoping for, Cody gets into his program, we move to a city halfway between the university and my high school, and all is right with the world.  In that year, I would begin applying for grad school as well so Cody and I could work on completing our educations together.  This, of course, is the goal.  Financially, it would make the most sense as well.  I would retain my steady income, Cody would have some sort of stipend, and we would live in the city with the lower cost of living.  A two bedroom, two bathroom apartment with a patio, walk-in closet, and washer/dryer hookups is in the cards for us, complete with my favorite ammenity--a garden tub!  (Every girl's dream bathtub allows her knees and boobs to be in the water at the same time.)

In the other scenario, I move to the city in which Cody has been living for almost two years while he finishes up the licensure portion of his Master's.  This is the more frightening of the two options for a few reasons.  First, I will have to resign from my position as an English teacher in a market that is not exactly ideal.  The area to which I will be moving is busy writing RIF notices for teachers, meaning there will be more jobless teachers on the market than there will be jobs to accommodate them.  With this being the case, I will probably have to find a job outside of my field; I've already checked through the newspaper's classifieds, Monster, and CareerBuilder, and the majority of the listed positions want specific degrees and experience that I simply do not have.  This city is also one of the most expensive in Indiana due to its affluence and proximity to Chicago, meaning what money we make will not stretch as far as it would in the other potential city of residence.  In this scenario, when we find a bigger apartment to accommodate a wife and her things (read: more money), our purse strings will not only tighten--they will tie themselves into a knot that would make a boy scout gasp in horror.

I worry about finances because I have always been budget conscious--a trait inherited from a fabulously frugal mother.  When I was a child, I went so far as to count pennies in my possession as well as record the serial numbers of the paper money I received.  The main reason behind this was to see how many bills were transferring in and out of my possession.  The perk was a small hope that one day, out of billions upon billions of bills, that one of them would find its way back to me.  This need to count pennies has not been lost on me.  I absolutely hate when I have to transfer money from savings to my checking account.  I know the total of all of my bills in a month, what I have as a savings goal per pay period, and how much money I can spend before I get a guilty feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Right now, the pit of my stomach is in knots over the thought of having to scrape out our savings to survive if we end up in Valpo and I can't find a job to supplement Cody's income.  I envision tiny, cracking, leaky apartments, ramen noodles, and most of our stuff stuck at my parents' house because we simply have no place for it.  I have idealized what life will be like when I get to live with Cody as his wife as opposed to our time living together as fiancés, and now I worry that life's circumstances will shatter that dream into a thousand job applications and empty savings accounts.

Of course, that will be slightly remedied by getting to snuggle with Cody and the pets on a daily basis.