big changes

A few weeks ago, I got an unexpected knock at my door. When I looked through the peep hole, I was super surprised to see my dad. I opened the door and asked what he was doing here . . . he was being all weird. My initial thoughts were that he had come to chat with me about my new business, because we've talked about doing that, but after a few minutes it was clear that was not why he had come.

My dad is on the executive board of Omadi, where Russ has worked for the last four years. The night before, he had found out that Omadi was cutting back their employees by about a third, and Russ was one who was being let go. My dad had come to let me know in person. He was so sweet and kind 💕

It was a pretty big shock to both me and Russ (I texted him right after my dad left, and he officially found out about 15 minutes later). After all, we both remembered his performance review where his boss had said he was an essential employee to Omadi. However, Omadi had basically decided to completely revamp their product, so all of Russ's specific knowledge about the old product was no longer really necessary.

For me, the shock was quickly followed by peace. Russ has never really liked his job at Omadi. Our tentative plan was for him to quit to pursue something more desirable once my business was a little more established and I could support us, with the hope of doing this by the end of 2018. So when I got the news of the layoff, my thoughts pretty much turned to, "Well at least now he can start pursuing something better!" Russ and I are very lucky to have two sets of parents who we know we can kind of fall back on if necessary; both sets have offered to give us loans, should we need them. So although our money situation won't be as good as it was, I know we're not going to lose everything or starve to death. And what amazing timing, as I had just launched my business and we had just gotten our biggest ever tax return ($4k!). I'm obviously not making what Russ was making yet, but at least I'm on the path to making money! Anyway, all of this to say, I felt peace because we get to start moving forward in a direction we want, and everything will work out money-wise.

For Russ, the peace didn't come so quickly. He had a hard time with the layoff -- and understandably so. I think he kind of felt hurt that Omadi didn't choose to find a different position for him. He also worried about money and what was next.

At first, he thought he'd learn to code at Dev Mountain. He had been doing tech support at Omadi, so coding would be upleveling his computer skills, and it would be a quick program (12 weeks) that could get him a good job quickly.

Once I unearthed the reasoning for Dev Mountain, I said no way. I told him he was going to make his next move based on what he wanted, not based on fear of the unknown and fear of having no money. I told him it was time to have a dream and pursue that dream! So after some talking, he decided he'd move forward with the plan that we had talked about roughly 6 months ago -- becoming a flight instructor.

Russ has always wanted to fly airplanes, but after his dad was a commercial pilot during his childhood, Russ decided he didn't want that for his kids -- he wanted to be home more than that. So he gave up his pilot dreams and moved on for a while. However, about 6 months ago, he realized that he could fly airplanes AND have a 9-5 type job if he chose to instruct rather than fly commercially. It was the best of both worlds! So now he's finishing up some research on flight school options so he can choose where he wants to go. The program is 9-12 months, so he'll be doing school for the next little bit. He is feeling more at peace about being let go, but still has some fears surrounding the unknown. It's also hard to start something that you don't know anything about yet, so he's feeling that. But I know that everything is going to turn out exactly as it should, and we're going to be in such a better place because of this layoff.

Blessings I've seen surrounding the layoff:

• Tax Return
• Severence
• Getting paid out for vacation days he hadn't taken
• No previous debt other than mortgage
• AirBnB income
• My business is launched and I can start making money from that
• We got an appraisal of our home a few weeks before the layoff because we wanted to drop our PMI early. We found out that our house has gone wayyyy up in value, due to both the market and all of the things we've added to it. We now own more than 1/3 of our house, and consequently we got to drop our PMI -- it's only $60, but that's $60 less that we have to fork out each month!
• We can get loans from our parents if necessary
• All of the above things combine to give us enough money for our living expenses for 4+ solid months. Then we've still got income from AirBnB and my business, so hopefully we'll only need loans to pay for flight school 🤞
• So much love from friends and family
• He gets to start doing something he likes sooner!
• We decided less than a week before the layoff that we were going to postpone trying to get pregnant. Before the layoff, I was annoyed about this because we had selected our insurance plan based on me getting pregnant and having a baby in 2018, so I didn't want to pay our high premium with our changed plan . . . welp, now we don't get insured through Omadi so we don't have to pay the high premium anymore!

We were definitely blindsided, but I know that everything is going to work out exactly as it should :) Our 2018 year is going to be filled with so much more difficulty than we expected, but also so much more growth and happiness. I'm so excited to see where we're at by the end of the year :)