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Arrived in Florida in Time for Thanksgiving

December 22nd, 2009 at 04:42 pm

Much has happened in the time between my last entry and I have found out much about myself. I realise that when my finances feel out of my hands, I have an urge to not follow them too closely as it creates more stress than necessary. My husband managed to find a job here in Florida and started working in it 1 and half months after he arrived. I think that must be some sort of record given the current unemployment in our area is 12% and rising. I am incredibly proud of him.

In making our decision not to bring the furniture we had with us, I ended up having to sell as much as I could a donate the rest. This was a loss but as we had planned to move for a long time, most of the stuff we had was acquired with the knowledge we would be immigrating in mind, so it was not a horrendous loss. I did manage to sell most of our electronical devices which cost more than the furniture, but it was a good lesson in the depreciation of value of your items and I also learned that it is better to sell as you go along rather than to hoard old things which you no longer require when you are forced to do so. When you can sell things at your own leisure you can ensure you get an acceptable price, rather than accepting the money offered because you have to get rid of the item.

Once I sold off all the things I could not bring with me, I also needed to ensure our appartment was clean to hand over and then got on a flight to come join my husband. Oh, but before I get to that point, I also needed to ensure all those companies I needed to communicate my new address to were informed. If I did not recieve a bill correctly or a retirement account statement regularly, who knows what state our financial affairs may be in after several months.

Joining my husband here in Florida was fantastic. We had been apart for just over 3 months and that has been the longest seperation we have ever had through our relationship. I know many couples go through much longer seperations, under much more stressful situations. However, to know it happens and to actually experience it is 2 different things. My heart goes out to those couples who are going through periods of seperation, especially those miltary couples.

So I arrived the weekend before Thanksgiving and we celebrated our first one in the US together. It was wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed becoming acquainted with the new home my husband prepared for me and exploring our new neighbourhood. He had purchased furniture for our apartment and I loved every piece of it. In fact the furniture here is so nice I have not regretted once having to leave behind the furniture we had before. I feel that furniture was very student like and we now have invested in some grown up furniture which could be with us for the new decade or more. We have an apartment for the first time, which I could see us bring kids into. Although we are still young and we need to settle before we do any other life changing move.

I have started to job hunt and have had some interest. Thank goodness! I was very scared to start looking for work here as it is very different to my home country. I having been looking for an analyst position in the Tampa area. I have my fingers crossed that something might come up soon. I'll keep you updated on the search. I have found that posting my resume on monster.com and careerbuilder.com has not been very fruitful, so I have made it might job to apply for 2 or 3 positions from those website a day and then to search around for other company websites with job postings or smaller job boards in the area. As I said this tactic has resulted in a few companies calling with some interested, but also A LOT of rejection emails. I am not used to the amount of rejection, but I guess if I am going to live here I will need to start developing a tougher skin.

So so far, so good. I have not touched much on our finances in this post, because I think I'll only be ready to post on those in the New Year. We are living off of my husband's income for now, with some money still in our emergency fund. Not where I want to be but we knew when we started on this journey that it we would take a huge hit to savings. I will be working on a financial plan for 2010 to get us back on track. I am think our priorities will be to maintain our costs as low as possible, to increase emergency fund to about 9 months, start a car fund up just in case the used car we brought needs to be maintined/replaced and ensure we have some pension fund savings in place so that it does not fall to the wayside.

3 Responses to “Arrived in Florida in Time for Thanksgiving”

  1. Joan.of.the.Arch Says:
    1261501362

    Congrats to your DH on finding work so quickly, and good luck to you as well. I'm curious as to why you chose Florida, a state which is currently experiencing more people leaving than coming.

  2. TampaBayYankee Says:
    1261576209

    We chose Florida because we have several friends here who were able to help my husband in the very beginning and it is close to his family :-)

  3. Jerry Says:
    1261659778

    I am glad that the move seems to lead to a better situation for you! Where did you come to the States from? That is a brave move, and it's great that you have some insurance that your family and friends can be there to help, as well. In this market, it is not uncommon to get a lot of rejection on a job search, so don't worry about that! Good luck to you both...
    Jerry

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