Welcome to Volume two of STID – Stupid Things I’ve Done.
It seems like we have never been able to make a large purchase without having to do it in a panic, be it real or imagined. “Never” actually might not be the appropriate word, but let me explain. I’ll describe the purchase itself and what led up to it and then what the consequences were for our family – either positive, negative, or neutral.
It started with the house we bought in Wichita after college. This “panic” was self induced and not real. We were married right out of college and decided to move away from our home/parents to get started off on our own two feet. We started off renting an apartment on a short-term lease of 6 months. And after living below an apparent herd of elephants for those 6 months, we decided it was time to move. “Rent a house, that’s the way to go” we thought and we were right, but that’s not what we ended up doing. After looking for a rental for a while didn’t really come up with anything we liked so we made the mistake of walking into a realtor’s office and asking if they managed any rental houses. “Oh, why would you rent when you could buy?” the realtor asked.
We hadn’t thought about buying a house really at this point in our lives, but we let ourselves get talked into it and we ended up signing up for a pretty nice little place with 3 bedrooms, 1.75 bath (that’s what you call 2 bathrooms were one has a shower and the other has tub/shower, right?), and a full basement. Really nice little place. We bought that in February of 2003. We had been out of school/married for 8 months, at my new job for 7. We never really had enough furniture to fill the house – the basement stayed empty pretty much the whole time (which was a real shame), but we had great plans! That was until May ‘03.
Things had been slowing down at work for a while, but I never really thought too much of it. When I was hired they told me that there was a pretty good backlog of work and things would be fine. Well, this was Wichita. In 2003. Wichita is very dependent on the airline industry and after 9/11 the whole city had been and still was in bad financial shape. But I’m just out of college and the world is filled with hope and promise and rainbows and puppy dogs (and we got one of those too!).
Then I was let go. Fired. Laid off. Canned. Whatever you want to call it. The feeling of coming home and telling your wife of less than on year that I was no longer employed. That was really rough. After the tears were shed and the initial shock wore off, the job hunt was on. There were absolutely no structural engineering jobs in the Wichita area. I applied to all the firms located anywhere close to Wichita and landed only one interview. To top it off, on the day of that interview, I came down with my first of many migraine headaches. I went anyway and did the best I could do in the interview, but got the “Sorry, we just don’t have a place for you right now”.
So, now that I felt that I had exhausted all of my structural engineering possibilities in Wichita I started applying for drafting positions: overqualified. Secretarial position: overqualified. I was almost to the point of becoming a Whopper flopper. I mean, remember, I had a new wife, a new mortgage, and I was trying to prove to my parents and myself that I could go out and make it in the real world.
May passes. June passes. July passes. August I hear of a job back in Oklahoma City. It’s an engineering position at a really respected small firm. The problem was I was rooted in Wichita at this point. I go to the interview anyway and when I get back to Wichita and check my email, I have an offer sitting there. I take the offer, but now what? We call the realtor that conned us that we used to buy the house and put it back on the market 6 months after we bought it. We had no assets to name at this point and just wanted out from under the mortgage and to move on with our lives. To do this, we had to bump the price we paid by $4000-$5000 just to cover closing costs. I started my new job in OKC living with my parents (own two feet, remember) during the week and driving back to Wichita on the weekends.
August passes, September passes. In October, we found a townhouse to rent in OKC so we packed up all our worldly possessions and moved from a house into a townhouse. Our house in Wichita sits empty as we pay rent on the townhouse and the mortgage in Wichita.
November passes. December comes and we fire the realtor and find a new one that was recommended to us. January comes and we finally get a contract on our house. It sells in February for the price we ask almost one year to the day from when we bought it. Lesson learned, right? well, that’s a story for another time.
