Steve starts a new job

We had a trying, and ultimately, strengthening challenge in our family and Marriage. On July 21, 2016 we bought and moved into our new house. On August 21 I made our very first mortgage payment. The next day, Monday August 22 Steve called me and said he was on his way home from work because he had been laid off. We came to find out that the company he was working for was having major financial trouble. Many other people were also laid off and many of the ones that stayed were asked to take a pay cut. They loved Steve, he did great work (he was named employee of the month a couple months before) but they couldn't afford to keep him on anymore. So they let him go and he wasn't going to receive any sort of severance package. I'm not going to lie, on the inside I was totally freaking out (as I'm sure Steve was) but I knew the last thing Steve needed was for me to be freaking out. We both needed each other to be calm and supportive. So that's what we were. I told him it was all going to work out. We had been financially smart leading up to this and I had every faith in him that he would find another a job (and I truly believed it). We made a pact to each other that for the first month we were not going to stress. We were going to proactively look for work, but not start stressing until after the first month was over. It was so hard and dis-heartening when it happened but looking back we were so blessed during that time.

Besides our new mortgage, we had no other debt and still had money in Savings and 2 credit cards that had zero balances we could use if push came to shove. Steve's supervisor (who was so sad to see Steve go and was a good friend of his) suggested to Steve that he immediately apply for unemployment benefits because it usually takes several weeks to go through. So he got home and we applied for that. Miraculously it only took a week to get approved so we were able to get a small supplement of income during his time with no employment. I also texted my supervisor at the credit union and asked if there was anyone looking to have their shifts covered. Miraculously, there were several people leaving on vacations that were looking to have someone cover shifts for them over the next two weeks. So I was able to earn another small supplement of income during the time that Steve was home to watch the kids while he was applying for jobs. After the 2 busy weeks there was only a few more days that people needed me but it worked out because Steve started going in for interviews so we needed me home with the kids anyway. We were also blessed financially with the boys. Spencer was about to start school when Steve was laid off, so I filled out a form to see if we could get discounted lunches for Spencer. Since Steve had no income we qualified for Free lunches. So that was one less expense we had to worry about. Also, a couple weeks before Steve lost his job, my next door neighbor Lauren had asked if I wanted to join their co-op preschool group. Rod has been able to do preschool with me, 5 other kids and their awesome moms for free. Another expense we didn't have to factor in.

One of the jobs Steve applied for was the "Creative Manager" position at a company called Modere in Springville.  Springville is a 10 minute drive from our house. After he applied he saw that David Goodman (one of our old neighbors from Springville) worked there. So Steve sent him a message asking about the company and to maybe put in a good word him. Dave replied shortly after. He said it was crazy getting Steve's message because the marketing coordinator at Modere, Cody, that had posted the job Steve applied for saw Steve's application and portfolio and really liked it. Cody had looked Steve up on Linkdin and saw he knew Dave so Cody went to Dave and asked how he knew Steve and while they were talking Dave got the message from Steve asking about Modere. Crazy! So Cody asked Dave to invite Steve over to take a tour of Modere and talk about the position. It turned into a semi-formal interview and then the execs invited him back for a second interview about a week later. During this time Steve was still applying and interviewing for other jobs but couldn't get Modere out of his head. Exactly one month after Steve was laid off, September 22, Steve was offered the job at Modere and he accepted it. It was a promotion for Steve (he's a manager now with a small team), it was a pay raise, and about 20 minutes closer to home. And because it was not over a month-we never had to stress. ;) And we only ended up using about $500 from our savings to boot. We were so incredibly blessed.

Ok so now you're wondering what is up with the picture of the table at the top. I chose that to represent this story because that was another blessing. We had been using Robin's table at our old house and since she has her own kitchen here we wanted to get a new one. We had been eating on a small folding table with camping and folding chairs because we thought we would wait until Labor Day sales to get a table. I found a table I wanted and was just waiting for Labor Day to see if the price would go down (and if it didn't I would buy it anyway). Well, Labor Day came and Steve was out of a job. So we didn't feel it was an essential purchase. We would wait until he got a job to buy it (and it would be the very first thing we bought. I was getting mighty sick of that folding table). I still checked on the table though and the price didn't go down over Labor Day. And the week after Labor Day the price ended up going up $50. It was all making me sad so I stopped checking. After Steve got the job, I got online and looked up the table. It had gone down in price $150 ($100 less than what I would have paid at Labor Day). So we bought it and saved $100. Really and truly, through this all we were truly blessed. The Lord works in mysterious ways.