Perspective

I've been thinking about my last post, and feeling like I need to remind myself of our overall situation a bit and put things in perspective. What I've been considering is more specific than the "well, at least we have our health and a lovely family" type of perspective (not that these things aren't incredibly important!). Instead I've been thinking how fortunate we are that we have as much as we have, especially given our age. We may not have that much given what everything costs where we are now, but if we look at other areas, we have a lot of options. We have absolutely no debt and we are fortunate to have a decent down payment available (well, not for this area, but certainly for other areas). We also have reasonably healthy 401(k) (especially given our age) as well as a few other smaller retirement and savings accounts. We have some money stashed away for a rainy day and we are very good at saving our money and staying pretty close to a budget. I really enjoy handling the finances and the financial planning (and I think I'm pretty decent at it) and luckily Matt is willing to let me take the reins. We do not have any of the money squabbles that a lot of couples seem to have. Matt has a good job that pays reasonably well - not for this region, but certainly in terms of national averages and such - which has the added benefit of being a job that he can continue if (when?) we relocate. So, really, for not having even hit 30 yet (next year!) I think we're really doing pretty well. Sure, we probably could have done some things differently and be even better off, but we could also have done a heck of a lot worse for ourselves too. I think it would have been a lot easier to do the latter than the former. I feel very fortunate that we do have options, and we do have the ability and the means to move fairly well on our way... we just need to make some hard decisions first.

OK, personal pep talk over, thanks for "listening". I'm going to try to start "the easy peasy cardigan" from Little Turtle Knits (scroll down a bit on the page for a picture). This will be the first knitting pattern I've ever attempted, so wish me luck! It is supposed to be easy (hence the name I suppose!) but we'll see how I do.