How many times have I yearned to live life a little (or a lot) differently than the way I’m currently living? In the early days of our marriage the desire for change drove Balin crazy. “Why take what is 90% amazing and change it to be 92.3% amazing. Just be satisfied with where we’re at.” Poor guy. It’s been over 20 years that we’ve been together and we’ve had lots of change; some not so good but the majority has been pretty epic. A short list:
Moving from Bellevue to Prescott
Hanging out with my parents & sister’s family for 5 years
Being a hiking guide in Switzerland for 3 summers
Traveling to Brazil, Equador, Singapore/SE Asia, Europe, Machu Picchu, Panama,
Costa Rica, Italy, Paris
Owning/selling a Engineering company
Moving to Spokane
Mtn biking in Moab - Skiing at Schweitzer - playing on Liberty Lake
Running my Airbnb Business in Coeur d Alene and Spokane
But by far the biggest and most exciting change in our lives has been the most recent. After much discussion with years and years of saving (I often to referred to it as the black hole of investments), Balin made a huge career change.
He said No. He said Yes.
Balin is learning to say No to the ever increasing demands of work.
He’s saying Yes to being home and being a husband, father and friend.
PTL! (Praise the Lord)
Make no mistake this was not a quick and easy decision - it has been in the works for years with goal setting and saving. The implementation of those goals was painful in that at some point a step of faith had to happen. Here’s the deal. We’ve worked our butts off for 20 years - saying yes to work first and everything else second. There were years of no work and years of WAY too much work. Stress was our bedfellow as Balin shouldered the responsibilities of CFO, COO, Human resource director and so on. When we sold the company, Balin felt an obligation to give the purchasing company his best for 3 years, which he did. By year 4 the travel and work load had gotten large with no foreseeable end in sight. Balin remarked that he had 140,000 miles from flying from Jan-May and every week people were asking for more and more of his time.
In the midst of this we were in the throws of accomplishing our other goals with our vacation rentals. May of 2017 Balin thought if we could get to 10 rental units we would be able to create enough income for him to think about stepping down from his job. By September ’17 we had purchased 10 units with 5 needing to be completely remodeled. I entered into the role of general contractor which quickly became clear was not my “sweet spot”. In fact I think it became my "death spot". I worked long hours, stressed over missed deadlines and unexpected expenses all the while Balin's travel schedule exploded.
By March I thought I was having a nervous breakdown.
With many discussions with tears and prayer, Balin heard my distress. He is not a man who makes rash decisions, for which I am thankful for, but the time had come for us to make some changes. A major tipping point came as we started reading Mr. Money Mustache. He's a guy who champions early financial independence, not by amassing vast sums of money, but rather telling people to stop buying "shit" in his own words. If we simplify and quit spending so much money on things that don't actually bring more happiness, we'll actually have enough money so we can make life balanced choices. I seriously recommend you look him up and judge for yourselves whether his advice is legit or not.
As for us, we've decided that we have enough money but we were seriously lacking in time. So Balin decided to approach his employer and change things up. It was successful. I can't go into details, as I want to respect Balin and his co-workers, but the results are we've been seeing a lot more of Balin and it's been glorious.
