On Second Thought....

It is beginning to appear that we will be staying in Lexington, at least for the time being.

Several things needed to come together in order for us to reasonably make the move up to Cincinnati, but it seems that instead of coming together, various roadblocks keep arising instead.

Primarily, Melanie needs to get a job in the Princeton district. Unfortunately, there don’t appear to be any openings right now, and she has also been told that any openings will likely be filled internally. That leaves her Mom’s district, and maybe a handful of others, but none of those pay as well as Princeton’s district. With the raise she will be getting here next year, there would only be a difference of a couple of thousand dollars per year if she got a job at one of these other districts in Cincinnati. Since I will be spending at least a couple of thousand dollars per year driving to school, clinicals, and back, this would negate any extra that she was making.

Couple that with the fact that it seems apparent we are going to have to pay more to rent the house than we previously (or should reasonably have) expected, it just seems like too much trouble and hassle to go up there now, be no better off or possibly even worse off financially, and also have me driving to and from Lexington 3 or 4 times a week. I’ve also recently discovered that one of the clinical sites for the LMR program I’m in is actually at the prison that sits almost within site of our house. One instructor has already said that this would be a good fit for me, as the person there is a very good teacher/mentor, and that she believes I would fit well in that site. How absurd would it be for me to be driving several times per week right back to our old house for clinical sites? I could practically walk there from where we live now.

Additionally, we’ve spoken with a realtor about our house, and because we have refinanced it twice, including just a few months ago, it would only list about $10K higher than what we still owe on it. When you figure that we’ll probably have to come down at least somewhat off the asking price, as well as the potential for buyers to want us to pay closing costs, and the 6% the realtor will take from the sale price, we could come out making next to nothing on the house. At best, we might make a couple thousand dollars. At worst, we could end up owing.

If Melanie could manage to get a job in the Princeton district, and/or if we could either live for free or for very, very low rent ($200 a month, maybe), then it might be one thing. But with us looking at Melanie only have a few thousand dollars more in her salary, and us only saving $350 or so per month in rent/mortgage, as well as the likelihood of not making much on selling our house, it just suddenly doesn’t seem like the best choice.

So, at this point, unless Melanie gets an opportunity in the next few weeks for an interview in the Princeton district, or a district with a similar pay scale, or unless her aunt suddenly has a change of heart about how much she wants to charge us to live in the house, we will most likely be staying here.

Regardless, I will have to find a new job come the end of summer, because, despite what we were told when we started in this program, there are no night clinicals currently available. So starting in September, I will have to be in clinical sites for 9 hours a day, during the day, about 2 or 3 days per week. So I won’t be able to work a regular business week job like I have now. I’ll almost certainly end up waiting tables again (which is what I would also probably be doing in Cincinnati). I’m not particularly looking forward to that, but one thing I did like about waiting tables was the hours. You can work 30 hours a week and bring home 350 in cash each week, and you don’t have to get up early.