Beverly Hillbillie's

I used to love watching The Beverly Hillbillies when I was younger. I dreamed about what it would be like to have the good fortune of striking it rich and moving in to a mansion.

40 years later, I started dreaming about loading up our wagon with only that which would fit and moving in to a remote cabin in the backwoods of Tennessee!

That's just about what happened when we made the final move to turn away from our life to keep up with the Joneses (Clampetts).

We were in escrow on yet another nice house when on the last week, the house fell out of escrow. It wasn't really a surprise. Truth be told, we should have never been considered as viable purchasers. My income had dropped significantly and we were one year in to a Chapter 13 bankruptcy (that's another blog)! Yet, we pushed forward trying to convince everyone that we deserved to have another house.

As with most valuable lessons we learn, falling out of escrow turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to us. I think it was God's final emergency flare in our lives shouting out for our attention, "Stop doing this - learn from your mistakes - change directions"!

The challenge was that we had given notice on our rental and had to be out within two weeks. No where to go and no hope of getting a loan. I started looking on Craigslist for owner-finance details, hoping that miraculously there would be an opportunity for us to pursue.

This is where the Beverly Hillbillies sequel begins! I had seen a posting by title several times and just ignored it, "2 bedroom/1 bath - $10,000.00". However, in desperation, I could no longer avoid it. I opened the posting and was amazed at what I saw. The pictures were all interior pics and what they showed was lovely. I summized one of two things: a) this is a fixer-upper condo or b) the posting is wrong! That night at dinner, I told Larry about it and we decided to drive by and check it out.

I hadn't considered what we found - it was worse! It was a single wide trailer house in a senior park. Now, this wasn't just any single wide, this one was built in 1966 - and looked like it! After the disappointment left both of us, we laughed for hours. We started playing an imaginary game of, "Let's pretend we're trailer trash". This little game continued just long enough that we started taking ourselves serious. A single wide trailer? Are you kidding?

What finally struck us was what buying a $10k house could do in our lives. We had robbed ourselves of any opportunity for retirement and we had no savings to see us through those years. I'm 48 but Larry is 58. Could buying this trailer actually put us in a position where we could turn this whole nightmare around and potentially allow us to recover?

We met with the seller the next day, walked through the house and were more confident than ever that this was our sweet and CRAZY opportunity.

It's been four months now and we are ecstatic with our choice As a matter of a fact, this truly was the 'miraculous' opportunity for us to have pursued.

In retrospect, we could have never known what was about to befall us shortly after moving in. I genuinely pause to think what would have happened had we not yielded to such a 'crazy' idea.

How did we get here?

Perspective (Jan's View)

What started out as what most would call a 'charmed' life - nice homes, nice cars, six figure incomes, world-wide travel - turned out to be our own personal prison. One that we heartily welcomed for sixteen years. Cat Pawnderings is part of our ongoing recovery. We hope that as we write, we will find others out there who, like us, are DYING to be free.

I met Larry while working for Apple Computer. We joined in the golden years and reaped the benefit of all that young and exciting up & coming start-ups could offer back in the early 80's. We married in the early 90's and joyfully walked hand in hand into a very dark and desperate financial prison.

There were signs all around us for years warning us that if we continued down the road we were on, we would barely survive. However, we had bitten hard on the seductive fruit of all the things that money could buy - and letting go was not easy. In fact, we fought so hard to hold on that many would find it hard to stand by and watch. We moved 14 times in our 15 years of marriage (four times in one year)! We bought and sold cars and houses like they meant nothing. Sadly, we did the same thing with our friends, our pets and sometimes, our family.

So, it was no surprise that by 2008, we had lost everything. We suffered financially, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Thankfully, our friends and family were patiently, and without judgment, there to see us through what would become the darkest, scariest, and yet, the best year of our lives.

I'm now 48. I'm healthier than I've been in years. I've come to experience real peace, real joy and what it means 'to have it all'. I believe we've learned some amazing truths about living below our means that I truly hope will speak into the lives of those that find themselves in similar territory. I look forward to hearing from you - thank you for being part of our recovery!

P.S. Cat Pawnderings came to us through the attached picture of our cat, Kisha. We live with two cats and find that they seem so peaceful and thoughtful most of the time. It seemed appropriate to spend time pondering like our cats.