I just found out from my husband now that his highest paying client has cut his work drastically, and thus lowering his monthly income by three quarters.
We were still struggling financially in 2020, after the medical device company that my husband has worked for since 2006 went under towards the end of 2019. My husband was exhausted from his third-shift supervisor job and it wasn’t bringing home much income either.
Last year around the same time as now, my husband said to me one day, “Let’s go, let’s go now”. I asked him “Go where”? He said “Anywhere, you choose”. I thought he was kidding, especially with the pandemic still being very bad around the same time this year. Then one night, about 2 weeks later, after he arrived at the start of his third-shift job, he texted me to let me know that he has arrived safely, and he also said that he’s done with working in Minnesota. He’s going to give one month’s notice to terminate his third-shift supervisor’s job and he wants me to start planning as to where we will live in California and to start packing accordingly. It’s not like there’s a job waiting for him in California but he’s just done with working in Minnesota.
I had actually just looked at a single family home for rent and was seriously considering taking it, as our current townhouse is way overpriced, main reason being that we are on a short-term lease.
I started sorting our stuff into three categories: to sell, to donate, and to throw away. My snow tires were about 4 years old and we sold them for $100. My husband just got brand new snow tires for winter, and we sold them for $200. We donated so many things. We had this fancy fiber-glass snow shovel that was hardly ever used, among many other expensive, hardly used things, that we just all donated away. We donated all of our winter clothes as we’ll never need them again in California.
I started planning our route to ship one car back to California and drive mine back ourselves. Even with the pandemic, traveling in summer can get very expensive especially with regards to lodging. I finally convinced my husband to let us leave after the Labor Day long weekend as that’s when all the kids are back to school and the hotel rates are no longer so expensive. My husband grudgingly agreed to it as he just can not stand working for that third-shift job anymore. It was taking a great toll on his health, so I can totally understand where he’s coming from. I told my supervisor for my work-from-home job and she said that it’s fine, I’ll just be working the same shift from a different time zone (from Central Time to Pacific Time after we move back to California). The money I make from my work-from-home job is minimal, especially compared to what my husband used to make as a medical device engineer, so I have no say to our move. It’s not like I can tell him that I will now put bread on our table while he slowly tries to find another suitable job in Minnesota.
About 3 weeks before we were going to leave Minnesota, it was as if by miracle, this client contacted my husband and basically told him that they’ll be working with investors that are constantly looking to start a new company, so my husband will always have work to do, and thus a consistent income.
That’s great news, except that we got rid of almost everything now…. We had to re-purchase all of our winter clothes. I had to buy new snow tires. My husband said that he doesn’t need snow tires so we didn’t buy new snow tires for him this time round. We’re still struggling to find stuff from our storage unit; not remembering whether it’s lying around somewhere in our storage unit, or if we’ve donated it, sold it, or trashed it away?
Things were finally beginning to become more stable towards Feb/March of 2021 so I decided to start looking for a single family house for rent again. But then my husband told me that we may be leaving again. This entire ordeal has put me into a constant state of fight or flight and I’m always on guard, not knowing when we’ll be leaving again. I got so fed up with him and asked him to please just stay put, especially because he’s wanting to leave not because his client doesn’t have any work for him, but because my husband is unhappy with the client now.
Well, here we are again, a few months later, and I just by chance found out (since my husband and I have hardly been speaking with each other this entire year) that his client dropped his workload by three quarters. And since this client promised my husband endless streams of investors, my husband has basically put all his eggs into this one basket. Good thing another client asked him to start some work just over a month ago, but that client is still trying to find investors to invest in his new start-up company, so we don’t even know if that client has the money to pay my husband for the work that my husband has done for him for the past two months?
I asked my husband just now to please let me know way in advance if we’ll have to leave Minnesota again, especially since I was just starting to look for another single family house for rent again! My husband told me to just start planning as if we’ll be leaving as with his current situation, there’s no guarantee as to how long it will last.
I don’t even know what to do anymore. And there I was, just a few days ago, complaining about that person who had been playing with my feelings for over a year now. Well, I guess if my husband and I end up leaving Minnesota, then that emotional situation will just end naturally. I won’t even have to try my best to get over this player, the circumstances will just do it for me.
I guess it’s time to just let bygones be bygones?