Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Hello and Introduction!

Hi Everyone,
Welcome to my new blog "Going Redneck"!  This blog is a little late in starting as the migration/transformation has already started, but I will fill you in gradually as the days move on.  But first, a little history of what prompted me to start this.  As you can see from the text below, we are a pretty typical family in this day-and-age, and we feel we are at that tipping point that so many have already fallen over.  What makes us different is how we chose to deal with this tipping point pro-actively. 

As it stands right now, I am a highly paid software engineering manager for a major communications company.  My wife is a stay at home mom, and we have three beautiful girls. I grew up in the Midwest (Kansas) and my wife grew up in Tajikistan (a former war torn USSR territory).  My wife moved to the states when she was 14 and has since learned English, completed high school, got a finance degree from Arizona State University, and then went on to get her teaching certificate (and a masters degree) in special education before deciding to stay home and raise our children.  I, on the other hand, do not have a degree, but did graduate from an advanced (science/technology oriented) high school, and taught myself engineering.

We currently live in a "typical" 5-bedroom, 3-bathroom, 3000 square feet house in the Phoenix Metropolitan area.  At the recent downturn (and arguably "collapse") of the economy, we started thinking long and hard about what we would do should I lose my job.  Not that I am afraid of that possibility, but with no degree to get me in the door anywhere, we would be really "up a creek without a paddle" if that were to happen.  To compound that, our mortgage on the house we are currently in won't break even for about 10-15 years (rough estimate).  So we are essentially paying a very high rental rate for something that will likely never bring us the investment potential we were lead to believe when we bought it.  Furthermore, since we are "good people" and pay our mortgage on time and blah, blah, blah, we don't qualify for any of the government assistance that others may get.

So...to kick this blog off, I will give you the teaser of what has happened so far (I will expand later):  We just purchased 2.6 acres in southern Queen Creek Arizona, and it has a newer (2006) double-wide mobile home on it that was completely trashed (are rebuilding).    We haven't even moved in yet, and already I have been to urgent care and the emergency room, the sheriff has been to our place twice (including a car towing and arrest), we have found needles wrapped in a paper towel, and have had to deal with more scorpions than I have ever seen in my 15 years here in AZ, and a snake.  Oh, and I should mention that the first thing we brought to the new house was a 1980's era mobile home and immediately parked it in front of the house.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to sharing more as our adventure continues!

Stay tuned for our updates on how we are essentially "going redneck" in order to live debt free with a lot of land for all of my and my families toys.

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