Plans in Motion

All of our plans are going great. We've now found the exact apartments we're planning to move to that fit all of our needs (a main one and a back up, both close to each other and very similar), have budgeted it all out, and have an idea of when we'd like to move. We have a date that we absolutely want to be gone by (June 2017 is the latest). I've signed Katie up for Ballet, and if it goes well, I'll add acro classes too (which would be two fun classes each week to attend). Everything is going quite well...the only thing I can't plan, and what's preventing me from doing actual dates for moving, is the next pregnancy.

I absolutely do not want to move mid-pregnancy. I don't want to change doctors half way through, I don't want to be sick driving the 12 hours back and forth until we're settled, and I don't want to be packing and unpacking while sick or huge.I also don't want to move with a brand new baby, I'd like to at least wait until they're 3 months old ideally. So the date we move greatly depends on how long it'll take us to get pregnant and when the baby is due.

However, all of those dates means that 2016 would totally be out of the question to move, unless it took us more than 6 months to get pregnant (because of Katie's ballet classes, we want to stay here until June 2016 so she gets to go her recital). I'm not quite ready to say we won't move in 2016, because we've been discussing it at length as a major possibility. I'd love to have this coming winter be our last full PA winter either way. I think I'd consider moving while pregnant if I got pregnant with a winter baby, as I hate having a newborn and worrying about giving birth in the winter.

So while everything seems pretty set, the timing is so much in the air. I'm eager to see how to plays out. So far we're doing what we can daily - Bill works overtime every day so we can put money away in our emergency/moving fund and finish up paying off the few thousand we have left in student loans. I've been slowly going through everything in the attic and decluttering, selling or chucking what we don't plan to move with. We're prepping the finished two room attic to become my Father-in-Law's apartment, which will bring $500 more a month to us and help with moving all of us down South. I've been making strides to keep the grocery bill lower and make everything by hand. We eat out less to save more. I'm even keeping a close eye on lights being on to lessen the eletricity bill. Every penny counts right now, and the more frugal we can be, the faster we can make it down south - and in better shape.

We still haven't decided if we plan to get our big house right away down there (there's a few that I'd jump on RIGHT NOW if I could) or if we want to stay in something smaller for a while so we can live a few years with zero mortgage and use that time to save up to pay for a big house outright. I'm eager to get the kids into a home where we can stretch out, but the idea of having no mortgage is so enticing that I may be willing to be a bit cramped for a bit longer so we can have more money and no fear. Most likely that decision will come when we're down in North Carolina already and we're house hunting.