Weddingbee boards

My new husband is a professor, and while we were still engaged, he found out he would be losing his job after the current contract due to funding.  That was set to run out this month.  Because another faculty member decided to retire, he was offered a one-year contract for this school year.

In the meantime, he had been applying for other university jobs all over.  After only getting two interviews out of dozens of applications, he was offered a job in at a school in eastern Tennessee.  He accepted the job, which means we have to move next month. 

It is a great opportunity, really his dream job, but I don't want to go!  I work as a translator and private language instructor, and it is very hard to find a good full-time in-office position in the field.  Not so hard in a major city, but we would be making what could be a permanent move to rural Tennessee, where there are almost no jobs in my field.  I've sent out two dozen applications to schools and other organizations, and haven't heard a work back from any of them.  I'm the Director of the school where I work.  This is a great job and I have built my career around this.  I love what I do.

We cannot afford for him to be out of work (which he would be after this academic year), but we also can't afford for me to be out of work (which I would be for who knows how long).  I don't want him to give up on his dreams, but it makes me sick to think that I have to throw away my career and everything I've worked for the last ten years to build to help him further his.  Honestly, if the move meant I could stay home with kids (we're also TTC) it would be fine, but we can't afford that. 

I don't know what to do.  I hate this feeling.  I mostly just needed to vent, but if anyone has any thoughts, please share.  He said if it would make me miserable, we could cancel the move, but I'm not sure if that would be worse, since then he might blame me for missing out on the opportunity.

Thanks for the reply.  Unfortunately, no, there are no jobs in his field in our city.  He's a profession of media arts, with a lot of non-university experience in television production, but there just haven't been any jobs here in Indy for him during the search.

I was initially supportive of the job search and I knew it would mean moving away.  I just hoped it would mean moving to an area where I could also expand my career. 

I would also keep in mind the cost of living difference - by moving to a small town, you could very easily be a SAHM with only his wages. Also, look in nearby cities - even an hour away. If you can work from home for them, and maybe only go into the office once a week, it might be worth it.

Thanks for the thoughts.  I looked into the cost of living differences but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) Indy is a pretty cheap city, so there really is no difference.  His wages aren't enough simply because of school loans and credit card debt that we are paying off.  We are in a horrible financial situation as it is, and this job actuallys pays $3000 a year less than the one he has now.

I'm a little confused, because it sounds like neither of your current options are tenable. You both have to work to be financially OK, but you are going to move with him to TN?

At one point, my parents lived in different cities for a bit when their situation was somewhat similar. No, it wasn't the greatest thing ever but it paid the bills until one found a job in the city where the other one lived. I think it took a little over a year for this to happen, so it may be an option if you can stomach it.

We've found a house that rents for $575 a month, and have been told we can rent our current house for $800 a month.  We pay about $1000 a month for the mortgage and an additional loan that he took out to install a geothermal HVAC system.  There's no way we can sell the house quickly enough in this market, and he apparently owes more than we would probably get for it. So we'll be paying about the same in living expenses. 

He does make more than I do, by about $10K.  We don't have cable, we don't eat out much... I'm really not sure what else we can cut back. 

I REALLY don't want to go the bankruptcy option.  That's just not how I was raised. But if I'm out of work, we won't have any other option after a few months.

He's convinced I'll be able to find work in the area, or that I should just do freelance translation.  Unfortunately, that's very unstable, as there is no way to know how much work I could get, if I could even get any.  The schools in the area have actually just dismantled their Spanish programs, and the schools farther out with positions that I have applied to aren't responding.

We've discussed this to death.  He wants to go and I am terrified and sick about it. But if we don't go now, we'll end up in the same place (one of us unemployed and/or having to move) next July anyway.

@rplatzer - That's what I'm thinking, too. 

We've only been married for a month. Separating isn't ideal, and I'm not sure he would even be willing to do it.  He and his first wife tried that, and it ultimately led to their divorce. I just don't think he realizes how bad our financial situation is. Or for some reason he's not concerned about it.

If I stay, we would still need to rent our house out, or our living expenses would go from $1000 a month to $1575.  Of course, then I would have to find an apartment or something, and for whatever reason studio apartments are not reasonably priced in this city.

And, of course, my employers could decide not to keep me on once he moves... it would make it pretty clear that I wouldn't be around for the long term, so they'd have no reason not to bring in a replacement.

He was given a contact at the new univeristy, who has yet to return either of my phone calls. :(

I applied for a translator/interpreter position at a hospital in Knoxville.  No response.

DH truly feels that there is nothing closer to home, or possibly anywhere, that's out there for him right now.  This single job offer is the result of a year long search.

As for whether I would be happy... well, I'd like to think that I could be happy sitting in a studio apartment eating ramen noodles everynight for dinner if it meant being with him... but I'm not sure I'm ready to say that.  My independence has always been very important to me, and I am afraid that this move will mean giving that up.

Thanks, all.

The job is an assistant professor position. The college does not have tenure right now, but they plan to reinstate it within the next year or two, and his position would be eligible.

I have applied for ever job I can find within two hours of the area or so, and even one in Greenville, SC. There just aren't any takers.

When he was applying for jobs, he just applied for every opening he could find that fit his qualifications. We never knew which ones would be viable, and he didn't tell me about all of them.

When he interviewed for the job, the people at the college led him to believe that a multilingual teacher with a Masters in TESOL would find a job in no time. It's a very small college, so I highly doubt there would be a spousal position available.

Thanks for the thought. It's actually a 3-year contract, followed by a 5-year contract, and the possibility of tenure at some point. And he makes more than me, which is part of the motivation.

Asking him to work out of his field... I don't know that he would go for it. A lot of his self-worth is tied into his job, and this search was exhausting for him. I should have put better geographical boundaries on it, but I didn't. I just didn't realize how bad the job market was in some areas, since Spanish is always called a high demand area and there are jobs all over the country for Spanish and ESL... Except, it seems, eastern TN.

Thanks. We're in Indianapolis, which has a comparable cost of living.

I would actually like to postpone TTC for a year. I couldn't wait to start before all of this, but now I'm worried about looking for a job or starting a new job while pregnant. But DH is 41, so he doesn't want to wait any longer and research seems to say we really shouldn't.

We'll have to talk it through more, but as far as he is concerned, the decision is made. He would reverse it to save our marriage oif it came to that, but I don't want to put him in that position. It's running his own department, rebuilding a program, which he's always wanted to be able to do.

Thanks.  We had a long, tearful and occassionally angry talk about it, and he now sees that I probably need to stay here until I can find a job. He's also going to call the man who will be his new boss and level with him about the situation of my job search.  When he was interviewing, he explained what I do and they all assured him I'd have no trouble finding something, so he's hopeful that perhaps they will come up with some other ideas as far as places to look (or something at the college).  It's worth a try. 

I think even though you've "talked this to death" you need to talk about it a little more and I say this as someone who has sacrificed her career on behalf of her husbands.  The truth is that based on the available salaries here my DH makes 3-4 times more than I do, so obviously we must live where he can find employ and I do the best that I can.

I hate this.  But I love him more.  So instead of being in my field where I have a master's degree I will go work as a secretary.  It OK, at least its straight day work. And I've yet to have a job that cuddles me at night, or cheers me up when I'm down.

Having said that, we do have parameters that we work from.  First of all, taking a pay cut, even a little one, is not something my DH is  willing to do.  It sounds like you really can't live on one salary -- and we wouldn't be able to either if we took a pay cut. Secondly, we agreed that we are not in the current area long term unless, in 3-5 years, we both really love it and want to stay.  Third, we've put off TTC.  Babies -- in the words of one friend of mine who has an 8 month old -- "are so expensive they make you cry."  It sounds like you already have enough on your plate financially. Maybe a financial counselor could assist you?  Or he could do some adjunct work at another college too?

I just wanted to thank you all for your advice. 

We talked it overagain, ran the numbers, and decided that as long as our current house for the at least $895 a month a rental management company thinks we can get (which is reasonable for our area), and I can get a job that pays at least minimum wage (or get approved for unemployment, which actually looks more possible after DH's last call to the office), we'll be OK.  Not great, but in pretty much the same place we are right now, only with a brighter future for DH since he'll be contracted for the next three years with a likely possiblity of tenure after that.

We also found out that he can teach additional classes at the college and a couple of schools in Knoxville for $1600 a session, which will help quite a bit. 

@puppymom2006 - I hear you.  I think that's what I'll end up doing, at least for the first year or so.  I am hoping that I will be able to find a teaching position somewhere in the area, but like you said - my career has never cuddled me at night, as much as I love it and have invested myself in it.  We also talked about putting off TTC, but I'm 30, DH is 41 and my family has a history of problems with fertility (it took my parents 8 years to conceive naturally), so we really don't feel like waiting longer is a luxury of time that we have.  At least (because of his job perks) we will know college is paid for. 

Thanks again for all the thoughts about this.

For now, we've found someone to rent our house for $950 a month, rented a house there for $800 a month, and I've given notice at my current job.  I also planted the idea of continuing to work long distance for them, but they wanted some time to think about that... so I imagine it will be a no. 

Still not a single bite on the dozens of applications I've sent out downt there, even now that we have a local address.

At least now I've seen the area.  We visited over the weekend.  It is really pretty... if only cows and horses wanted to learn Spanish.  I'm just such a city girl.  I wanted to cry at one point.  I LOVE visiting nature... but not living in it.

I'm really not feeling any better about the situation, and it's become a constant source of fighting between us.  I just sort of feel resentfully resigned and numb.  Yuck.

Thanks for letting me vent, hive.

@MrsSl82be - It does stink.  I'm going to have to try freelancing, it looks like.  Contacting all the local schools was the first thing I did... only to learn that they have eradicated ALL of the Spanish programs in the district down to one single teacher at the local high school in order to save $$$.  (Sadly, she doesn't seem to be about to retire.)  This also makes me a little concerned about the value placed on foreign language learning in the area... yikes.