By 1993, we had lived in Massachusetts for 11 years, had investments in stocks and 401ks and had bought our first house. But, we felt we needed a change, and Jim had an opportunity to work at a small software company in Pittsburgh. Our challenge in early June of that year, just after Leslie had finished 7th grade, was to find a house in the Pittsburgh area, then pack and prepare our Massachusetts house for sale.
We gave ourselves one day to find the new house so we could return to Massachusetts.
Since Jim had grown up in the Pittsburgh area and I'd lived there for four years, we knew we wanted to live in the South Hills. We wanted to be close to mass transit since Jim's new job would be in the city. We made one decision that was simultaneously good and bad. We had savings but not enough for a house down payment. So Jim chose to cash out his 401k which would give us about $40,000 for a house down payment, some new home fix-up, and for the extra taxes we'd have to pay the next year on cashing out the 401k.
Pittsburgh houses were cheaper than Massachusetts houses, so we knew we could find a house for less than we'd paid for our first house. I'm not sure how many houses we looked at that day; at least 6 and maybe 8. We looked at houses in Mt. Lebanon, Upper Saint Clair and Bethel Park. Our agent kept driving by a little house for sale which was across from the high school in Mt. Lebanon. We finally looked at it late in the afternoon, a bit reluctantly as it looked too small. It turned out to be larger than we expected - the attic was finished and it had a master bedroom addition off the second floor. While it was about a 70 year old house, it was in reasonable shape and shouldn't need too much work. We put in an offer for full price which was accepted.
Three weeks later, Jim moved to Pittsburgh to start his new job; he lived with his godparents for a few weeks until he could start to move into the new house. I remained in Massachusetts, working on packing and getting our house ready for the market. Once Jim closed on our Mt. Lebanon house, I put Leslie on a plane to Pittsburgh so she could adjust to her new home.
In 1993, the usually hot Massachusetts housing market had cooled a bit. We got an offer on our old house that was a little low, but we took it so I could move to the Pittsburgh area. The inspection found a couple of minor problems - we needed to rebuild the wooden stairs into the house. I hired a friend to rebuild the stairs, then quit my job and moved south.
But...almost as soon as I got to Pittsburgh, there were more problems with buyers. Now they were demanding cosmetic changes. It was one thing after the other and so...we pulled out of the deal. That was a risky decision - we now had two mortgages to pay. We thought the Massachusetts house would sell pretty fast.
We were wrong.
There weren't a lot of tech writing jobs available when I got to Pittsburgh. I think I only sent out one or two resumes, and I needed a job immediately so we could cover two mortgages. It turned out, we were only 2 miles from a Borders Book Store that was looking for a new bookseller. I did the math and realized the Borders job would just about cover 1 mortgage each month. I aced their test and found out they really wanted someone with computer experience to oversee their computer book section, so I was hired and started the next day.
We were very cautious with money during this time. Since I got a book discount, we bought more books. And we went to the movies. That was about it. Jim's new job had a 401k so we started investing in that as soon as we could. We still had some Stratus stock, but I learned I was a terrible market timer. We held onto our Stratus stock until it fell to $2 a share - way too long. Eventually, the company was bought and disappeared. But because we were very careful, we managed to avoid adding non-mortgage-related debt at that time, even if we weren't expanding our investments.
Eight months after we pulled out of the deal on our Massachusetts house, it finally sold but for even less than we expected. The new price covered what was left of the mortgage; I think we got a check for about $500 after the mortgage on the old house was paid off.
I stayed at Borders about a year, then found another tech writing job. It wound up being kind of an odd job with very strange politics. When my boss and his assistant quit a few months later, I decided to leave with them. I'd had an introduction to the World Wide Web at that job, and learned HTML right away, I started building Web pages. For a few months, you could make $30 an hour if you could code HTML, so I made a little money at that. Soon, there was software that would edit HTML for you, so HTML coding quickly became a minimum wage job.
Found another tech writing job with a miserable commute. I only lasted there about six months as the commute was pretty wearing.
Finally got a tech writing job that I liked at an interesting company called ANSYS. The pay was good, and the company had a stock purchase plan as well as a 401k. I was able to invest in both.
After about four rocky years, we were able to save and invest more seriously. We started to travel and set money aside for Leslie for college.
I remember in the 1970s there was a book called something like "Your Wealth-Building Years." For us, our wealth-building years were finally starting.
