One Dollar Allowance

In honor of my last post being two years ago, we’re starting this back up! Here’s a summary of what’s been happening, and I’ll delve deeper into specific topics with future posts.

In January 2019, Mrs. ODS was back at work part time after having our first child, burning through sick leave, getting ready to quit her job. In February 2019, the Federal government was shut down for several weeks, and I found other tasks to occupy my time, including being the full-time caregiver to our son. I took a temporary assignment over the summer of 2019, moving my family to Lexington, KY for 3 months. My wife was pregnant with baby #2, which wasn’t easy. On January 2, 2020, she was admitted to the hospital for pre-term labor at 26 weeks. Luckily, they were able to stop contractions and send her home for bedrest for the next 10 weeks. A week after the country shut down, baby girl was born full term and healthy. Living through a pandemic and limiting our social circle while at home with a newborn and toddler (19 months apart) made us realize how we wanted to be closer to family. On a whim, we agreed to move to KY. Everything played out a lot faster than we expected, and we sold our VA house in September 2020, moved into our new home in KY in November 2020, unpacked, celebrated the holidays, and here we are. We both feel better suited to continue to build these efforts started so long ago.

Here are the goals: teaching posts, story (background) posts, and monthly financial updates. Each post will be categorized into one of these for ease of future searches. We’ve made a lot of financial decisions over the past two years and have a lot to share!