Working the options in my head

DH and I are in the "dreaming of a better (or at least different) life" stage, now that we know we are getting closer to being able to sell. But the logistics of making it all work, especially to move to another state, is a bit overwhelming.

First there is all that timing of getting your home sold and then finding something new (and closed purchase) by the time you have to be out of your old place. I have always wondered how people managed that. I know some have enough money and good credit to own 2 homes at the same time, until they can sell the old one, but that won't be our case.

And there's our credit rating......we are currently 5 years past our bankruptcy filing. I have no idea how hard it will be to get financing. I have read numerous places that we would qualify for an FHA loan after 2 years and they finance with a credit score as low as 580 (ours is currently at 700), so unless I'm totally off, it seems we should be able to get a loan that way, if we can't get a conventional loan. I know that FHA doesn't require a very big down payment, but we for sure want to have enough to put down 20%. Heck, based on the equity we have now and if we wanted to put down a much smaller down payment, we could get the heck out of here.......but that would be a stupid move financially, given our ages. So, that is the main reason we are still here putting up with druggies :/

Then there is finding a job  Eeek! That part seems the most daunting to me, but at least being an accountant my skills are not tied to any one industry. Ideally, I'd love to find the job first, in order to widen the areas of search and then move to that area, rather than move to an area and have my job prospects limited to what I am willing to drive to get to work. But my mind isn't wrapping around the timing of all that working out.

I would definitely at least ask my current employer if they would be willing to keep me on and let me work all remote. Currently I am in the office 16 1/2 hours of my 40 hour work week and often times only 11 hours in the office per week. Of the work that I do that I physically need to be there, I'd say it's more like 5 hours a week, the rest of the time I just work on things that I could be doing at home. The only things that I can't do from home are preparing the bank deposits (that I then scan into a nifty little machine and don't even have to go to the bank or mail the deposit), sorting through all my mail/bills, and cutting actual checks and all the filing of checkstubs/invoices and paperwork.

They could hire a p/t clerical person (at much less per hour than I make) to come in and do that. I'd be willing to take a pay cut. Our cost of living will be such that doing that is totally feasible on my end. (most likely any other job I get at new place will be less than I make in this big city). The extra hours per week that I would have available could be used to work on increasing the time I have for researching when we don't get paid what we expected to get paid on our commissions. This happens so often, and I really don't have the time available to work on it. We just end up accepting what we were paid, for the most part. If I was able to work on those more, the recovery of lost income would probably pay for the part time person.

Hey, I have to at least ask! No one ever gets a yes answer by not asking in the first place. That would be PERFECT, if I could continue with my job that I love. I'm about 99% certain I will be able to keep my side job - it's all remotely done anyway, so there will still be that $12k a year income. It is essentially exactly the same job I do now full time. This company just has their office clerk do the deposits and she pays the bills via online banking. She then scans and forwards me the deposit slip and all the remittance stubs and I enter in Quickbooks and process all the commission payments in the order system. I also process the payroll. All same exact things I do at my full time job, other than I do the clerical stuff in the office setting.

But, if that isn't an option I had another idea to make this transition work a little better. If we sold, we would then buy something new in new area, while I still kept this job. We'd probably qualify for a mortgage much better on this income and the fact that I've worked here over 10 years. If asked I will say that I will be working remotely when we move. We'll get everything moved to new house and DH will stay there while I stay back here (at my moms) and continue to work my job, while I actively search for a new job in new area. That way there is no gap in income coming in and allows me to be much more picky to whatever job I accept and not just take whatever I can get.

There are definitely a lot of homes in the areas we like and in our price range (even lower priced) and we will end up with a stick built home on acreage for the same price as we have here for a manuf. home on one acre, in a suburban area that takes hours to get anywhere. A 50 mile trip usually takes 2 hours. On a Friday afternoon it is 3 hours.