<p>Have any of you been in a situation where you MAY have to relo (job) but you’re not sure and won’t be for several months? Its kind of like the Twilight Zone, making me feel incredibly restless like I should be doing things to get ready even though its not a sure thing at all. If it were just me and H it would be one thing, but the kids’ schooling gets me frazzled and we’re not telling them until we’re more sure because we don’t want to upset the apple cart. I’ve started looking at our house as something that needs to be sold so am starting with basic repairs/ upkeep, cleaning out closets (very cathartic!) researching local schools and spending WAY too much time looking at real estate online. Any other suggestion would be most appreciated! (oh, and the worst part is I can’t confide in my local friends because its a company town…so everything’s on the QT)</p>
<p>This must be really stressful. Good luck. I’ve had two friends where the husband got a new job in a new city and the wife and kids stayed behind to finish the school year and then before the school year was out, the dad had moved back - in one case the job was not as expected and in another the company got bought out and the husband felt he didn’t fit in anymore. You might think about a two-step move, the one with the new job first and then the other with the kids later?</p>
<p>I agree with MidwestMom2 kids. It is far better to move when the school year is over. A few months from now, you will know better whether a move is indeed in order. You can then research the new location for new housing in a district with good schools for your children; meanwhile, your children’s education will not be disrupted and you will have time to prepare your house for selling. I don’t see the advantages of preparing for a move that may not happen or moving in the middle of the school year.</p>
<p>Why don’t you pm veryhappy? She’s been going through this and can be of help to you.</p>
<p>Getting a house decluttered, spruced up, and ready to sell is always a great idea, whether you end up selling or not. </p>
<p>It is so nice to have a decluttered house.</p>
<p>(message sent from a clean but cluttered house)</p>
<p>thanks for the suggestions. Yes, we most definitely wouldn’t move them during the school year. H would start in April and we’d probably stay here through the summer to take advantage of the known sports and camps as opposed to trying to figure out a good summer long distance. This is what we did 10 years ago when we moved here. A two step process seemed to work well, and H house hunted after work and on weekends when he wasn’t visiting us. Yes, a decluttered house is GREAT whether this works out or not!</p>
<p>dke - Yes! We are there right now. We are going for a look-see at the end of September. We don’t know if we will like the area, if they will like my H, if H will like the job, if they will offer him enough to make it worthwhile…</p>
<p>Meanwhile, he has to create a long-term plan at his current company. And I am taking on new piano students. We have to live right now as if we are staying. We just can’t put our lives on hold for every possibility.</p>
<p>And we are trying to make home-repair / decor decisions that we like, but that would also work toward selling. I am NOT a neutral-color person, so it is hard. (I painted my living room a couple weeks ago - kind of a butterscotch color. I hope it is neutral enough.) We need new carpeting in a couple rooms. If we move, it will be the cheap stuff; if we stay, I have something much more elegant picked out.</p>
<p>The positive is that it is helping us get focused about prioritizing our home projects. My H spent much of yesterday cleaning out some boxes of his stuff in the basement - yay! </p>
<p>We’ve lived through this uncertainty before; however, we weren’t changing companies, so at least he could talk about it at work.</p>
<p>In Feb 2003, my H’s company asked for volunteers to go to Germany. Several folks, including H, spoke up. In March, 3 people were chosen. In April, the whole thing was cancelled. In May, it was back on, then off again. In June, it was back on, but 1 person dropped out. (The 2nd person’s wife quit her job in anticipation, and they withdrew their kids from private school.) Later in June, that second family was dropped. In July, the contract still wasn’t signed, and seemingly at impasse. The Germans insisted he was coming, but the US side thought it was falling through. In late July, H was sent to Germany to discuss things. They wanted him to move, still without contract. He told them he needed a contract first, and that his deadline to move was August, due to having two kids in HS.</p>
<p>End of July they gave him a contract, and we got on the plane 3 weeks later. Company gave us 3, single-spaced pages of things we had to do, including we had to inventory our whole house and assign values to everything for insurance purposes, and decide what to take and what to store. Medical exams, various legal things, police reports on all of us, etc. Get kids withdrawn from school, and get copies of everything imaginable.</p>
<p>After months of uncertainty, to be thrown into that sort of whirlwind was awful. I kept wishing we could have had the time over the previous months! Emotionally, I was a basket case by then, which led to some bad decisions and took me literally months to recover. Not a good frame of mind to move into a new culture with. </p>
<p>This time around, I’ve decided I will personally take it slower. Even if my H ends up taking the new job, I will stay put for awhile. Meanwhile, we are using the time to discuss every pro and con, get our questions in order, talk about things that might happen if we move and if we don’t. It is very hard to live in this limbo, though. We have to guard against mentally moving before we even have an offer!</p>
<p>Having lived through the uncertainty of a possible relocation for about 6 months a couple of years ago I can only validate that it is extremely stressful. Be careful of your health and do all that you can to alleviate the stress. Regular exercise became a priority for me.</p>
<p>I too, can vouch for the unsettling feeling of “not knowing” for a prolonged period of time. We’ve done the corporate relo thing from Chicago–California–Chicago–Pennsylvania–North Carolina. Between the PA/NC thing, it was probably a 9-month thing… Choice of moving to AZ, moving to NC, or going to a different company in who-knows-where… I felt like I was on “Let’s Make a Deal” and trying to decide whether to go for door #3 or not. Cleaning up the house is a good thing…I know in previous moves, I kicked myself for lots of things—“Why couldn’t I have made the house this nice when I LIVED here?” Just try to continue on course, for a while. Living in limbo is bad; don’t hold back on starting new things because you don’t know if you’ll still be there or not…try as hard as you can to keep a normal life. Partition the “worry time” to a certain time of day (I’d devote a couple of hours a day to internet-research on future locations, etc.), but continue “living”. Good luck. Lots of us have been there, and it’s no picnic.</p>
<p>Having relocated with kids multiple times, I will suggest that it is easier for younger kids (before high school) to move mid-year instead of in the summer. That way they have a semester to make friends before the summer. For high school kids, unless they’ve been in a semester block system, it’s just too hard to transfer the credits appropriately.</p>
<p>As for moving/not moving… I’m with the person who said it’s great to have a repaired, clean, decluttered house. Good luck with it all.</p>
<p>Your comments are so validating to me, thank you!! It’s an odd place to be for me mentally, ie when the kids come home thrilled with something at school, I start to feel sad and guilty that we may be pulling them out of such a terrific learning environment. If I’m annoyed with something (or someone!) here I think, “Well, only a few more months of tolerating this!” and then reality check comes swooping down that we really have no idea if H will even get the new job! I’m constantly monitoring my attitudes on things and its driving me a bit nuts, but I’ll go with astro’s suggestion of an alloted “worry time” which makes sense. I could stay online for HOURS looking at houses which wasn’t technologically possible the last time we moved. (ten years ago) It ends up being a waste of time because by next Spring they’ll probably be sold anyway…but it seems to be a bit of a stress reliever. Well, off to the treadmill!</p>
<p>Excuse me while I tear out my hair and run away screaming. . .</p>
<p>I’ve also moved multiple times with a bunch of kids. The last episode started in March of 07, when H first interviewed, then accepted a job in May of 07. We intended to move that summer. The kids told everyone they were leaving. . .
We couldn’t sell our house and stayed on for the entire school year after H moved. We just now sold our house (last week) taking a HUGE loss. . .Pretty much destroyed our finances, our marriage/family relationships, my mental health. . .dumped WAY too much responsibility on our 16yo D who essentially lost her junior year. . .well, you get the picture. It sucked. But it’s over now, and I’m relieved to close that chapter.</p>
<p>Good idea not to tell people about it. Once you tell people you’re moving, they start to withdraw (No use investing more time in a relationship that is about to end). Even after we moved (in June) I spent the whole summer going back to our old house to do repairs, maintenance, yardwork, etc. Kids would see friends. . .It was depressing because we couldn’t make a clean break, we loved our old house and (unlike all the other times we’d moved) didn’t want to move.</p>
<p>I would be very wary of changing jobs/trying to sell a house right now (unless you’ve got the company behind you to help with housing).</p>
<p>We’ve moved 3 times in the last 5 years–I can’t tell you how much time I’ve wasted looking at houses on-line! I even started to think about becoming a real estate agent. . .</p>
<p>dke, I was in your shoes all of last year! I know exactly how you feel, and you have my sympathies. The initial contacts started in August last year and the decision to move didn’t get made until May of this year! Lots of uncertainty about everything- can’t really make any plans, can’t tell the friends and family what you are up to, etc. We did end up moving and things have generally worked out OK so far, but it has been a very difficult 12 months. No question about it.</p>
<p>I agree with some of the advice you’ve been given here. I also found it helpful to limit my ‘worrying time’, and regular exercise really helped. Another suggestion would be to spend more time here on C.C. When you move, we will still be here.</p>
<p>Atomom and vicarious, thanks! Nice to know that there are other CC’er s who’ve been there and done that…Sorry you guys had to go through it but have gotten to the other side. That’s encouraging. One thing that is particularly good about this (IF it works out) is that we’d really like to live in the new area and it would be like returning home. (although we don’t have family there anymore, we have most of our old friends within a three hour radius which we haven’t had for the past ten years) I do hate the duplicity, though. The other day I met a friend here for coffee, and was feeling particularly frazzled. She asked me the usual, “how are you!” and I would have LIKED to bark out that I’d been filling out school applications (middle and high school, private) all a.m but just smiled and said, “oh, fine!”. It’s just odd that way! Time to put my “big girl pants” on, I guess!</p>
<p>Well, that’s very close to my current situation, though in my case it would be a relo within the same company. Situation started in November of last year, and still hasn’t played out – may extend in to the first quarter of 2009. It has been very stressful all around. Not just for me and my family, but also just coming to work and being surrounded by a large group of people who are all feeling the same stress. Then there are the people who have been notified that they will NOT be asked to relo, but will be given severance – but they don’t know when either! </p>
<p>One of the biggest stress factors is that there does not appear to be any potential for increased compensation due to company cost-cutting, despite the fact that we would be told to move from a relatively low-cost area to a very high-cost area. Arrhg. </p>
<p>Unfortunately I have no additional suggestions, but I appreciate the thread as it has been helpful. I did go on a big weight-loss and exercise kick earlier this year and have been more successful than I have before – definitely a case of feeling good about being in “control” of something when everything else is so uncertain.</p>
<p>Spending hours online looking at houses is NOT a waste of time. You are finding out what kinds of houses appeal to you, what prices are like, what neighborhoods sell for what… that’s research, not timewasting.</p>
<p>From the kid’s perspective (moved after 6th and 8th grade) it was very helpful to finish out the year each time. That way I didn’t have to worry about different curriculum, or being thrown into a new school at a weird time. The first time we all moved together from Ohio to Indiana during the summer. But the second time, my mom moved down to FL to start her job in early April, while my dad stayed back and helped us finish school. It was kind of surreal, especially with track since I knew it would be last year competing at that school, but I was glad to finish out the season and year with my friends there. Plus, I got to move into a brand new HS in FL, so not everyone knew each other anyways, so I wasn’t labeled “the new kid.”</p>
<p>dke: I had started a similar thread when we were in the midst of the decision making process. Our daughter also read some of the responses and found them useful. I am pasting the link below, maybe you will find some responses helpful. I plan to post a follow-up on that thread when things settle down here for us and when we figure out how everything turned out.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/504141-what-consequences-moving-b-w-soph-junior-year.html?highlight=Moving[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/504141-what-consequences-moving-b-w-soph-junior-year.html?highlight=Moving</a></p>
<p>dmd is right, looking at houses online will have you well prepared to make a quick decision should it be necessary, you will know more about housing and pricing in the neighborhood and in today’s market the house may very well still be there on the market. My parent’s house in CA has been for sale for two years, come down in price nearly $100k and is still not moving.</p>
<p>I was in that relo limbo land for years. When the move it or lose offer dod come through I took a package. It was more important to me to keep the kids where they were. Cost of living increase was also a factor.</p>
<p>I was working again in the same town after a short break. </p>
<p>Best decision I could have made at the time. Good luck with yours.</p>