the eternal student

How I deliver pizzas

This is what I'm working up to...

I have a PhD and I'm delivering pizzas to pay off my student loan because it's smart and I'm afraid my job will be outsourced to Asia along with me.

That's right. Andy is humbling himself and is going to deliver pizzas 2-3 nights a week to help pay off his student loan of $18k (will be $10k after we sell our house in Atlanta). The student loan is from my undergrad days at Covenant College. My 7 years of graduate school was all covered by Georgia Tech.

We've been following Dave Ramsey's plan seriously for the past 6 months now and it has done wonders for our budgeting and cash flow. We stopped using our credit card and have gotten to the point where we can pay our mortgage a month a head of time. I"m not going to say being on a zero cash flow budget is easy-but it has given us a better sense of control and realization of how strong our desires for unnecessary but desirable items are. If you don't tell your money where to go it just kind of disappears.

The extra money we are putting towards our student loan of about $400/month just wasn't making it go away fast enough for us. We want to be debt-free as quickly as possible so we can have peace of mind and really start chugging away at retirement and college savings. At my age of 30 it's critically important to put as much in long term savings as possible. If we sacrifice now it will be alot better for us later.

The other reason I want to be debt free is because I am seriously afraid of America losing its ability to pay for brainpower-my brainpower that is. It's not that I'm afraid of being paid less-it's that I'm afraid that the job won't even be there. Awesome jobs-to me- like mine at Micron are continuously more difficult to find in America due to our Asian neighbors and the global market. We want cheap goods-but it comes at a great expense. Micron is the only large-scale DRAM/memory company left in the US. All others were driven out by foreign competition. Micron just laid off 5% of its workforce in Boise. I knew I was taking a risk by going into the semiconductor industry due to its cyclical nature, but I didn't know exactly how it feels emotionally to be going through it. I want to prepare for the day I get laid off. We love Boise and don't want to move. That means I need to prepare for becoming a professor at Boise State or get into a consulting job like I was doing in graduate school. Then again, Micron is already beginning to recover and I could spend another 20 happy years there.

We're finally getting seriously mad at debt. I'm even considering not flying back to the East Coast until it's gone-saves about $2000 a year. Short term sacrifices for long term gains. Although when we get plane tickets for $164 from Boise to Atlanta it's hard not to take the flight. Plus-seeing family is pretty darn important to us.

What's funny is that Lynn worked at Pizza Hut before her Covenant College days in order to avoid a student loan. Now I'm working at Pizza Hut to pay a student
loan. I can't imagine carrying a student loan and not having a great paying job like mine-the Micron job that is. Perhaps I can get a second job consulting that pays $150/hour like I had in grad school. Man, that was nice.

Check out more pics on http://www.flickr.com/theeternalstudent

Another great camping weekend

Camping/Horseback riding trip to Atlanta, Idaho-

-New van
-Andy too excited about trip to check state of tires
-2 flat tires and 1 spare- Lynn hitchike's to meet Donna/Cindy
-Abandon van- try to rescue van-realize bad plan
-Lynn horseback rides and hikes all day saturday while Andy stays with kids
-Isaac shows he is a redneck while roasting marshmallows
-Ride back to Boise with Donna
-Get new tires in Boise
-Find babysitter for kids
-Lynn and Andy drive the Honda wagon 2 hours back to van
-Fix van
-Find incredible hot spring (mind you with no kids in tow)
-Stay well past dark
-Drive both vehicles back to Boise
-Can't wait to get back to the Boise National Forest

. More details later.

Be sure to click on the Image for the full collage.

Early Morning Mountain Biking

I've been up at 5am nearly every morning this week-mostly becuase I find the day goes better when I'm up early. Bu ttis morning instead of housechores and work, I'm going mountain biking. I hope to be in the foothills overlooking Boise by the time the sun comes up. Just another thing I love about Idaho in the summer.

Also:

1) We have a contract signed for our house in Atlanta. Real blessing because it is a couple we somewhat know who have a heart for the inner city, our current rental lease was almost up, and we still get equity out of the house despite the current seller's market.

2) We bought a 91 Toyota Previa with 200k miles for $1700. We have the bench seat and this thing is a near perfect family vehicle. 200k miles is about midlife for this vehicle.

3) I made it through my first experience of layoffs in the semiconductor industry. It's a wild ride. Wall Street loves to hear about layoffs-really backwards. More on that later.