I didn’t even know what Coddiwompling was a month ago, but when I stumbled upon the definition of the word I realised that my family had already started and it was about to get VERY real. I am sure that from the outside looking in it might look like my wife and I have been having a mid-life crisis but there is a lot of method to our current madness. In fact we might just be the sane ones and all the mainstream friends out there are the crazies…..
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I’d already been looking to mix things up a bit in 2018 but things really came to a head for us in about September when my wife and I came through the last wisps of that dreaded “Baby Haze”. We had realised that we now had the family we wanted and even though we weren’t going to be having any more kids our cosy little cottage home seemed to be shrinking. Really our mess was just getting bigger but I had been in denial that we’d need a bigger residence. I came to the conclusion that we had about another year to resettle somewhere before our eldest was due to go into Primary school, but my thinking started moving very quickly from there.
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I knew we’d missed the Aussie real estate peak, but with the market already in decline I figured “Why wait?” so the very next day we started talking about putting the house up for sale and trying to get ahead of a market that might be even uglier in 12 months time. That kicked off a massive project of renovations to properly “Stage” the property and get it ready for open house inspections…thus we rolled up the old sleeves and dropped off the grid. When we weren’t renovating we were inspecting rental properties as we weren’t ready to buy and we needed somewhere for the kids to live where they would be safe and couldn’t make a mess of things. Our kids are particularly talented in that they can make mess faster than we can clean it up. Renovating with kids in the house was going to be impossible.
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There were a few spanners thrown in the works, but when we couldn’t score a decent rental that was a big one. I’d actually offered to pay for one place with cash 12 months up front and still got knocked back! I was quickly realising just how close we are to having our own Social Credit Score here in Australia as I don’t have any credit or rental history, nor any recent payslips to prove I am a good citizen….but don’t get me started on that or this post will turn into a rant.
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It was now early December and with Christmas approaching I wanted some normalcy and stability for my kids (and parents) over the festive season so I didn’t want to be moving house, nor putting it on the market during a time we should really be enjoying so things came to a head and I boiled it all down to choice between two options.
1. The Safe Plan – There was a rental we thought was “OK” but even though neither my wife nor I was excited about it’d do the job. We could sign up, move in before Christmas and continue as planned.
2. The Radical Plan – My wife quits her job and we become homeless nomads.
Ok, so I am perhaps being a bit dramatic but there is not a lie there. I figured that from go to woe the Safe Plan was going to cost us several thousands of dollars in rent for a property we barely needed and it would be a hell of a lot more fun to spend those thousands on a nomadic experience. My wife was pretty unhappy in her job anyway and this was probably just the catalyst we needed to break the cycle of abuse she was enduring at work. The Australian Summer is a great time to be hitting the road and enjoying the outdoors, so off we went and the day after Christmas we started putting stuff in storage as we embraced the Radical Plan with all our hearts.
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We’ve stayed at a few places close to home already while we were feverishly doing renovations remotely and we hit up all the baby-sitting options we could muster. Our families and friends have been very supportive on that front, but gradually we’re spreading our wings a bit more now as we’re past the hard stuff. Our house has been formally listed for sale and our first open house inspections have begun so it’s getting easier from here. Currently we are staying at a caravan park which is about 20 metres from a great Aussie beach. We don’t really know what or where we are going to in coming weeks, we don’t know where we will be living in a month or whether our house will even sell, but we are most definitely travelling in a purposeful manner toward a vague destination and we are loving life. This Coddiwomple is great and it’s also come at a great time for me to get away from the Crypto space while some of the negative stuff plays out. Being on the move I might be hard to catch for a while to come, but I’m expecting 2019 will be a big year for us and we’ll land on our feet somewhere. Soon after I hope to be writing again more regularly. See you then!
