7 years ago my wife and I made the decision to move to her home country. It was a serious gamble! We had a lot pressure where we lived, it was during the EU banking crisis. I was working a...
7 years ago my wife and I made the decision to move to her home country. It was a serious gamble! We had a lot pressure where we lived, it was during the EU banking crisis. I was working a reasonably decent job, as was my wife, we have one son. The company I worked for had agreed to pay my college tuition to reskill as a software developer and I was just finishing my first year (studying in the evenings).
Even though we had good salaries, the cost of living was excessive. We were just keeping our heads above water.
My wife was putting out the feelers for a job in her home country just to see what was out there. She got an offer. We discussed the possibilities; everyone we spoke with said we (but me in particular) were nuts. We were giving up two good jobs, selling our house, moving to a country where I don't speak the language during a recession. We had good jobs, a nice house, etc.... but we weren't living, we were literally working to pay to keep working.
So we took a gamble. I applied for a University in her country, handed in my notice and we packed everything up and left 3 months later. I didn't know I had a place in the college until a month before we left, after we had already handed in our notice and quit our jobs.
Now, 7 years later, we look back and wonder wtf would have happened if we never took the chances.
It was absolutely best decision we could have made. Sure, I had to give up a 10 year career and start from scratch again in a foreign country. It was really tough getting a job after college. and I had to take a 50% pay cut in the beginning (after 2 years of my wife supporting us while I was studying). But the change in lifestyle made everything worth it. And now after 4 years as a programmer I'm earning about 25% more than I was in my original career, with a much better work/life balance, very little debt, a larger house in a nice small town for less than half the price of our old house. All in all everything is better.
I see so many people fighting to hold a tight grip on what they have, and rightly so I suppose. But after my experience over the past few years I'll never get tied down to a single place again. The pressure of trying to hold on to our home because "this is where we live, this is our home" is NOT worth it. Our new home is better in every way, except that my friends and family are far away. But even then, when we fly home to visit them a lot of the time they tell me they only usually meet up when we go to visit anyway, so it's not even as if we're missing that. And you find new friends abroad too. It's all good. Especially with skype and whatsapp, etc....
If the situation demanded it again I'd pack everything up and move on to the next place. Quality of life is now my most important criteria for living; if things aren't living up to my standards now I'll think about moving again. It's definitely the best decision we ever made.
I'd say that two moments are in tight position for me as "biggest decision". The first has been to move in with my current partner and the family that we formed. Everything started around 10 years...
I'd say that two moments are in tight position for me as "biggest decision".
The first has been to move in with my current partner and the family that we formed.
Everything started around 10 years ago. We had previous history together from when we were younger but back then I bailed as she already wanted something serious I wasn't ready. It's probably worth to mention that a Rome - Florence (countryside) relationship while being under 20 wasn't exactly something easy.
Things happened in the meanwhile for both of us but mostly for her as she had a son that had to raise alone.
For some coincidence I ended up meeting her again while I was in my middle 20s and living by myself while working in Florence. Something clicked right away and, even if she was seeing a guy from Birmingham (UK) without anything serious, we decided to give it a go anyway. Just for fun as well.
After 6 months, more or less, we realised that it wasn't just for fun anymore and after having clarified some things we begun to see each other on a more regular basis and involving the young kid. One year after that meeting in florence I moved in with her and her son.
Things weren't always easy, especially because of how her parents were being quite (passive) aggressive in how she was managing her life even if, at that point, she had a stable job, managing her parent responsabilites and all the extra thing that good parents do (trips or activities every weekend to keep a kid in wonder of new things).
I suppose her parents never went past the curve balls that life threw at her to being able to see how she managed to catch them all and even get a point out of it. Six years ago we had our kid together as well and, despite her concern for the firstborn, things are quite good between our two kids.
Anyway, moving in with her and her son has been quite an important step in my life as she definitely complete me and that helped me grow in some aspect in which I wouldn't if I stayed alone/with parents. While our second son is definitely something that touched me deeply, it has been more of a thing that followed that decision than a turning point in my life.
The second time is in the summer of 2016. Our country was (and still is) going through a social and economic crisis that is slowly destroying the whole country of so many different level since 20-30 years ago.
That summer, after around 10 years of working to basically just survive, I took the decision to begin applying for jobs outside our country. Wasn't easy as apparently if you look for jobs in UK, the first "wave" of recruiter try to hire you for shitty job and you're treated on par of the indian's software houses in which they expect you to be paid crumbles and deliver stuff by working until you die.
It took my last consultancy job in Italy to get the right chance. I worked for an small italian company that was providing IT services for a UK company.
They took the job but didn't had the proficiency for doing it and were looking for someone. I applied and worked my ass off as usual but then, they didn't met the criteria with the UK company because they were terrible in overpromising and not being able to manage their time efficiently, they lose the contract.
At that point they lied to me and claimed to not being able to stay in business anymore because the two founder were having heavy divergence on how to lead the company (notice: it was just the two of them and me plus a couple of other consultants).
They went on for two months fake-fighting until I left. And applied to the UK company directly, knowing that I could literally save their ass and put them on a straight course on their technical department.
They knew I was the one behind every feature, fix or emergency intervention on their services (fullstack+devops) while I was working for the italian company and so, after a painful slow interview process (summer slowed everything down), I moved in London on May 4th, 2016. Hoping to get around and buying an house in the next three months for the family to come with me.
Of course, it wasn't easy and we ended up having to rent (you need 3 years of credit history to buy in UK, even if credit agency are international since quite some years) but I managed to get a decent house with garden in the london suburbs. Since then I changed job and while the commute isn't great, I earn 50% more than I was earning in Italy. Enough money that I can afford to not have my partner forced to look for a job and instead follow the kids/house.
She's free to look for something of course but I suppose that she enjoy not having to work in a rigid bank environment anymore and being able to manage her time :)
So yeah, betting on a whole family moves at over 30yo, with two kids (signin them up for school, and for them to learn a new language nearly from scratch) plus my partner leaving her job, was kind of a big step and could have gone quite bad.
Now we just hope the brexit won't destroy this country too bad as well. Eventually we'll move again. I always wanted to see Canada ;)
Edit: Cleaned up some sentence's structure and typos all around
A handful of years ago I absolutely fell in love with the kitchen culture after leaving the military. I worked in a few different kitchens as a line cook and lunch chef and eventually started a...
A handful of years ago I absolutely fell in love with the kitchen culture after leaving the military. I worked in a few different kitchens as a line cook and lunch chef and eventually started a food truck and catering business with a couple other young chefs that had amazing talent and ability. Additionally, to make ends meet I worked as a cellarman at a brewery startup. The amount of business knowledge I gained during that period of time was substantial. Both the brewery and the food truck were incredibly successful, but they were incredibly stressful. As a newly married guy, I was working 100 hour work weeks and not seeing my wife very often. Further, I wasn't taking care of myself or handling the stressful aspects of working on/for 2 startups where every decision can be life or death for a business. I drank to excess and some problems I had from the military were beginning to exacerbate things. Eventually, my life felt that it was completely out of control, and I began to contemplate whether it was worth it to be alive.
I sought help
Over the next year, I began chipping away at things I needed to fix about myself. I walked away from the businesses (one of which I had invested my life savings into) and headed to school at 28 years old.
I recently completed my associates in engineering and will be attending a pretty decent aerospace program at university in the coming months. I'm still with my wife, and we're still working through things. I'm a lot happier now, but have to keep an eye on the things that I allow to adversely affect me.
Hey man thanks for sharing your story. I recently went to treatment for my alcohol addiction and coming out the other side has been a lot to take in. It's reassuring to read a story like yours...
Hey man thanks for sharing your story. I recently went to treatment for my alcohol addiction and coming out the other side has been a lot to take in. It's reassuring to read a story like yours right now. Sometimes I feel that because I missed the window for college at the usual age that I don't have a chance to get back on that track or that I've failed that aspect entirely. It helps to be reminded that not everyone takes the same path or the same place.
I don't have a "best decision" story to share but I just wanted to say that all three of the ones here so far have been amazing reads. @Emerald_Knight's for its sheer serendipity,...
I don't have a "best decision" story to share but I just wanted to say that all three of the ones here so far have been amazing reads. @Emerald_Knight's for its sheer serendipity, @a_wild_swarm_appears' for the insane bravery it took and @crius' for being so incredibly heartfelt and touching. 💗 you all. :)
Hey, thanks! It was quite a scary, but none of us were happy; my part time degree had the same content over the same period as the full-time version. So after work I'd typically be studying 4...
Hey, thanks!
It was quite a scary, but none of us were happy; my part time degree had the same content over the same period as the full-time version. So after work I'd typically be studying 4 hours a night and all day Saturday trying to keep up, leaving my wife to look after our young son (after working a full day herself). We were both jaded all the time. I needed to change career, but we couldn't handle that situation for another 3 years, so we took a calculated risk.
Of course there were ups and downs along the way, but it worked out really well in the end.
I was pretty down on my luck. My family was in disarray. My mother and brother were both deep into a heroin addiction, and my father was unable to deal with the situation. I had recently become...
I was pretty down on my luck. My family was in disarray. My mother and brother were both deep into a heroin addiction, and my father was unable to deal with the situation. I had recently become unemployed and my girlfriend and I had abandoned our 2nd try at being together after I caught her kissing another man. I had to move back into my family's house and seeing my mother and brother descend into addiction was painful. It was bad.
I played music at a local bar in exchange for drinks and a little bit of pay. Nothing big, it was just something to do to stay sane while I looked for work. Having a place to be every Wednesday night was what kept me going.
After playing a show one Wednesday night, I decided to head to another bar. I chose the bar at random. While there a group of people entered and one of the people in the group was a girl I went to high school with The whole group of people sat down around me and we started talking. Turns out one of the guys, Mike, was pretty cool - into sci-fi, video games, etc. We became quick friends. He'd come to my shows, go to parties, and introduced me to a bunch of new people. Mike worked as a line producer (think "accountant for tv and film) for a small production company.
One day, Mike asked me if I'd be interested logging footage for this new TV show his company had made. Logging footage is monotonous and low-paying work where you simply watch footage and then write down what is happening, but I jumped at the chance. I was hungry for work, and since I never wanted to be home, I always offered to stay late and do more work. In a few months I was promoted. In a few more months, my pay was raised enough to save money and buy a car.
Seven years later I'm making over six figures a year and am working with Oscar-winning filmmakers. I think about what would have happened if I didn't go to that bar, on that day, at that time. It's chilling to think that the biggest decision I've made in my life has been "Hey, I think I'll go for another beer here."
Going to university in the UK as opposed to here in the US. I've remained together with my (very English) girlfriend and have started building a beautiful life that I adore. If I didn't do that,...
Going to university in the UK as opposed to here in the US. I've remained together with my (very English) girlfriend and have started building a beautiful life that I adore. If I didn't do that, I'd probably be in a much worse place.
I know it wasn't a split second decision but I really was torn in those months trying to choose between staying here and starting life in a new country.
I was given the choice between going back to school, or being hired by my internship. Now 3 years later, I’m back in school while working/studying part time. I’m also a pretty damn experienced...
I was given the choice between going back to school, or being hired by my internship.
Now 3 years later, I’m back in school while working/studying part time. I’m also a pretty damn experienced devops engineer, and have a stable job at a fantastic company. I may have delayed my graduation, but it was 100% worth it.
Oh probably when I was struggling with suicidal thoughts and held a knife to my skin but had a moment of clarity where I decided to text my mom that I needed to be hospitalized. A few weeks later...
Oh probably when I was struggling with suicidal thoughts and held a knife to my skin but had a moment of clarity where I decided to text my mom that I needed to be hospitalized. A few weeks later I was on a different medication and was enrolled in college and felt happier than I ever had in my life. I really hope there isn't a world out there where I took the other option. I think I've lived the best almost year of my life since then
7 years ago my wife and I made the decision to move to her home country. It was a serious gamble! We had a lot pressure where we lived, it was during the EU banking crisis. I was working a reasonably decent job, as was my wife, we have one son. The company I worked for had agreed to pay my college tuition to reskill as a software developer and I was just finishing my first year (studying in the evenings).
Even though we had good salaries, the cost of living was excessive. We were just keeping our heads above water.
My wife was putting out the feelers for a job in her home country just to see what was out there. She got an offer. We discussed the possibilities; everyone we spoke with said we (but me in particular) were nuts. We were giving up two good jobs, selling our house, moving to a country where I don't speak the language during a recession. We had good jobs, a nice house, etc.... but we weren't living, we were literally working to pay to keep working.
So we took a gamble. I applied for a University in her country, handed in my notice and we packed everything up and left 3 months later. I didn't know I had a place in the college until a month before we left, after we had already handed in our notice and quit our jobs.
Now, 7 years later, we look back and wonder wtf would have happened if we never took the chances.
It was absolutely best decision we could have made. Sure, I had to give up a 10 year career and start from scratch again in a foreign country. It was really tough getting a job after college. and I had to take a 50% pay cut in the beginning (after 2 years of my wife supporting us while I was studying). But the change in lifestyle made everything worth it. And now after 4 years as a programmer I'm earning about 25% more than I was in my original career, with a much better work/life balance, very little debt, a larger house in a nice small town for less than half the price of our old house. All in all everything is better.
I see so many people fighting to hold a tight grip on what they have, and rightly so I suppose. But after my experience over the past few years I'll never get tied down to a single place again. The pressure of trying to hold on to our home because "this is where we live, this is our home" is NOT worth it. Our new home is better in every way, except that my friends and family are far away. But even then, when we fly home to visit them a lot of the time they tell me they only usually meet up when we go to visit anyway, so it's not even as if we're missing that. And you find new friends abroad too. It's all good. Especially with skype and whatsapp, etc....
If the situation demanded it again I'd pack everything up and move on to the next place. Quality of life is now my most important criteria for living; if things aren't living up to my standards now I'll think about moving again. It's definitely the best decision we ever made.
I'd say that two moments are in tight position for me as "biggest decision".
The first has been to move in with my current partner and the family that we formed.
Everything started around 10 years ago. We had previous history together from when we were younger but back then I bailed as she already wanted something serious I wasn't ready. It's probably worth to mention that a Rome - Florence (countryside) relationship while being under 20 wasn't exactly something easy.
Things happened in the meanwhile for both of us but mostly for her as she had a son that had to raise alone.
For some coincidence I ended up meeting her again while I was in my middle 20s and living by myself while working in Florence. Something clicked right away and, even if she was seeing a guy from Birmingham (UK) without anything serious, we decided to give it a go anyway. Just for fun as well.
After 6 months, more or less, we realised that it wasn't just for fun anymore and after having clarified some things we begun to see each other on a more regular basis and involving the young kid. One year after that meeting in florence I moved in with her and her son.
Things weren't always easy, especially because of how her parents were being quite (passive) aggressive in how she was managing her life even if, at that point, she had a stable job, managing her parent responsabilites and all the extra thing that good parents do (trips or activities every weekend to keep a kid in wonder of new things).
I suppose her parents never went past the curve balls that life threw at her to being able to see how she managed to catch them all and even get a point out of it. Six years ago we had our kid together as well and, despite her concern for the firstborn, things are quite good between our two kids.
Anyway, moving in with her and her son has been quite an important step in my life as she definitely complete me and that helped me grow in some aspect in which I wouldn't if I stayed alone/with parents. While our second son is definitely something that touched me deeply, it has been more of a thing that followed that decision than a turning point in my life.
The second time is in the summer of 2016. Our country was (and still is) going through a social and economic crisis that is slowly destroying the whole country of so many different level since 20-30 years ago.
That summer, after around 10 years of working to basically just survive, I took the decision to begin applying for jobs outside our country. Wasn't easy as apparently if you look for jobs in UK, the first "wave" of recruiter try to hire you for shitty job and you're treated on par of the indian's software houses in which they expect you to be paid crumbles and deliver stuff by working until you die.
It took my last consultancy job in Italy to get the right chance. I worked for an small italian company that was providing IT services for a UK company.
They took the job but didn't had the proficiency for doing it and were looking for someone. I applied and worked my ass off as usual but then, they didn't met the criteria with the UK company because they were terrible in overpromising and not being able to manage their time efficiently, they lose the contract.
At that point they lied to me and claimed to not being able to stay in business anymore because the two founder were having heavy divergence on how to lead the company (notice: it was just the two of them and me plus a couple of other consultants).
They went on for two months fake-fighting until I left. And applied to the UK company directly, knowing that I could literally save their ass and put them on a straight course on their technical department.
They knew I was the one behind every feature, fix or emergency intervention on their services (fullstack+devops) while I was working for the italian company and so, after a painful slow interview process (summer slowed everything down), I moved in London on May 4th, 2016. Hoping to get around and buying an house in the next three months for the family to come with me.
Of course, it wasn't easy and we ended up having to rent (you need 3 years of credit history to buy in UK, even if credit agency are international since quite some years) but I managed to get a decent house with garden in the london suburbs. Since then I changed job and while the commute isn't great, I earn 50% more than I was earning in Italy. Enough money that I can afford to not have my partner forced to look for a job and instead follow the kids/house.
She's free to look for something of course but I suppose that she enjoy not having to work in a rigid bank environment anymore and being able to manage her time :)
So yeah, betting on a whole family moves at over 30yo, with two kids (signin them up for school, and for them to learn a new language nearly from scratch) plus my partner leaving her job, was kind of a big step and could have gone quite bad.
Now we just hope the brexit won't destroy this country too bad as well. Eventually we'll move again. I always wanted to see Canada ;)
Edit: Cleaned up some sentence's structure and typos all around
Re-reading, I've written this comment quite horribly. I'll fix it in a minute, sorry everyone :)
A handful of years ago I absolutely fell in love with the kitchen culture after leaving the military. I worked in a few different kitchens as a line cook and lunch chef and eventually started a food truck and catering business with a couple other young chefs that had amazing talent and ability. Additionally, to make ends meet I worked as a cellarman at a brewery startup. The amount of business knowledge I gained during that period of time was substantial. Both the brewery and the food truck were incredibly successful, but they were incredibly stressful. As a newly married guy, I was working 100 hour work weeks and not seeing my wife very often. Further, I wasn't taking care of myself or handling the stressful aspects of working on/for 2 startups where every decision can be life or death for a business. I drank to excess and some problems I had from the military were beginning to exacerbate things. Eventually, my life felt that it was completely out of control, and I began to contemplate whether it was worth it to be alive.
I sought help
Over the next year, I began chipping away at things I needed to fix about myself. I walked away from the businesses (one of which I had invested my life savings into) and headed to school at 28 years old.
I recently completed my associates in engineering and will be attending a pretty decent aerospace program at university in the coming months. I'm still with my wife, and we're still working through things. I'm a lot happier now, but have to keep an eye on the things that I allow to adversely affect me.
Hey man thanks for sharing your story. I recently went to treatment for my alcohol addiction and coming out the other side has been a lot to take in. It's reassuring to read a story like yours right now. Sometimes I feel that because I missed the window for college at the usual age that I don't have a chance to get back on that track or that I've failed that aspect entirely. It helps to be reminded that not everyone takes the same path or the same place.
I don't have a "best decision" story to share but I just wanted to say that all three of the ones here so far have been amazing reads. @Emerald_Knight's for its sheer serendipity, @a_wild_swarm_appears' for the insane bravery it took and @crius' for being so incredibly heartfelt and touching. 💗 you all. :)
Hey, thanks!
It was quite a scary, but none of us were happy; my part time degree had the same content over the same period as the full-time version. So after work I'd typically be studying 4 hours a night and all day Saturday trying to keep up, leaving my wife to look after our young son (after working a full day herself). We were both jaded all the time. I needed to change career, but we couldn't handle that situation for another 3 years, so we took a calculated risk.
Of course there were ups and downs along the way, but it worked out really well in the end.
I was pretty down on my luck. My family was in disarray. My mother and brother were both deep into a heroin addiction, and my father was unable to deal with the situation. I had recently become unemployed and my girlfriend and I had abandoned our 2nd try at being together after I caught her kissing another man. I had to move back into my family's house and seeing my mother and brother descend into addiction was painful. It was bad.
I played music at a local bar in exchange for drinks and a little bit of pay. Nothing big, it was just something to do to stay sane while I looked for work. Having a place to be every Wednesday night was what kept me going.
After playing a show one Wednesday night, I decided to head to another bar. I chose the bar at random. While there a group of people entered and one of the people in the group was a girl I went to high school with The whole group of people sat down around me and we started talking. Turns out one of the guys, Mike, was pretty cool - into sci-fi, video games, etc. We became quick friends. He'd come to my shows, go to parties, and introduced me to a bunch of new people. Mike worked as a line producer (think "accountant for tv and film) for a small production company.
One day, Mike asked me if I'd be interested logging footage for this new TV show his company had made. Logging footage is monotonous and low-paying work where you simply watch footage and then write down what is happening, but I jumped at the chance. I was hungry for work, and since I never wanted to be home, I always offered to stay late and do more work. In a few months I was promoted. In a few more months, my pay was raised enough to save money and buy a car.
Seven years later I'm making over six figures a year and am working with Oscar-winning filmmakers. I think about what would have happened if I didn't go to that bar, on that day, at that time. It's chilling to think that the biggest decision I've made in my life has been "Hey, I think I'll go for another beer here."
Signing my first mortgage. As a single 26 year old it was a little harrowing but I'm glad I made that decision.
Breaking out of an abusive relationship, return to my country and ask for medical help. Best decision ever.
Going to university in the UK as opposed to here in the US. I've remained together with my (very English) girlfriend and have started building a beautiful life that I adore. If I didn't do that, I'd probably be in a much worse place.
I know it wasn't a split second decision but I really was torn in those months trying to choose between staying here and starting life in a new country.
I was given the choice between going back to school, or being hired by my internship.
Now 3 years later, I’m back in school while working/studying part time. I’m also a pretty damn experienced devops engineer, and have a stable job at a fantastic company. I may have delayed my graduation, but it was 100% worth it.
Oh probably when I was struggling with suicidal thoughts and held a knife to my skin but had a moment of clarity where I decided to text my mom that I needed to be hospitalized. A few weeks later I was on a different medication and was enrolled in college and felt happier than I ever had in my life. I really hope there isn't a world out there where I took the other option. I think I've lived the best almost year of my life since then