Pat is mowing the yard as I type, I think he tries to keep busy from losing his mind. We have gotten ourselves into quite a mess and we're struggling to find a way out. When he left anheuser busch in Oct 2011 his plan was to pay off our massive debt with the money he was given to take an early retirment and then enjoy 3 months off before finding a new job. That was 18 months ago. His pay went from an annual six figure number to about $24000 a year. Needless to say, this has not been enough to keep us afloat, so we started using the charges we had paid off. We maxed out four of our credit cards and are to a point now where we cannot afford to make the payments on them. Our once great credit rating has gone to hell. Our house is in foreclosure and we do not have enough money to make it from one month to the next without selling something on ebay. Last week Pat pawned one of my rings so I could make a trip back to Ohio to stay with my mom who just got out of rehab after having two major hip surgeries in the past four months. When my sister called and was crying because she's tired and stressed out, without thinking, I blurted out "I'll come home to stay with mom for the first two weeks" (until she settles in and is able to do  more on her own). I was thinking or speaking with my heart and not my brain. My sister sounding relieved, told me she'd send us some money (from mom) to help us get back there. I tell Pat and he says we need to rent a car, that our car may not make that long of a trip (it has over 140,000 miles on it). Great...Just what I needed..another worry. I never thought we would be in this shape are our age. I mean, we aren't exactly young! We're at an age where we should be ready to retire without worries. We're FAR from that. When Pat was in the military we were at least assured a place to live, we spent most of our miltary years living in base housing, which some people assume is free, it's not, but..it was cheap and it was taken directly out of his paychecks. Being an NCO with four children did not make for a lot of extra money, but I never felt the panic or stress over our finances that I'm feeling today. I look back on our military years and I miss them. I felt safe and secure. We were able to travel to and live in places that we never could have afforded on our own.  Sicily! Hawaii! Those were the days! Life seemed so easy and simple.
Its hard to believe that it's been almost 18 years since Pat retired from the Air Force. We were living in Hawaii when he retired. We moved back here to Illinois, for our kids. Because we had been stationed here before our tour in Hawaii, our kids had friends here which is why they wanted to come back to Mascoutah. Pat and I would have much rather moved to the south east coast...close to the ocean, but we figured we had moved our kids around enough over the years, so we would go to where they wanted and later fulfill our retirement by the ocean dream!