Our Financial Story Part 2: North Dakota
A picture is worth a thousand words, so they say. Believe it or not, this picture sets the tone for what was the tail end of 2015 and the year 2016.
Early 2015 was looking, overall, pretty good for us. We were debt free other than our house, I was being sent to Houston for 3 weeks of advanced training, and our oldest, Penelope, was due in May. The oilfield had slowed down some and a number of the mud engineers who had less than 6 months of experience had already been let go. In spite of that, things were looking good.
Then the rigs really started to drop. Anyone that had worked the oilfield in that era remembers this time period. It started with one rig here, one rig there. Then it was a few rigs today, a couple more tomorrow, finally, it was tens of rigs daily. The less experienced people were getting laid off nearly every couple of weeks. We were dwindling in our numbers as mud engineers in North Dakota. I was getting concerned.
About April, my Senior Service Manager asked me, "If I got you a moving package, would you move to Williston?" I immediately said "Absolutely. Can I delay the move until my baby is born?" He responded "You have until the end of the year to make the move."
I immediately told Martha the great news! We were moving to Williston, North Dakota! In hindsight, I probably should have broke the news a little differently. You see, when your wife is into her 8th month of pregnancy and you tell her that in just a few short months we are going to uproot our family from California, the very place she had spent her entire life at up to that point, move 1,600 miles away from any family to a city and state that she knew nothing about, well you can all imagine just how well that went over. To her credit, she was cool and calm. Which really scared me because when a Latina is cool and calm during a life altering situation, I knew I was not the most popular guy at the moment.
Seriously though, Martha was very understanding. By moving to North Dakota, we would get rid of the $14,000 per year commute cost, Martha could quit work and stay at home, and being a drive-by mud engineer, I would be home every night. We were looking good financially, even with the loss of Martha's $70,000 per year job as I was on par to make about $90,000 that year. It was really a good thing all around. And so in September, we began to pack and move to Williston. This is where things turned.
Penelope, our daughter, had bad cholic at that time. Martha was getting sleep in about 2 hour intervals, we had the two dogs adjusting to the baby, and we had an entire house to pack up. Martha did what she could yet I ended up having to pack up most of the house in 4 days. Then the Uhaul would be loaded up and the plan was I would drive the Uhaul, towing my pick up to North Dakota, fly back and drive with the Explorer and dogs to North Dakota while Martha and Penny flew. Solid plan right up to the Uhaul rental. I tried to rent a trailer only to discover that my pickup would not fit. And driving with the dogs in that pickup for 1,600 miles was not an option due to space constraints. So I rented an extra cargo trailer, packed it full along with the Uhaul and took off to North Dakota. Yet the very evening prior to my planned departure, I fell off my pickup and rolled my ankle. It was so bad that I initially thought I had broke it. I was freaking out! My timeline was fixed and I had zero room for injuries. Luckily it was a bad sprain, I drugged up with anti-inflammatories, wrapped and iced that sucker, and off I went.
I got to Williston, and had movers on that end lined up to help me out. Two guys showed up to off load the truck with zero equipment. After they started putting my tools and gas cans into the house and dropped my 70 year old antique dresser, I told them to bugger off. I managed to get a dolly and my Senior Service Manager was gracious enough to help me unload half my truck that night. The next day, with sheer anger and determination, I offloaded the remainder of the trailer as well as managed to get a 500 lbs safe up 4 steps and into the house. To this day I still do not know how I did by myself other than to say I was still so mad with those two bozos from the day before and I was flying out the next day that I just had no option other than to get it put into place.
I flew back to California where I had arranged for a friend of mine, who had been laid off from the oilfield, to come up on Amtrak from San Bernardino to Hanford where he drove the Explorer and I drove the truck to North Dakota. He helped me move a bunch of other things into the house once we got to Williston and I sent him back to Orange County. The very same day my friend flew back to California, Martha and Penny arrived in Williston and got to see the city and house that we made a home for the next 3 years.
So what does this have to do with finances? I'll tell you. We were debt free other than the house (which we were selling). We had a 6 month emergency fund set aside. That move threw all sorts of twists and turns that required us having to shell out cash. We had to rent and extra Uhaul trailer out of our own pocket. I paid my unemployed friend transportation and wages to help me move half way across the country. I had meals and hotels to buy along the way. All to say, even with the stress of timelines and injury, the one thing that I was not worried about was how to pay for everything. The emergency fund saved us in what was already a very stressful time.
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