vent

Jon got his first paycheck and now we have a better idea of what he'll get paid after insurance and such. On paper, he should be making $5000 more a year, but after higher insurance prices, he is only making $40 more a month than we did in Kansas City. This is with a new graduate degree. If you take into account the job that I lost when we left KC, we would have made at least $350 more per month in KC, even without Jon changing jobs. If he'd gotten a job there, he would be making $5-10k more per yearn than here, so we'd be much better off.

We were just making it in KC and really looking at Jon's graduate degree as our "way out". Our housing here---while the cheapest decent apartment we could find---costs $115 more per month than it did in KC. Cost of living is equal or maybe even more here. Our net income is less now than it was two months ago.

It sucks. I'm going to have to get a job a lot earlier than we'd been planning. Sending Ellie to a daycare now would kill me. We're going to try to wait until she's at least six months old.

It's just depressing. I love being back here and really enjoy being around family, but financially this is a very difficult place for us to live.