We're Back!

To all of our friends and family who have been asking about and trying to follow the roller coaster of the past month and a half, here is the summed up story and final conclusion;

As you all know, Dane has been accepted into the MAIOP program in New Haven, CT. We have been trying relentlessly to move and have been preparing as much as possible along the way. Unfortunately it apparently isn't in the cards for this to happen. Our family has gone through quite a bit as of late.

Near the end of February we found a family that we really liked (initially) to rent our home, they wanted to move in immediately so we had 5 days to pack up our home, decide what was going to CT, what was staying in storage, and what was going to be given away. We busted our butts literally and got the job done. Once we were out, we agreed to have the carpets in the home professionally cleaned. Well long story short, the family ended up moving in after the carpets were cleaned and then a few days later claimed they thought that mold had grown under the carpets due to the cleaning. We had a specialist come out, pull the carpet up and do a thorough inspection to determine there was in fact NO mold. The family then said they must just be allergic to the chemicals the carpets were cleaned with and decided to move out and terminate the contract early.

With plans to move to New Haven in less than 3 weeks, we had a vacant house with out renters so we decided the only option would be to have me stay behind for a few weeks to a few months to get our home rented and my car sold. That was the plan right? Well once we heard from Chase that we had in fact been approved for student loans, we hopped a flight to CT and spent a week getting to know the area, interviewing for assistantships, and finding housing. Although our trip was super busy we really enjoyed meeting our new ward and having so many friendly people willing to help us out while we were out there. Well housing ended up being not as cheap or as nice as all the online ads would have made us thought but luckily on our last day, last hour in CT we found an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G place for a great deal to rent. So we left a deposit and signed a lease a few days later...

Once we got home, we got word from Chase that the last step before they were able to disperse the funds was that they just needed to get the schools certification for the loan. They explained this is very common, and usually not a problem. Wrong! We called the financial aid office at Danes school and they let us know that they would not be willing to certify ANY funds for private student loans. They told Dane that bringing his family was a personal choice and that he could just as easily come out to school and live on campus like all the other single students.... WHAT?! Are you kidding me? That was an actual option to them? As you can guess that didn't really fly with us. I wrote up a petition and we tried talking to various directors of financial aid at the school but it did no good. They base 'Student Need' off of a single undergraduate student who lives on campus and figure that we should be able to live off of $18K a year total in the most expensive state in the US, Not going to happen. So after much back and forth over the loan that THEY originally suggested we apply for, they said we must apply for a direct to consumer loan which does not require school certification, again long story short, the Select loan takes 3 days to cancel and we can't apply for a Direct loan until then. Three days pass, our school certified loan gets cancelled and then Chase informs us that even though they have offered a Direct loan for the past 15 years that they discontinued them that day. At this point we try to find another DTC loan and find out that with the financial crunch, most companies that use to do them have gone out of business and that the only one left is Wells Fargo who's loan limit is not even near where we need it but something is better then nothing, Dane applies with a cosigner, they both have great credit and the cosigner makes good money. Unfortunately they deny them.

We come to the conclusion that we will not be able to afford to go and call the management company for the place we were supposed to rent (we signed the lease only a day and a half ago and had not taken possession yet) and they inform us on top of the deposit and first month's rent that we have already paid that we owe them $6500. to get out of the contract early. The weight of this fee weighs heavily on our minds as we have absolutely no money and after much discussion we decide that if we were both working full time at decent jobs and dane was going to school and doing his assistantship, we might be able to make it work, of course we don't really think about the fact that we were going to be sharing one car yet.

Push comes to shove, we decide that we need to take the opportunity and make the best of a bad situation, so we say good by to friends and dane is scheduled to head out 2 days later, flying on a buddy pass. We sign a renter for our home and they move in. The next evening we were on our way to SLC, to say goodbye to my family and my mom calls and asks how quickly Dane can pack because she just found out that as of the next day that all Buddy passes were embargoed for the next two weeks. We couldn't get him a flight out that night and started asking if this was the wrong path for us. We have tried multiple times to confirm the choice to move and also to confirm the choice to stay and were unable to get a strong feeling either way so this last thing with the flights was kind of the straw that broke the camels back, we have had so many other things go wrong that I haven't mentioned such as some private health problems which lead to hospital visits, surgery, later complications and more hospital visits, missed flights in CT, my dads wedding, the wedding date and location, family drama, etc that all played into the situation.

So to end this phone book of a story, we decided not to buy a last minute expensive flight so that dane could make it in time to start school last Saturday, and have him and I go away for the weekend, watch conference, cut off the outside world, and search for answers. We had so many people with contradicting strong opinions of what we needed to do so we really needed the opportunity to clear our minds and figure out what was right for ourselves. At the end of the weekend we felt that we were not going to be able to make it happen financially in CT right now with out student loans and that maybe we should stay here until the next semester in September. So here we are...

We are excited for the opportunity to stay in Utah for now and spend more time with my family and our friends!