I wanted to share our family story and get some feedback from all you bad ass people.
My wife and I are in our early 30's and we have been married for about eight years now. Up until last year I had not given much thought to finances or FI. I had a good job with a Fortune 500 tech company, she worked part time and did volunteer work 70 hours per month. We had bought our house at the top of the market in 2006. Over the years I indulged myself in a bad car habit, STI's, M3's, turbo M3's, Miata's, Lexus etc. Almost every year I would have a new car and then get the itch to upgrade it for more power. Each time I would dump more and more money into a project. That being said I always had 10k-15k in a emergency fund sitting in the bank and 5% going into 401k.
Well fall 2011 we got some shocking news, one of my wife's family members came out about their substance problem. Being the most financially stable members of the family we felt obligated get this person some professional help. I sold my turbo M3 to pay for rehab. Let's just say it didn't take, three months latter they are back in that lifestyle and I'm out 25k. At that point we washed our hands of the whole mess. But out of the bleakness of that time also came joy. In November 2011 we found out that we had a baby on the way.
With that news it was no question that mom was going to stay home with the baby. But without her income maintaining our current lifestyle would of been hard so we put our house on then market. With the market drop in 2008 we were underwater by about 25k. We ponyed up the cash and sold the house, and rented a smaller place for the last 14 months. This is around the same time found MMM.
Our long term goal had been to move back to my wife's home town to be by her sister and raise our son around family. It is a town of about 3500 people in the Ouachita mountains in West central Arkansas. Not many jobs to be had in this area let alone tech jobs. Late 2012 I went to my management and ask about the possibility of working remote. After weeks of discussion they offered me a different job working remote two days a week along with a 40k pay cut. Not worth it at all.
But it is funny how things work out. I was offered a job from my current customer! So now not only do I now work for the #2 company on the Fortune 500 list but they gave me a 10℅ pay bump, stock and I work remote three days a week. The kicker is I am now the customer for my old company and team. In the last three weeks we bought a house in my wifes hometown, started a new job and moved 120 miles from my office. The only downside is the 120 mile drive to and from work I will have to make once a week, but I drive a Prius and cutting our housing costs by 1k per month will more then make up for it.
I wanted to get opinions, I have to wait one year to contribute to my 401k with the new company. What would you do with the money in the meantime? I want to put it into the ESPP but I'm open to ideas.