Preparing for Address #11 in 21 years.

Well, we're moving again. It'll be our 11th address in 21 years of marriage - and that includes staying at one location for 7 years! We've definitely moved a lot, probably more than most. Why? Well, when we first got married, we did that in NH but had moved our date up because Tim was working as a volunteer on a Congressional campaign for a friend of the family in Arizona. We got married and our first address was in Mesa, AZ. After the elections, we returned to NH but were living with his parents while we saved for our first home. Then we bought a mobile home for us and decided to have Adam. All that worked great until we made the decision to take responsibility for my teenage younger sister - now we needed a 3rd bedroom. Since my in-laws bought the horse farm where they boarded their horses, and there was a 3 bedroom home on-site, we lived there to watch over the horses. After our third child, we decided we better toy something of our own. We bought a duplex in NH. It came with tenants that paid the entire mortgage so we lived pretty close to free for a year. We decided to get into real estate and purchased several more multi-family houses. We lived in 3 of them all together. We missed Arizona and hated the snow, and the cold, so we moved back to Arizona in 2003. We stayed there for 7 years until the place I worked at closed, and its replacement company was headed that way too. Tim also had to take a pay cut to keep his job. Our credit cards (which we only used for necessities, not dining out, movies, shopping) went from a guaranteed "2% for the life of the balance" to 28% overnight for no reason whatsoever. The companies just decided to change the deal, all in the same month. Our bank told us we couldn't apply for a re-fi on the house because we had excellent credit. They were only considering families "in trouble". We were advised by the mortgage company to get 3 to 6 months behind so they could deal with our situation. Against my begging for a better solution, we decided to follow their advice. Within 75 days, we received a notice our mortgage had been sold, we could not pay them what we owed since they no longer held the account, the new company was some private trust company, and it was being auctioned soon. We had to move and let it foreclose. We moved to the White Mts. of AZ to again live with Tim's parents who'd moved here a few years earlier. We spent two years in a very rural county, not even recognized as a town, no central government, nothing to do for three teenagers but work in the garden and yard. Good experience, but living there, we'd NEVER earn enough to have a place of our own again, nor buy groceries without government help, nor have gas to get the 35 miles to the grocery store! We had to leave. Tim took advantage of a program there to change careers, get training, and become a flatbed, over-the-road truck driver. That meant we had to move back to the city. He couldn't take the chance of having the road to the city closed for snow and he couldn't get to work 3 1/2 hours away. That happened the day before he was to start his company's training. I was blessed to have some wonderful friends who knew we were good, responsible people who just got hit unexpectedly by the economy in 2010. They were willing to give us a chance. They allowed us to live in a beautiful 3-bedroom home while we got back on our feet. They also knew our budget restraints since Tim was just starting out. He barely earned his first few paychecks when they let us move into their rental home. They gave us a reduced rate that has gotten us back into good credit standing, allowed us to fix some major medical and dental issues in our family, put aside some savings, and live a normal life again. Now we are moving to a new place. The one year lease is up here and the rent will increase by almost 30% (and rightly so, to be fair). Our friends will rent this place out for more money, which is great for them, and we'll gather a few more amenities and things for the kids to do in the process. Our new rent will be less than the increase would've been, which allows us to save for our own house that much sooner. This will be our 11th address, and the plan is to stay for 12 to 24 months while we save like crazy for a home in Scottsdale near our church home. Move to our 12th address will hopefully be our last. We hope to buy the home we really want, with space for us, and a few extra room for the kids, or someday grandkids, or friends & relatives to visit. We'll be able to fix it up any way we want, plant a garden and fruit trees of our own. That should be our last move.