Change is hard, we should know. We traded the ghost town life for downtown poverty. An unemployment glitch and a couple of unexpected injuries left us broke AF. All the while, a silver lining was gleaming faintly in the distance. This is the last of the past, ya’ll.

Like a pack of displaced wolves, we moved to a ghost town in the mountains, full of scorpions, hermits, and bigfoot. It was the wild west of emotions, mental health, and big changes. Team Babe survived the tidal wave of the ponzi scheme and washed up on the shore of what to do next.

As a raid on our “financial advisors” made national news headlines, one even tried to flee the country, attempting to smuggle gold, cash, and drugs through customs in his cowboy boots. Seriously. We got a nerve-wracking call from the FBI, and developed a close personal relationship with our fax machine. The illusion of wealth went up in smoke, and we found ourselves tangled in the consequences of our actions.

In the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko said, “greed is good.” But when it is veiled in a responsible plan for your future and your family, it’s easy to say yes to just about anything. Here’s where we opened the wrong door and signed on the dotted line that lead to the eventual demise of the dream house and $1 million dollars worth of debt.

The real estate market bubble was just about to pop and we were approved for a massive mortgage. Of course, we also had a 6 week old baby. It was now or never, so we sunk all of our cash, signed away our lives, and kept on chasing the dream. What could possibly go wrong with blinders firmly in place and confidence on high? Find out how we got just what we asked for.

With the American Dream in mind, we did the responsible thing and put all of our cards, and none of our money, on the table. We became homeowners! The house was ugly but the mortgage was cheap…it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Babies, spiders, and dogs oh my!

One of us wanted to snowboard and drink beer, the other wanted to change the future by having a family—can you guess who wanted what? Could the cognitive dissonance possibly lead to problems? The baby fever breaks and we get a barrel full of monkeys, topped with a butt-load of responsibility.

We were finally 18 and we couldn’t wait to move out! We ditched our home town and got a place of our own complete with: sideways neighbors, occult interactions, and long strolls on the beach. The place we thought we couldn’t wait to get to, ended up being the place we couldn’t wait to get away from!