WHEN IT COMES TO THE CRUNCH – WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
You can’t find work in your local area that pays enough to support your family in your current lifestyle. But you have been offered a well paid job hundreds of miles away from home. It will mean being away from your family for extended periods but it will help you to pay for their education and health expenses.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
What is THE CARAMEL CRUNCH? Well, it’s all about decisions. When it comes to THE CRUNCH what would you do?
One of the definitions of the word CRUNCH is:
a crucial point or situation
– generally involving a decision with weighty consequences
- Your response can be a quickie. Please feel free to send a comment to say what you would do, and if you have time or are inclined, please feel free to explain your decision.
- If you would like to create a post with a longer explanation of your decision, please pingback to THE CARAMEL CRUNCH post. (Or copy and paste a link to your post in the comments section – please feel free.)
If you know anything about CRUSHED CARAMEL, you will probably realize I am a gentle soul, so my questions are not supposed to be terrifying! What I am hoping for really is to see a variety of responses. Afterall, it’s pretty obvious that WordPress bloggers are from a huge variety of backgrounds and cultures. It would be fascinating to learn more about how we as individuals make decisions.
Some of the questions I am going to ask are questions I have discussed with friends when we have been having coffee or dinner. I often find there is no clear right or wrong. It can be so much a matter of our individual experiences and outlook. I find it fascinating how very different some of us are when it comes to decision making.
We all have different outlooks, and may make different decisions. I am really looking forward to learning WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Caramel 
Last photo of woman crossing her eyes made me smile x
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I love her expression too!
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My son in law took the job, and travels quite a bit but home on weekends and more.
Sent from my iPad
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I have a number of friends here in London who work and send a lot of their wages to their family who are living elsewhere. As using their annual leave to travel back to their family they talk on Facetime or Whatsapp regularly.
I think they find it tough at times though.
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It is hard, but it’s a job. The older you get the harder a good paying ones are to find.
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The last girl is you? Isn’t it? 😊
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Most of the time I probably do have an expression like that! My hair is blonder though 🙂
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Her silliness only makes her more pretty… 👍
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One option is to take a 2nd job to keep the funds the same. Another is to tone down the lifestyle and go back to training that leads to another job. Another would be to go to the higher paying job, which may lead to the whole family relocating. Taking on a renter who can help with expenses is an option. Maybe simplifying the lifestyle would cost less? Lots of options are available.
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I think there are lots of options.
I know a lot of people here in London who work here when their spouses and children are elsewhere. Sometimes their family are in other parts of the UK, but mostly in other countries.
When I have asked, most of them have told me that they could not support their family in their hometowns.
Because I have never married or had children, I have not had to make a decision like that. But I think it would be very hard to leave your marriage mate and children. I understand why some of my friends have done so, but it must be very tough at times.
But I did choose to leave home (as in my parents and siblings) because of opportunities that opened up as a volunteer.
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I can’t imagine how expensive it would be to live in London! It would seem like the cost of living would eat up a lot of whatever was earned, so not much would be sent home to another country? Where I live expenses aren’t low, but they are nothing compared to 50 miles away where my kids live, and that town isn’t even very big compared to a mega-city like London (or Chicago or New York City here.)
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Some of my friends are renting a tiny room and sharing kitchen and bathroom facilities with four or five other housemates.
It does cost a lot to live here. For many the only option is house sharing.
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Not sure I could ever do it. Certainly can’t do it now.
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I can imagine.
I have never been married or had children. So, I have not been in this situation myself, but if I were married, I would dread the thought of being seperated. I would want to try every other option to avoid that.
Jack has a couple of international volunteer assignments coming up. I am dreading him going away for weeks at a time. It’s going to be so hard.
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Take the job. You can always come back if things don’t work out.
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That’s true. A decision like this doesn’t have to be permanent.
Some of my friends have been working here in London, sending money back to their families, for years. They are doing it because they want to provide opportunities for their children that they say they could not do so at home. But for some of them it is very tough. Recently I was with a friend who was in tears because of how much she misses her kids. In her case the children are with her husbands parents. She works here in London and her husband works in Germany. Both send money back. I think they might be saving some of their wages for the future as well. But emotionally, I can see it is very hard for her at times. We try to look after so that she does not feel too lonely here.
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Nothing is permanent, but you will never know if it is for you or not if you don’t try. And if you don’t at least try, it will always be in the back of your mind.
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My hubby could not get work locally some years ago. We live in a backwater. He got a job in London though, and lived in lodgings during the week but came home at weekends. It was just me and him with no kids involved, and I have never been happier than I was then lol. It gave me some much needed space and it was great not to be monitored all the time as to where I was going and when. It worked well for us. I didn’t take to it too well when he finally came home for good, having got a job locally! It CAN be good for abmarriage. But it is not for everybody.
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You made me smile! I guess you focused on the positive in the situation, the freedom you were able to enjoy, It does sound as if in your case it worked out well.
I have a family member who spent Monday-Thursday (living in a tiny bedsit) in London and then travelled across the country to be back with their spouse and child. They could earn an incredible amount in London, but nowhere else in the country had the kind of posts my family member was qualified for.
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It’s sad usn’t it. It is not so good when a child is involved. So upsetting.
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You are right, I think it would make the separation even more challenging if children were involved.
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It would depend on the exact circumstances of course, but my feeling is I would take the job to provide for my children. I was a stay at home mom for 10 years and then returned to the workforce when my girls were 9 and 11 as my marriage began to derail. It was hard to not be with them after school, but more important to begin earning money in case we had to be on our own, which in fact happened. I can’t imagine letting them go hungry or without medical care or an education because I refused to take a job on offer.
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I think you have illustrated well how different our circumstances can be. We have to make decisions about the best way to care for our responsibilities and our loved ones.
My momma returned to work when all three of us were at school. I was ten years old, Milly was five, and Mandy was eight. Mum was a nurse. She normally worked four long days a week. Her shifts usually finished at 8pm. When we came home from school in the winter Dad would be there because it was dark at 4pm. But in the summer he needed to work until five or six o’clock. So the days in the lighter months, we had a babysitter (a teenager from a family who lived nearby) and I would cook a meal for me and my two sisters and save meals for my parents. I am pleased in some ways that I gained that early experience in learning to prepare a meal on my own. Mum even let me make suggestions about what to include in the grocery shopping so that I could use it to cook.
In the school holidays, we went to work with Dad window-cleaning. Which was good for us.
The only person I feel sorry for is the babysitter. Sometimes we terrorised her! Especially Mandy. Mandy was very naughty!
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