<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of you reading this may have heard New Zealand either by Facebook post, word of mouth or in conversation, but may not know how serious we were… We have kept this close to our hearts. We have done so intentionally to avoid disappointment, temper expectations and to keep our sanity during what could be a drawn-out process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The process is complex and attention to detail is a must. Until recently we did not know where we would go or even how we would get there. We needed a plan to accomplish the monumental task of uprooting a family of 5 along with our 3 furry companions. But the feeling of wanting change for our family begin to overflow our hearts. So, we started our plan… with that this serves has our announcement that the Gallwas family along with our 3 Siberian Huskies will be making the 12000 kilometer (7400 mile) journey to Christchurch, New Zealand by March 2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n By far the most common question that has come up when\nspeaking about the idea of moving we get is \u201cWhy would you want to move?\u201d,\nfollowed by \u201cWhy not somewhere else in the US?\u201d We live as a cohesive family unit that lives on a single\nincome, the sort of \u201c1950\u2019s\u201d nuclear family unit. By all accounts, I\u2019ve achieved what can\narguably be described as the American Dream \u2013 coming from a divorced\nsingle-mother, low-income household to a middle-class life in the suburbs. With that said, it was not without its\nchallenge and hard work. I didn\u2019t attend\ncollege or university as I had always felt a strong anxiety around debt and\nmoney since I knew it was a finite resource. \nStudent loans, while available, looked insurmountable or just not\nworthwhile in my early estimation. \nCouple that with the very reality that I would be on my own to both\nwork, go to school, and pay for it all myself, and the decision to begin\nworking without school happened a bit by default. It wasn\u2019t without a plan though, as I had\nalready started working in IT on a career pathway that could lead to high\npaying jobs. Looking back, that\u2019s\ncertainly the case. IT is the great\nequalizer \u2013 the barrier to entry is low if you\u2019re willing to learn you can go\nas far as you\u2019re willing to invest in yourself. \nYou\u2019ll meet people in IT all the time that don\u2019t have college or\nuniversity degrees who operate at a level at or in some cases above those\nwithout. While the structured education\nmay help open one\u2019s mind to certain approaches or broaden their general\nworldview, when it comes to \u2018getting the job done\u2019 the simple fact is that much\nof the technology itself requires you to learn specifics that cannot be taught\nin class due to the speed at which things change in order to accomplish the\nday-to-day tasks in an IT job. With all that said, I\u2019ve had great success in my\ncareer advancing to bigger and broader horizons year after year. My children face a similar challenge I will\nface, but to a greater degree \u2013 school will be inaccessible to them without\nabsolutely crushing debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My current job with Right! Systems is one that I cherish for\nthe challenges, friendships, and opportunities it has given me. The people are top notch and they really do\ndeliver on exactly what I need out of a work relationship. As a consultant, though, it does require\ntravel to various customers. Given the\nnature of IT, the customers are dotted throughout the Pacific Northwest, and\nthat\u2019s where our story takes a turn towards societal failings. Simply put, the Puget Sound region has no\nreal way to dig itself out of the hole it is in regarding transit in the next\nfifty years. When one tells others that\nyou cannot estimate arrival times based on distance but rather time of day, the\nsystem is completely broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, it is entirely possible that we could<\/em> move closer to the bulk of my customers who would be in and\naround Seattle or Bellevue. However,\ngoing back to the earlier statement about how we\u2019ve chosen to live our lives\nwith Rebecca staying at home, financial reality sets in. If we could buy a house that was 2.1x more\nexpensive than where we live now, I\u2019d cut what is a 2.5 hour commute down to,\non an average day without weather or wrecks, to about 1 hour 20 minutes \u2013 1\nhour 45 minutes. That\u2019s still in crazy\nstupid levels of commuting, and we\u2019d be \u201chouse poor\u201d. I see hundreds or thousands of drivers each\nday, who are all in the same congestion that I\u2019m in, and I can\u2019t reconcile how\nthey and their families don\u2019t burn with a fire to find a solution to the\ninfrastructure problems. The reality is,\npolitically, it will likely be impossible due to the culture within Washington\nState that is vehemently against alternative revenue (tax) collection. 7 million people with a large majority voting\nagainst their own interest as they lose time with their loved ones or just\nplain lose their sanity. Likewise,\neconomic development in other areas has sputtered and the Seattle area has\nboomed, a trend that is unlikely to change in the next decade (sorry Tacoma,\nyou blew it. Somehow you managed to\ndrive away Russell and State Farm \u2013 good luck attracting other large\nemployers).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to the infrastructure woes, the health care\nsystem in our nation gives me quite a bit of anxiety. Despite \u201cdoing everything we\u2019re supposed to\u201d\nwe\u2019re one bad illness or accident away from being financially ruined, likely\nfor life. When things like a nurse\nadministering a single Tylenol costs nearly $500 ($78 for the pill alone), its\neasy to hit all the right maximums and be left with huge deductible bills. The intent of the compulsory purchase of\ninsurance was a good one \u2013 young people like my family subsidize the older,\nless healthy people \u2013 but that same voting block that gets the benefits also\nlargely votes against such programs despite being the primary beneficiaries. To wit, the healthcare system is a cobbled\ntogether mess, with no one willing to step in and fix it, instead draining\nmoney from people while not having outcomes that are anywhere near the dollars\nspent. That\u2019s a lot of high level policy\ntype talk to say our health care premium is about $18,500 a year for the\nprivilege of a $5000 individual\ndeductible \/ $10000 family \ndeductible. So, on any given year\nwe can likely expect to pay somewhere in the range of $24,000-28,000 before\ninsurance kicks in covering 80%. That\u2019s\npretty scary, considering when Elisabeth was born the total bills were nearly\n$40,000, so we could have looked at another $8,000 out of pocket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite all the doom and gloom about the financial aspect,\nthe thing that gnaws at me perhaps more is the fact that a lot of people have\nthis idea that people aren\u2019t entitled to live a healthy life. Whether it\u2019s a view of, \u201cWell if they can\u2019t\nafford healthcare they shouldn\u2019t get it!\u201d or \u201cI pay a lot for my insurance why\nshould they get it free?!\u201d I can\ncertainly agree that the idea of it does sting a bit, especially given the\nfinancial bits I laid out above, I simply can\u2019t agree that someone should be\nforced to decide between getting checked out by a doctor or a dentist or\nnot. A few years ago a 20-something year\nold husband died because he had an abscess tooth; he couldn\u2019t afford the\ndentist, or so he thought. It is tragic,\nand no one should be put in that situation. \nThe declaration of independence states “Life<\/strong>, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” are unalienable\nrights. A life in danger because of lack\nof access to basic care is a life in bondage and not life at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In terms of safety, our relatively low-crime area is\nactually quite fraught with societal problems that pose a real risk. Despite claims to the contrary, there are in\nfact places where things like petty left, assault, and murder rates are\nactually low (on a per-capita basis). \nThe culture of violence in the USA is certainly has complicated causes\nand history, but the fact that there is so much apathy towards solving it is\nquite worrisome. When it is viewed as\njust another day when 20 children get massacred at school, or there are a\ncouple of drive by shootings at the Tacoma mall and it is simply accepted in\ndefense of gun rights. The culture of\ngun worship is simply sickening, and it shows no signs of changing, despite\nmounting bodies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We want to live in a place where there is public outrage\nwhen a shooting happens. we want to know\nthat if I go to the mall the likelihood of a drive-by shooting nearly does not\nexist. Or that concerts or other crowded\nvenues won\u2019t be attractive targets. \nRather, if something were to happen, I want to live in a place where\npeople are moved by empathy for their fellow human beings to take action to help\nprevent it in the future. The thought of\nnot getting shot shouldn\u2019t be relegated to statistical probabilities \u2013 it\nshould be instead thought of as unthinkable. \nMore often, I hear rather normal people who own guns \u201cfor protection\u201d \u2013\nfrom what? Why are we living in a\ncountry that is so unsafe you feel the need to have a tool that who\u2019s only\npurpose is to end life? Moreover, what\nis the calculation for the value of a human life, and why are we having to make\nit? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Preston and Rebecca Gallwas Some of you reading this may have heard New Zealand either by Facebook post, word of mouth or in conversation, but may not know how serious we were… We have kept this close to our hearts. We have done so intentionally to avoid disappointment, temper expectations and to keep our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4813"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avtempwp.azurewebsites.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Image](\"https:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/shutterstock_714806110-554x414.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSummary<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
The Reasoning<\/em><\/em><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\nThe answer lies partially as the inverse, \u201cWhy would we not want to move to New\nZealand?\u201d Coupled with, \u201cHave you seen what\u2019s happening?\u201d Allow me to explain a\nbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n