My name is Tamra, my husband is JT. We are both currently 25 years old and just trying to figure out life.
We both grew up in East Texas and lived in close proximity to each other, but in different counties. At 17 years old, we met on MySpace. After graduation he moved four hours away to Houston, TX to attend school at the Universal Technical Institute. After my first semester at a local community college, I decided I too wanted to move to Houston to live with him. I transferred to a local community college there and continued my education. We lived in a tiny not so cute apartment, with our mattress and box spring sitting on concrete cinder blocks and bed risers. We had one chair that he found at the dumpster at our apartment complex and it sat on pieces of 4x4 wood blocks. We had a dinning table and coffee table that I bought on Craig's List. We both worked at a local grocery store, he stocked the shelves and I worked in the cash office. We weren't living the high life, but we were together and to us that is all that mattered.
Shortly after I moved to Houston, on our one year anniversary he proposed. In late 2009, he finished school and we moved to Plano, TX. We moved into a huge two bedroom apartment, had new couches and bought a bed from Ikea! He began working as a paint prepper for an auto body shop and I transferred back to the local community college there and began working as a tech in training at a pharmacy. We got married at 20, right before our two year anniversary.
Then we moved to Carrollton, TX, to a brand new apartment with granite counter tops, it was gorgeous. Jt began working as a painter and I was officially a registered pharmacy technician. I was still going to community college, since I had been working full time at a pharmacy I had been going part time to school. However, with going part time I never missed a summer session. I struggled a lot with trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life as far as a career. I went from teacher, to business, to pharmacy, to nursing, to radiation therapy, and back to pharmacy. The University of North Texas announced that they would be opening a pharmacy school so I decided to transfer there.
We had also grown tired of paying rent and we decided to buy our first home, we were 22 years old. We moved right outside of Denton, TX to a town called Crossroads, TX. We lived there for three years, during that time I was still going to UNT and working at a pharmacy. JT was still painting cars for a while, but then got promoted to an estimator.
While we were living there we lost a few loved ones to cancer and it really got me thinking about health. We slowly began changing our eating habits, buy cutting out fast food and eating organic. I just realized that there are things we can try to do in life to prevent things like cancer and I really wanted to get our health good before we decided to have children. After 5.5 years working the pharmacy, I knew that that is not what I wanted to do my whole life. I decided to finish my degree in biology and join the education program at UNT. There I was able to utilize my degree in biology to get a teacher certification, I will graduate in December this year. While we were making all these changes and looking for happiness, we decided we wanted land.
Initially we purchased a small chunk of land in Hickory Creek, TX and were going to build on it. However, with all the restrictions by the city and not having all the money to just build out of pocket, we couldn't build the self-sufficient style home we wanted to. So we sold the land shortly after that, decided to buy a house on land, and sell our other home. So that brings us closer to today, we moved to Greenville, TX, where JT grew up, three months ago today. The house was a foreclosure, and it needed a lot of work! During this time, we have also adopted a plant-based diet and lifestyle.
We love the house, but through all of our changes and "progression" in life we have realized that we want a different lifestyle. Jt has worked very hard the last five years to move up in his industry and has had a lot of success. However, as he began to make more and more money we came to realize the exchange of his time, happiness, and health for money wasn't all that worth it. We have always thought of happiness as the most important thing in life. We want to experience different places, meet different faces, and just live in general. We no longer feel that having a thirty year mortgage, car payments, and a professional career is what we want in life. We want to be happy number one, so that takes us to the School of Life.
We made good investments on the land we bought and the last house we had which resulted in financial stability. We had made enough money on those two investments to fix up our current house and build our new one. Yesterday we bought a school bus from a local private school. It is a 1991 Blue Bird and has only 55,000 miles. We are going to convert this bus to our mobile tiny home. We plan to continue work on our current house and sell it once we get the bus done. It was a foreclosure, so the money we make after fixing it up should fund our travels for a while and give us enough money to fall back on. We plan to travel as much as possible and spend time in different places learning, teaching, and helping out different people. We plan to also have jobs as we stay in different places for longer periods of time. In addition I am in the midst of opening a candle business. If it works out, we plan to make the candles together on the road for extra money.
Now that you know a large, but actually really small portion of our life, we hope that you will enjoy following us and learning with us as we go through the School of Life!
"There's one life, one world, one chance, and I don't wanna wait." -Soja
We both grew up in East Texas and lived in close proximity to each other, but in different counties. At 17 years old, we met on MySpace. After graduation he moved four hours away to Houston, TX to attend school at the Universal Technical Institute. After my first semester at a local community college, I decided I too wanted to move to Houston to live with him. I transferred to a local community college there and continued my education. We lived in a tiny not so cute apartment, with our mattress and box spring sitting on concrete cinder blocks and bed risers. We had one chair that he found at the dumpster at our apartment complex and it sat on pieces of 4x4 wood blocks. We had a dinning table and coffee table that I bought on Craig's List. We both worked at a local grocery store, he stocked the shelves and I worked in the cash office. We weren't living the high life, but we were together and to us that is all that mattered.
Shortly after I moved to Houston, on our one year anniversary he proposed. In late 2009, he finished school and we moved to Plano, TX. We moved into a huge two bedroom apartment, had new couches and bought a bed from Ikea! He began working as a paint prepper for an auto body shop and I transferred back to the local community college there and began working as a tech in training at a pharmacy. We got married at 20, right before our two year anniversary.
Then we moved to Carrollton, TX, to a brand new apartment with granite counter tops, it was gorgeous. Jt began working as a painter and I was officially a registered pharmacy technician. I was still going to community college, since I had been working full time at a pharmacy I had been going part time to school. However, with going part time I never missed a summer session. I struggled a lot with trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life as far as a career. I went from teacher, to business, to pharmacy, to nursing, to radiation therapy, and back to pharmacy. The University of North Texas announced that they would be opening a pharmacy school so I decided to transfer there.
We had also grown tired of paying rent and we decided to buy our first home, we were 22 years old. We moved right outside of Denton, TX to a town called Crossroads, TX. We lived there for three years, during that time I was still going to UNT and working at a pharmacy. JT was still painting cars for a while, but then got promoted to an estimator.
While we were living there we lost a few loved ones to cancer and it really got me thinking about health. We slowly began changing our eating habits, buy cutting out fast food and eating organic. I just realized that there are things we can try to do in life to prevent things like cancer and I really wanted to get our health good before we decided to have children. After 5.5 years working the pharmacy, I knew that that is not what I wanted to do my whole life. I decided to finish my degree in biology and join the education program at UNT. There I was able to utilize my degree in biology to get a teacher certification, I will graduate in December this year. While we were making all these changes and looking for happiness, we decided we wanted land.
Initially we purchased a small chunk of land in Hickory Creek, TX and were going to build on it. However, with all the restrictions by the city and not having all the money to just build out of pocket, we couldn't build the self-sufficient style home we wanted to. So we sold the land shortly after that, decided to buy a house on land, and sell our other home. So that brings us closer to today, we moved to Greenville, TX, where JT grew up, three months ago today. The house was a foreclosure, and it needed a lot of work! During this time, we have also adopted a plant-based diet and lifestyle.
We love the house, but through all of our changes and "progression" in life we have realized that we want a different lifestyle. Jt has worked very hard the last five years to move up in his industry and has had a lot of success. However, as he began to make more and more money we came to realize the exchange of his time, happiness, and health for money wasn't all that worth it. We have always thought of happiness as the most important thing in life. We want to experience different places, meet different faces, and just live in general. We no longer feel that having a thirty year mortgage, car payments, and a professional career is what we want in life. We want to be happy number one, so that takes us to the School of Life.
We made good investments on the land we bought and the last house we had which resulted in financial stability. We had made enough money on those two investments to fix up our current house and build our new one. Yesterday we bought a school bus from a local private school. It is a 1991 Blue Bird and has only 55,000 miles. We are going to convert this bus to our mobile tiny home. We plan to continue work on our current house and sell it once we get the bus done. It was a foreclosure, so the money we make after fixing it up should fund our travels for a while and give us enough money to fall back on. We plan to travel as much as possible and spend time in different places learning, teaching, and helping out different people. We plan to also have jobs as we stay in different places for longer periods of time. In addition I am in the midst of opening a candle business. If it works out, we plan to make the candles together on the road for extra money.
Now that you know a large, but actually really small portion of our life, we hope that you will enjoy following us and learning with us as we go through the School of Life!
"There's one life, one world, one chance, and I don't wanna wait." -Soja