Renae's Lesson

Renae Hart­son shares her story

Renae Hart­son, Out of the Box Web Solutions

We are all taught at a young age to go to school, get good grades, get into a good col­lege and then grad­u­ate and take the world by storm when you land the per­fect job. Hap­pily ever after, right? Unfor­tu­nately, life doesn’t always work out that way. Some­one for­got to tell our employ­ers that they can’t change those rules.

When you hear the garage door open at 9 a.m. on a Thurs­day morn­ing, it’s never a good sign. And, when you see your hus­band car­ry­ing a small box, it’s even more omi­nous. Iron­i­cally, just days before we were com­ment­ing on how sad it was that our neigh­bor was let go the week prior to Christ­mas. We never thought it would hap­pen to us. After all, Steve got the com­pany to a very sig­nif­i­cant level of achieve­ment the year before. He has an M.B.A. and was a hard worker, ded­i­cated to the com­pany to the point of relo­cat­ing to another state only 9 months after start­ing with the com­pany at their request. I was a work from home designer/​manufacturer in my own busi­ness and was strug­gling. The long hours, the stress of busi­ness own­er­ship and the debt was tak­ing its toll. Bou­tiques and brick and mor­tar stores weren’t buy­ing, plan­ning for another sea­son was out of the ques­tion and Steve’s salary was the only thing keep­ing us afloat. [Read More]

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