An occurrance in your life that significantly changed your future.

[G#Gill]

My hubby was persuaded by a family friend to join a charity that ran boat trips for handicapped people. They needed somebody full-time to skipper the 'holiday boat' a broad-beam barge specially adapted to carry all degrees of handicapped children and adults on a 4 day cruise on the inland waterways in the Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire area. It meant that he would give up a secure job as a police officer on the Ministry of Defence Police, at a time when he was going for his sergeant's exam and the attendant increase of salary. We discussed this and as it was a job that was really a vocation and something that my hubby would thoroughly enjoy doing, we took the plunge. My hubby was told that he would always have the same amount of salary that he would have been paid in the M.O.D. so he wouldn't loose out financially. This was OK for about a year, but the promise of parity was not adhered to - the excuse being that as a charity they could not afford to pay my hubby any more than he got when he first started working as their holiday skipper ! After a few years, we realised that we may have to find a part-time job for me to top up my hubby's salary. There were no such jobs in the countryside at that time and it had to be part-time so that I was at home when my son was home from school. We reluctantly decided to sell our cottage and move into the suburbs of the nearby city to give me more opportunity of work.

My hubby was still the holiday skipper and was really enjoying his work, even though the money remained static. It was such a worthwhile job, and he put in a lot of extra hours to make sure everything ran smoothly. Then out-of-the-blue he was asked to leave as they really couldn't afford his salary any more. They were going to use volunteer skippers who had retired and could spare the time. My hubby, of course, was devastated - he loved that job and it broke his heart to have to leave. My dad thought that my hubby had been treated very shabbily and told the owner of the boats, but it made no difference.

We had moved to the suburbs, my hubby was without work (but not for long thank goodness), so we took in students as paying guests and that helped with the finances.

I often wonder what we would have been doing had we stayed in our cottage. If my hubby had stayed in the M.O.D. he certainly would have got his promotion and retired on a pretty decent pension. We would have sold that detached cottage and bought a bungalow at the coast and still had cash capital in hand, as that cottage was valued at over £350,000 - it had 1/4 acre garden and loads of outbuildings. My hubby's M.O.D. pension would have given us a very comfortable life. Ah well, such is life !

We made a wrong decision, that coloured the rest of our lives. Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing ? I'm not saying that we totally regret making that decision because we did things that we may not have done otherwise.

Have you ever made a decision in your life that has proved to be the wrong one. Did you regret making that decision ?

[Chloe_88]

Sometimes I wished I stayed in school, went to college etc.

As my current qualifications get me no where (animal care).

So i'm a bit stuck in a boring job..

BUT

I would never have met my OH.

And I would never have bought a house at 21 years of age.

So a little regret but the good makes up for it