Getting the Aliyah Ball Rolling

As I have stated previously, the initial intention of this blog was to document my family's aliyah experience. As time goes along and that dream becomes more of a reality, that message will start to play a bigger and bigger role in these posts. In the meantime, please continue to enjoy the stories along the way.

That being said, this will serve as our aliyah kick-off post. No we aren't in contact with Nefesh B'Nefesh yet. No we aren't about to leave any time soon. But there are things we are already doing now to get the ball rolling to set us up for a successful aliyah.

One such thing is our cell phones. As you know, though it is highly contested, in the United States most cell phone providers lock users into a 2 year contract. Well, as we'd like to think about leaving within the next 2-3 years we made the decision that after Rivkah's next available upgrade in the summer we are not allowing any more 2 year contracts on our plan. We have 6 lines on our plan currently and if anyone wants to extend their plan they'll just have to wait until the contract is up and get their own plan. Once our two contracts are done we'll take them month to month the rest of the way.

The other thing we have been doing is working with a financial planner to get our finances in order. Cut back on spending where it's not needed, purchase proper levels of insurance (life, auto, renters), invest some money, and most importantly, start to save up an Aliyah nest egg. I've always heard that to have a small fortune in Israel you need to move with a large fortune in America. I don't know if that's 100% accurate but we definitely need to have some money stored away for the move.

So, for all you nay-sayers who want to keep us tied down here, I'm terribly sorry but this is happening.