Moving there would mean selling the house and hoping to break even. Worse, he says, it would take Jennifer two hours from relatives now just 10 doors away.
Maybe, Bobic says, he'll work through the week and come home on weekends. He did it before in Georgia, sleeping in his office on a fold-out Army cot and showering at the gym.
It's not so bad, he says.
"You'd be amazed how many people are doing it."
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Kathy Miller recalls when the finances of work and family life were adding up just right.
In 2008, her events planning company was having its best year ever. She and her husband had set aside money to put their two sons through college, with enough left in income and savings for "a very nice life" in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, Ill.
Then the financial crisis sent the stock market tumbling and many of the corporate customers who had kept Miller's Total Event Resources busy, stopped calling.
By the following year, business was down so sharply that Miller laid off 10 of her 15 employees. For four to six months, the rest worked only for benefits. Miller didn't collect a salary for a year-and-a-half.
The business wasn't all that suffered. The value of the Miller home in Hoffman Estates, another well-to-do suburb of Chicago, fell almost 30 percent. She'd been counting on the house to fund part of her retirement.
The family was forced to dip into savings to cover living expenses and the drop in stock prices took more from their nest egg. "We've lost one kid's college money," she says. So two years ago, when her older son was half-way through Illinois State University, Miller and her husband told him he'd have to pay for his last two years of school. They told their younger son he would also have to pay for his last two years.
Add it up now, Miller says, and her net worth is just half what it used to be.
"All of a sudden, you wake up and on paper, it's completely different," she says.
Business has rebounded to the point where Miller now has seven full-time and two part-time staffers. Old clients have come back, and she has new ones. But revenue is still down 20 percent. The family has adjusted their plans and expectations accordingly.
In Miller's kitchen, there's a door to nowhere. It was supposed to open onto a deck that hasn't been built.
Vacations are shorter — a maximum of five days instead of two weeks. Money is one reason. But "being away from the office is more difficult because we're doing more with less."
When shopping, Miller asks herself, "Do I need this jewelry or pair of shoes? No, I don't, because I'm thinking about keeping that money to sustain our business and make it work."
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Long after Main Street goes quiet, Mike Lamm is still at the back of his jewelry shop, surrounded by tools. There'll be no more customers until the morning, but that does not mean the job is done.
"If I had to rely on retail sales out of my case, I'd have had to close my doors a long time ago," the 48-year-old businessman says.
These days, people aren't buying much jewelry. What saves Lamm is his ability to repair watches and make rings. There's still enough call for that kind of work in Mediapolis, a small town in rural southeastern Iowa.
Things have always been tight for the Lamms, who Mike describes as a family of "modest means." But like many of their neighbors, it's become more of a struggle over the past five years. At this hour, Mike would rather be home with wife Tracey and their two children, Ethan, 16, and Raeann, 11.
But there are groceries to buy, cars that need gas, and a mortgage to meet, says Tracey, who works as a grant writer for their regional government council.
"I feel like, for what we make, we should be doing better. We should have more money," says Tracey, who's 43. "But all of it just seems to go to bills."
Tracey estimates she spends $60 a week on gas, commuting to work. Mike, who uses a wheelchair after losing use of his legs in a car accident at 17, spends about the same for van that operates with hand controls.
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