So, you took your dream job.

Our story is your story.

You’ve packed up all your things, traveled halfway around the country, and now you find yourself living in a van down by the river. Or maybe in a ski town dorm with 5 other people. Your family is so excited for you. Your friends are in awe. They are all so happy that you are getting to live your dream. At least for the first two years or so…

Then the questions start to come. The excitement fades into concern. Are you thinking about the future? You can’t do this forever. How are you going to save for retirement? You'll never be able to buy a house and have kids. Do you have health care? 

At first you laugh it off. Investing? That's for rich people that own a second home in Aspen. How am I supposed to save up for a house when I can't even figure out how to put food on the table in October? Or maybe you were ahead of the game and realized that investing in your retirement fund at 23 actually is a smart idea. You took a look around and noticed that the traditional options don't exist in this line of work. Maybe you turned 26 and got kicked off your parents health care to find it difficult to find proper coverage, for the right amount of time, in the right location, at a price that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. 

Maybe 30-ish comes around and you begin to wonder if your parents are right after all. Building a life in this line of work feels impossible. Yet, you’ve made friends you now call family in a place you now call home. God forbid you “sell out” and move to the city. You start looking at how to piece together your second or third career that's going to make this all work. 

Maybe you’ve managed to “make it”. You’ve landed one of those rare year round jobs in your mountain community, and everything is beginning to feel slightly more stable. You’ve met the love of your life and you're ready to buy a house. You take one look into the market and this whole thing starts to feel like it might cost you your sanity and your first born child. 

Maybe you’ve toughed it out. You’ve stuck with it long enough that you’ve discovered all the loopholes and you’ve really done it. You've got the job, or three, the house and some semblance of a life savings going. You find yourself in a position working with or managing people that you see going through the same struggles. You are wondering what you can do as an employer and community member to help make this all a bit more attainable for those following you. 

Maybe you built a life and career on a more traditional path and stumbled upon this mountain town later in life. You fell in love with the lifestyle, the place, and the people. You notice the unique struggles of these towns and are wondering what kind of contribution you can make. 

As seasonal professionals ourselves, our story is your story. We live and breathe the unique challenges that seasonal professionals and mountain communities face day in and day out. We’ve never done life the way we were supposed to. Why would our finances be any different? 

The way we see it, we’ve got two options. 

Option A: Work the system.

What resources are available to us now? What are the creative, non-traditional pathways to finding health care, investing, saving for retirement or buying a home that are currently out there and actually work for those of us in seasonal work? It is possible. We just have to think outside of the box. 

Option B: Change the system. 

Realistically, there are few health care or retirement packages available that were designed for seasonal workers in the first place. Those of us that have successfully navigated the system have creatively pieced together things that just barely get the job done. We believe there is opportunity to redesign and release new financial packages that actually fit the lifestyles and careers of our communities.

This is where we come in. We are here to support you in navigating the system as is, to help you understand the landscape and find information that will enable you to keep living your dream. Additionally, we hope to build products, relationships, and opportunities over time that can help make all of these things a little easier and more effective for us all.