saw myself as more of a metropolitan person , but you know , without money , this was our best option . '' The couple 's drastic lifestyle change -- one they chose -- came last October when Wright , 48 , lost his job managing life insurance portfolios for millionaires at a private firm in Beverly Hills . His niche company , which relied heavily on capital flow , had felt the pain of the credit crunch . Once making over $ 100,000 a year , Wright soon joined the growing number of Americans facing unemployment in the economic downturn . iReport.com : Tell us how you 're surviving With meager savings , Bird and Wright knew they could n't maintain their costly Los Angeles lifestyle in an area where , they say , image is everything . Even if they had stayed in Beverly Hills , they would have needed to move into a smaller apartment and rely on Bird 's modest salary as a financial manager . Exhausted from the rat race , Wright decided they needed another option . `` I 've been in Los Angeles for a long time and I 've had to start
This story is part of an ongoing series of profiles by CNN about economic survival in this time of financial crisis . Leah Bird and her husband Ed Wright stand in front of their new home : a 1974 Airstream trailer . -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- They bid farewell to their beloved trips to the opera and museum , the beach and Buddhist temples . They ate one last time at their favorite restaurants serving Indian curried chicken and warm bowls of Vietnamese pho . Leah Bird and her husband , Ed Wright , have traded their comfortable two-bedroom apartment and jobs in Beverly Hills , California , for life in a trailer on a five-acre Oregon farm . No longer do the couple hear roaring fire trucks in the street or chatter from patrons dining at outdoor cafes . On this farm , the dominant silence is occasionally interrupted by the sounds of frogs and crickets . `` It 's not necessarily a lifestyle that has ever seemed attractive to me , '' says 28-year-old Bird , between tending to the farm animals : two sheep , two Nubian goats , miniature horses and geese . `` I always