Decisions, Decisions - #5

You never know which way life's road will lead you.

I learned a long time ago, you have to be flexible with your plans. It's good to have more than one option - or at least be willing to go with the flow and revise your plans along the way.

Over the past ten years, I came up with many different scenarios of how we could accomplish our dream of retirement. Interestingly, two years ago, a new opportunity presented itself which became the perfect solution for a new home base.

My younger daughter and new husband, both very successful and family conscious individuals, decided they wanted to buy their first home. They also generously asked us to be part of their new living situation. This would be in the form of a fully separate in-law apartment.  So, just over six months ago, their new house just outside of Boston was completed and ready to move in. They picked an area in Massachusetts that would be accessible for all of us to travel to our current employment, convenient to commuter rail and highways. And they were able to find a large piece of property, formerly a farm, being developed by a local builder which would give us a lot of outside space; I knew this would make Charlie happy. Working with the builder on a new build was an opportunity to have the home customized for all our specific needs. Since our "apartment" would be basement level, the house was lifted to allow for full sized windows in the rear of the house and a special entryway was created in the front of the house to provide direct access to the lower level. In doing this, the staircase which generally would divide the basement space in half, was now moved off to one side. This allowed for many more design possibilities. The basement area would provide approximately 800 square feet of blank space to create "my" dream apartment. We even installed a special steel beam in the ceiling to eliminate most of the support columns that would normally impede upon the openness of the space, had all the plumbing installed and upgraded the electrical system. All preliminary "behind the scenes work" would be completed leaving the actual construction of the apartment to be done after my daughter & husband took occupancy of their house. All the changes to accommodate our needs and work to create our space would be a separate transaction paid for by us and required a separate permit and therefore would not hold up their house closing.
And, we still had to sell our house.

Change - #4

Change is not easy. For some it is harder than others.

My husband Charlie isn't a big fan of change. But I like the idea of starting over. I am always trying new approaches to different things that may make my(our) life better or at least more interesting. For this reason, I consider myself more driven. I am always thinking.

I was 24 years old when my first husband, Bob and I purchased our first (and only) home.  Our children were born and raised in this home and it was where Bob suddenly died, a very young man of 34. I remarried and continued to live in this house, starting over again, many times. Thirty seven years later, I feel like I have lived several lives in this home and I have been ready for a change for a very long time now. I am not generally the sentimental type.

After all our children had come and gone, the house was pretty empty. It seemed like we gravitated only to a small portion of the house and the rest of the rooms remained untouched. So I came up with an idea. (always thinking) The way the house was styled, it would be easy to separate the upstairs from the downstairs and make two separate living spaces, each with their own private entrance. And that is what we did.

For six years, we rented the larger main upstairs of the house and created an apartment for ourselves in the basement level. The basement of our raised ranch had large windows around the entire house, making it bright and sunny. It had been divided up and partially finished when I first purchased the home. Over the years, I had finished the remaining space. When we moved downstairs, it became the first step toward downsizing. We created clearly defined uses for the rooms: a large bedroom (almost 20' long) with sitting area, a separate office, and a combined living and eating space, and a nice little bathroom with a shower. We created a "European" kitchen - small refrigerator,  microwave, convection/toaster oven and a small portable cooktop. We also had a laundry area. This type of living is obviously not for everyone, but it worked for us. The rental income gave us an opportunity to save, pay off debt and begin to make improvements to the house. And, it became a possible scenario for us to travel and leave the house in the custody of our tenants, while making the house self supporting through rental income.

However, once the decision had been made that we would be moving with our children (story forthcoming), we gave our tenants about 6 months notice to vacate. And in May, 2016, we began the process of readying the house for sale.

The RV - #3

You just know when the right one comes along!

In 2012, right after I returned home from my trip to France visiting my older daughter and her husband, Charlie and I purchased our travel trailer.

It was the perfect size - 21.5' in length. The interior was laid our perfectly for our needs and the additional outdoor kitchen in a side panel clinched the deal for us. We were in love!

Over the past five years, we have been enjoying it on and off, mostly for excursions to our favorite destinations in Connecticut and weekends exploring various campgrounds within New England. 

In the meanwhile, we continued sorting out the remaining pieces of our retirement puzzle.

The Plan - #2

It started with a dream.  Then it became a plan.

Ten years ago in 2007, I was far off from retirement but it is never too early to start putting a plan into motion. After all, the journey is part of the pleasure.

First, I assessed what we had. Our biggest asset was the house - no mortgage. We had some savings, but probably only enough to allow us to live about 5-7 years (frugally) supplemented by social security.  Our vehicles were older, paid for, but would eventually need to be replaced. We were both working full time. Health insurance would be our biggest expense. And we would need an RV.

As I started doing research, I discovered a whole world of possibilities through RVing.  "Workamping -  a contraction of "work camping" is a form of RV camping involving singles, couples or families who work part-time or full-time. The people who are Workamping can be called Workampers."  This would be an opportunity for us to be compensated, even if only covering our living expenses. It would also provide a venue for us to be active, involved and meet like minded people. I also joined RV communities on-line and found members very supportive and forthcoming.

Selling the house would provide a bigger nest egg and investment income but we still wanted a home base in Massachusetts, at least for the warmer months. An ideal situation would be a condo, where exterior maintenance - mowing, snow plowing - would be eliminated from our list of responsibilities. With money from the sale of our house, we could buy a property outright and our living expenses would be greatly reduced. It would be hard to convince my husband of this.

We started visiting RV sales centers and RV shows in Boston and Rhode Island, to gather information about products, pricing and figure out what would work for us. We weren't quite ready to buy.



                                      

Beginnings/March, 2017 - #1

Every day is a new beginning.
If you are healthy and feel good, a new day can bring wonderful possibilities!

My name is Eileen. I turned 62 exactly one month ago. I am the younger and more driven half of the Lorings. The other Loring is my husband, Charlie. He is a youthful 69 and for better or worse, is along for the ride on our life adventures.

Charlie and I just "celebrated" our 19th anniversary. We are parents of a relatively "un" blended family. Charlie's three children are substantially older than my two girls; our offspring ranging in age from 49 to 31 and being at different stages of their lives when we first met, probably accounts for a good portion of the lack of mixing in.  Our kids are now all adults, most with kids of their own. As of this writing, I am expecting my first grandchild.

For a very long time I have been dreaming of retirement. I have wanted to make some changes, take some chances, do something off the beaten path but within reason as to not burn through our limited finances. So about 10 years ago, I came up with a plan.

Through Charlie, I acquired a taste for RVing. When we first met, he introduced me to his fully self-contained camper that slid into the back of his pick up truck. It was an adorable tiny living space and I became enamored with the idea of traveling with your home in tow. We used the slide on for a number of years until the squirrels ate through a wall, the roof began to leak and the hand jacks that lifted the camper up to slide into the truck bed had become rusty and too difficult to crank. Did I mention that my husband is not big on preventative maintenance? We eventually found a handy guy with some foresight and a pick up truck and gave the camper to him. As the story goes, handy guy passed the camper on to someone else and it is probably rotting away in a backyard somewhere in New England as I type this blog... (Better his yard than mine)