As I shared in Part One of this series, I found myself at a crossroads. As Yogi Berra famously quipped, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” That pretty much sums up what happens next. I decided to seriously consider an outright retirement as advised by my Charles Schwab financial advisor. Figuring out what to do next – the Part Two of this story – was still an open question. Schwab guy had seemingly run out of great ideas, so I went where absolutely no one would suggest you seek life-planning advice – from strangers, randos, and assorted weirdos on social media: no empathic life coach needed. It may be absolute shite advice, mind you, but it saves you lots of money.
I had been following the online saga of a person on Twitter who had decided to walk away from a high salary (and high pressure) gig, move from a large, comfortable suburban home and travel thousands of miles with their spouse and cats to a much smaller home in Florida. How stereotypical, I thought. How cliché, I thought. But, maybe I want that, too, I thought. It was every stereotype and cliché I had once sworn to avoid. If I did those things, I felt, I would be openly acknowledging my mortality and jumping on the fast track to the grave.
I had initially rejected this option out-of-hand several years ago based on nothing more than my preconceived notions. But I kept following the transition of my social media friends hoping to glean insights that retirement could be a better place for me. My current situation was far from what I had imagined for my Golden Years. I was bored, unhealthy, and constantly annoyed with the world around me. Our large, recently remodeled suburban home was like a weight around my neck. I loved the house and all the time and treasure we had invested in it. In addition to the money, time, and emotional investments, there was the ongoing maintenance issues. I had taken on some cleaning and all the lawn work we had previously outsourced. I was finding my schedule crushed by demands for mowing, raking, and cleaning. How did I maintain a full-time job, and a side hustle while consistently traveling before the New Times?
I was reminded of a maxim I used to say to my kids: you don’t own things, things own you. I first came to this realization the three seasons we had a boat on the Chesapeake Bay. After the initial excitement wears off, you find yourself making life decisions centered on the fact you own that damn boat.
Sunny weekend? You’d better plan a boating event or you’re wasting your investment.
Rainy weekend? Need to quickly change plans to ‘not’ use the boat.
Nice late fall weekend? Block it for two days of cleaning, engine/lower end maintenance, and wrapping to put up the boat for the season.
It became the same game when my wife and I returned to motorcycling after the kids moved out. Sounds like open-road freedom, right? Well, it uses the same mental calculus we had to deal with owning a boat. The bikes grow to own you.
It suddenly occurred to me I had arrived at this same place with our home. We loved it. It had evolved to become our own private little oasis for us and family members to unwind and relax when we had downtime from our busy work and travel schedules. But without the work and the busy travel schedules, it became a lonely place, cut-off from the world around us. Our resort had become our gilded cage.
I returned to the world of social media to see my contacts there making new friends, attending events several days a week, and going to all these places on a – gasp – golf cart. How stereotypical, I thought. How cliché, I thought. But, maybe I want that, too, I thought.
On a whim, I reached out directly through the social media app. My wife and I had decided to go see for ourselves. We were just going to look around, mind you. No grandiose plans, no preparatory work like seeking out pre-approval for a new mortgage, nor any other major arrangements. Just going down there to look.
I did reach out to a realtor who promised to show us around. But before we could meet him at our hotel, we finally had a chance to meet up with my social media friend. I thought that first in-person meeting (scheduled for a local restaurant) would be awkward as we had never met, but had only interacted via social media. In fact, it turned out to be an easy, comfortable continuation of the collegial dialogue we had been having on in cyberspace.
After lunch, they took us all around their retirement community to see the area, houses, and amenities. It was so unlike my preconceived notions, I was stunned. When I noted this discordant perception, I mentioned it to my friend who looked at me in the passenger’s seat, smiled, and simply stated, “So many people just hate to see others having fun.”
It made perfect sense. Everywhere we looked, we saw people having fun. There was a large farmers market in a village square that day. Golf carts swarmed the area and people were walking around with their coffee buying fresh vegetables and Key lime pies. Later in the day, a live band cranked up “classic” rock n’ roll tunes for the seniors: about a hundred people moved into the area in front of the band to dance, most of them rather badly. Some did common line dances adapted to the rhythm of whatever tune was being played. No one laughed, no one judged, and no one cared.
After an exhausting day that began with an early flight to Florida and ended in the evening after the first whirlwind day. I felt myself being drawn in and realizing how my retirement could actually work. But I still didn’t want to rely on one other’s perspective, so my wife and I spent the next two days with a local realtor to show us other options in the same region. This was the next whirlwind of riding in a big SUV while being whisked around to other retirement communities. They were all very nice properties, but none of them even came close to the lifestyle my friend had taken the time to show us. After quickly telling the agent we weren’t interested in what we were seeing, we went back.
This time, we got a brand-new realtor that handles just my friend’s community. He apologized for the lack of inventory. We whipped us around the area to see a grand total of three houses – out of thousands of similar homes. But our friend had laid us a solid groundwork to understand the area and we had already developed a good idea of what to seek out in a house there. So, when we walked into the third house – a five year-old resale – my wife turned to look at me with a big grin. I looked to the realtor and said, “We’ll put in an offer on this one.”
He looked back at me with mild surprise. “Have you got any mortgage pre-approval and an earnest check to leave with me? Is your home in North Carolina currently on the market to sell?””
“I must confess I came here completely unprepared to make an impulse purchase like this.”
“You are certainly not the first person to do this. It’s a running joke here. Here, shake my hand, and I’ll help you and your wife get that house.”
With less than 48 hours until our return flight, we had to apply for a bridge mortgage, gather up earnest money, and produce a reasonable offer. And yet, we did it all. We left Florida with a signed agreement to purchase a house and a now-empty bank account that had to be raided for the earnest money. With reams of paperwork in-hand, we raced back to the airport to drop off the rental car and catch the flight back to North Carolina. The next time we would see that house would be the day we would move in 31 days later.
Up next, Part Three – The Move
