Tuesday, March 6, 2012

We're Moving! (Part 2) Explain this to me again.

Why are we doing this?
We absolutely love our neighbourhood and house.  The garden is outstanding and backs onto a "secret" park.  That park has done good things for my chipping game.
But ...
A bunch of good reasons and some that seemed good at the time came together.

Although I do own a recliner chair, WE ARE NOT RETIRING !!!!!
But it is probably past time for thinking about and planning for retirement.  Our parents had a fairly long list of bad moves after the nests were empty.  A few of those mistakes involved waiting a few years too long to move, then whining about why they didn't do it years earlier.  So in the usual way of parents and kids, we are probably bailing too early.

Bailing early will give us a few years to figure out what we can live with.  It's pretty unlikely we'll discover we are happiest in a basement apartment somewhere that has monthly visits from Aetna.  We hope it's unlikely that we will be knocking on our old door in two years trying to buy it back.  There is a lot of room in between.

I have a theory that smart, adaptive people will move way more often in the decades post-55 than in the decades pre-55.  It's all about focusing your energy on the stuff you want to do and a little less on the stuff you have to do.

Downsizing is quite a neat way to convince yourself that you have added to your savings nest egg... so long as you don't get distracted by the silly thought that it is just swapping one asset for another and we have no clue whether our house is smarter or dumber than our financial advisor.  Lately the house has looked pretty smart, but the financial advisor has also had his moments.  Maybe if we give him some more money to play with he'll stop phoning in the middle of the night to tell us that there's a 57% chance that the sky is falling.

WE DO NOT THINK THE MARKET IS CRASHING !!!
We long ago realized that we know enough to know that we don't know when, if, or how much the market will correct.  Our biggest worry today is that so many "smart" people now are saying the same as what our best guess has been for a few years: growth will likely at least slow and maybe correct gently in a while, for a while.  When the analysts start to agree with each other, something else is going to happen ... when they start agreeing with us ... that's really spooky!

Lee has changed her tune.  She used to love gardening.  She still loves her garden.  There's a difference.  I am scared to death that the next phase would require me to help with the gardening.  Gotta move.
There are some gimpy body bits that have something to do with this ... could be the mangled neck vertebrae and arthritic bits can only handle mass quantities of either garening or golf.  I am thrilled that she has made the obvious and brilliant choice.  Though she still has to find time for golf and her nasty singing habit.

Our dog died.  Sounds silly, but Mallaig was one of the things that anchored us to the place.  That made us full empty-nesters.  And, of course, being dogless opens up several options.

1...2...3...
How many properties do you really want to maintain?  We have a condo in Florida that we occasionally get to visit, and a cottage ... that we occasionally get to visit.  Maybe a condo would be a significant property management simplification.

You know, when I read this over, it's not nearly as compelling an argument as it seemed a couple of months ago .... OMG, What Have We Done !?

Next up: back to dealing with the stuff

1 comment:

Bill smith said...

This is great. it is like xmas letters every week! With the "stuff" I have been accused of being a heartless purger and in fact am on "do not throw out or sell until approval is given" notice. But someone else's the possibilities are intriguing.