Anyone not want to retire?
Most folks goal, seems to be, to retire as soon as possible. It has been my experience, that, for many folks retiring was the greatest thing they ever did. But for others it is the worst thing they ...
Forum Discussion
For a while both DW and I traveled a lot for business. I used to joke that we only spent 5 of our first 7 married years together. And maybe because of all that business travel I never moved further than 30 miles away from where I grew up in Southern California (DW spent 2 years back East).
So I don't remember exactly how we came to the decision that we'd leave California for retirement, but it became a goal and we started our list of criteria. We even made a trip to an active 55+ community (while about 10 years too young) and did a couple night test stay while checking out their amenities and the surrounding area.
I still thought we had some scouting trips needed almost 4 years ago when my DW pulled me aside and asked "why not now?" I'm currently working in retail, so that's a very portable skill. And DW knew our target city had a facility trying to mimic what her current employer was doing. So we thought we could move and test-drive our retirement destination while still working for an uncertain number of additional years.
Because we had not treated our previous house like some sort of ATM, and we'd been in it since the mid-90's downturn, we had serious equity even in late 2011 and early 2012. We put it on the market in December 2011 and closed escrow in March 2012.
We bought annual passes for our National Parks and for the Utah State Parks and started exploring our new home base for a couple of years. Last year we added the TT to the mix and could not be happier.
We're both working about 36 hours per week, and during camping season I can take every other weekend off starting at 1pm on Fridays. I don't know when retirement will come, but everything we've done in the last 3+ years has reaffirmed our need/desire to have a real life outside our careers.
So I don't remember exactly how we came to the decision that we'd leave California for retirement, but it became a goal and we started our list of criteria. We even made a trip to an active 55+ community (while about 10 years too young) and did a couple night test stay while checking out their amenities and the surrounding area.
I still thought we had some scouting trips needed almost 4 years ago when my DW pulled me aside and asked "why not now?" I'm currently working in retail, so that's a very portable skill. And DW knew our target city had a facility trying to mimic what her current employer was doing. So we thought we could move and test-drive our retirement destination while still working for an uncertain number of additional years.
Because we had not treated our previous house like some sort of ATM, and we'd been in it since the mid-90's downturn, we had serious equity even in late 2011 and early 2012. We put it on the market in December 2011 and closed escrow in March 2012.
We bought annual passes for our National Parks and for the Utah State Parks and started exploring our new home base for a couple of years. Last year we added the TT to the mix and could not be happier.
We're both working about 36 hours per week, and during camping season I can take every other weekend off starting at 1pm on Fridays. I don't know when retirement will come, but everything we've done in the last 3+ years has reaffirmed our need/desire to have a real life outside our careers.
