Retirement Housing Thoughts
I’m not sure anyone can retire when they want. There is so much to do trying to tie up the loose ends and finish your work-a-day lifestyle.
Meetings with financial advisors, management of sick/vacation time and other benefits like health care/vision/dental appointments.
Where are you going to retire to? Have you been there and actually lived for a while to know that it is not just a pipe dream? Is the weather really that great? Have you looked a the locals lifestyle and not just the tourist dream? What about those other living expenses: Fuel, HOA, housing premiums, other actual housing association fees? Dreaming of Del Webb style retirement developments? Better check those extra fees like lot placement premiums and the upgrade fees to get that no threshold shower or the fancy brick patio. Bare land purchase? Is there power, sewer, water and all those amenities available that you want to build into your dream home. Are the current prices ever going down or are they going to continue to rise?
Oh, never mind, you’re just going to buy a big Class A RV and travel from resort to resort and live the good life. Ever been stuck with the one you love for more than a month in your bathroom at home, in a rain storm with wind blowing miles per hour? You are one “off comment” away from homicidal urges or at least being stuck with that nice big RV (that depreciated 35 percent the day you drove it off the lot) and one spouse or the other vowing to never return.
What about when you get tired of that love of your life RV? Or you become disabled or debilitated in some way that is not conducive to living in your RV full time? Or, even before you start, have you ever driven anything larger than your Prius or even your Escalade? My current truck and trailer (yes, much like a semi-truck) is 53 feet long, think that one over.
We are looking at the middle ground. We are going to have both our cake and eat it too in the shape of a house and an RV. Readers of this blog and the F&O site know that we have been RV’ing for a number of years, pulling our faithful 30 foot fifth wheel Piper behind the Beast, our workhorse Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD pickup. Things changed at the end of last year for us. We decided that Piper wasn’t big enough for our retirement needs and that we wanted more amenities in our lives. We also decided on a new tow vehicle to haul the new monster around with. They will be getting their own post soon.
So, with new rig in the yard, we set our sights on where to buy the retirement/rejuvenation brick and mortar home. Our first reaction is to be in the Nevada desert, near Las Vegas. But who really knows? Our plans are very fluid and our options are endless as we plan on doing the full time thing with our RV until we find what we are looking for. Besides, we have family and friends flung all over this vast land and we want to see them and spend time exploring.
After all, that is why E and I do our thing. We sight see and explore, mostly together but often separate as we have diverging likes and emotional needs that are only fed by ourselves at times. Remember that diversity of thought and challenges are indeed the spice of life. We identified this early in our relationship and 20 years later, we are still able to give to each other and also feed our individual needs for stimulus. Often E will be found walking the Vegas strip enjoying watching people, while I am lost to society somewhere in the outdoors throwing up desert dust plumes. We both enjoy these things together and separately and know when we need to do them on a solo basis.
In any case, join us next time when we reveal our full time combination.
See you out there,
BFD
