Retirement: A Full-Time Job

Calling All Retirees

 (Photo details:  Relaxing in the back garden with a glass of wine is certainly one of the benefits of retirement, but you'll need more than that for a happy retirement.)

(Caution: This is a post about retirement.  If you came here for politics I’m sorry to disappoint you.)

 

Yesterday Walter left a comment on my post:

Unfortunately, I am one of those who retired from something, not to something. I was a high level state government administrator and my work was my identity and passion. I retired almost three years ago. Not being a hobby or volunteer guy, I ended up taking a new job after one year. I am now a minion and work 40 hours per week hating my job. But if I quit, I know what the year without working was like. I am lost, unhappy, and looking for suggestions. I just don’t want the cookie cutter ideas of get a hobby, learn to play an instrument, learn a new language, volunteer. My finances are good, my health, except for my frame of mind, is good, but I regret the day I retired and there is no do over and I hate my current job–not challenging, engaging, etc. Is there a retirement to enjoy just relaxing? Suggestions please!!!

In my post yesterday, I wrote that I didn’t think I was alone in feeling the way I do.  I don’t think Walter is alone in feeling the way he feels either.  So I thought I’d put the question out to you.  Fellow retirees who maybe struggled with the same feelings as Walter and came out the other side.

He’s hit on a truth, that we need to feel challenged, engaged, and I also think valued.  I have gotten those things over the eight years of my retirement from blogging, my stint at a part-time job, volunteer work, time spent with friends and family, community college classes, traveling, and now piano.  But Walter needs some more ideas.  Walter needs a project that engages his intellect and passion.  I think I can safely say that a retirement spent just relaxing is not going to cut it.

You, my dear readers, have amazed me with your contributions on issues large and small over the years.  I have a feeling some of you might be able to help Walter like you’ve helped me over the years.  Any ideas?

Related Posts:   

    Why Retirement Won't Make You Happy

    Are You a Failure at Retirement?

    How to Recapture Your Retirement High

 

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Why I Would Rather Be Retired Than Run for President

(Photo Details:  My kitty.  Why? Because she is so cute.)

Here’s a little story.

I graduated from U.C. Santa Barbara with a degree in Business Economics with an Accounting emphasis.  I went to work after college for a “Big 8” accounting firm.  Four years later, after earning my CPA license, I left public accounting to work as the Controller of a venture capital firm.  Several years later, I was promoted to CFO.  And after 18 years of working there, I retired.  Some other facts:

1) When I retired, the guy who replaced me was offered a salary and bonus package that was almost 50% higher than mine.  His bio read much like mine, same college, same major, same Big 8 experience, same venture capital experience.  Except that he graduated a year after I did.

2) Every CFO before me and every CFO after me, was invited to attend in the weekly partner meetings.  I was not.

3) Every CFO before and after me was a man.

But I did very well at this firm, amassing enough money to retire at the age of 44. 

So that’s one story.  Here’s another one. 

When I started my career, I worked in the tax division of a Big 8 accounting firm.  Every so often, a partner would take each of us to lunch.  A “mentoring” lunch where they would share their wisdom on how we could be successful.  One such time, I scored a big “win,” the head of the tax division was my lunch-time mentor.  He spent most of the lunch telling me about how he had the great advantage of looking old when he was younger.  Because he was prematurely gray or prematurely bald or something like that.  I forget, it was so irrelevant to my situation.  He attributed much of his success to this.  

He told me I looked very young so the wisdom he passed along to me was, “Maybe don’t smile so much.”

These are just two of my stories.  Maybe you have some stories too.

While apparently, I smile too much, Hillary Clinton smiles to little.  She’s not relatable, she’s shrill, she doesn’t have the right experience.  Oh yeah, and she doesn’t laugh right.  When I watched the debates on Monday night, I actually yelled expletives not fit to print at the TV when Donald Trump would not stop talking over Hillary Clinton.  I’ve been there too. 

I am not trying to persuade you to vote one way or the other.  You already know how you are voting.  I just wanted to write a post about how this election is making me feel.  I wasn’t even going to write about it but I read these articles today and I wanted to share them, in case you’ve been there too.

Hillary Clinton Will Not Be Manterrupted  (New York Times)

Hillary Clinton’s Everywoman Moment  (New York Times)

Women do ask for pay raises, they just don’t get them (CNN Money)

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Postcard from Retirement

(Photo Details:  The relaxing part of our bike trip in Indonesia on the island of Lombok-May 2016)

It’s always hard to write a post after such a long absence.   Even when I’m not blogging, I think about blogging all the time.  Both for the writing part and for the interaction part--I always miss the interaction part the most.

But there are only so many hours in a day, even when you are retired!  So I just thought I’d send you a little postcard from retirement to tell you that I miss you, and let you know what I’ve been up to.  You already know that I haven’t been blogging (other than just thinking about blogging, which I guess doesn’t really count.)

Piano

As many of you know, learning to play jazz piano was something I had always pictured doing when I retired.  I didn’t get around to starting until five years into my retirement.  Better late than never, right?  But I’m deep into it now.  Besides taking weekly private lessons, I am now taking a jazz piano class at the community college.  We meet three days a week for an hour.  With practice and an hour commute each way to school, I’m as busy with this as I was when I had a part-time job a few years ago!

On the first day of class last week, our teacher told us about four different levels of learning piano.  Actually, this is probably true with any new skill: 

-First you don’t know how much you don’t know.  That’s the Unconscious Incompetence stage.

-Next you start to learn and you realize how much you don’t know.  That’s the Conscious Incompetence stage.

-I’m beginning to gain competence (finally after three years of lessons!)  So I’m in the Conscious Competence stage.  It takes a lot of concentration and practice for me to play right now.  It doesn’t really come naturally or easily, it’s still very hard work to play what I want to be playing.

-The final stage, she told us, is the Unconscious Competence stage.  Where you can access all your knowledge basically unconsciously--with ease.

Of course one student asked how long until we get to that stage, and our professor said 10,000 hours.  We all know about that 10,000 hours thing, right?

So I calculated that if I could practice 20 hours per week, I could get there in 10 years.  Even though I’m retired, I don’t think I can manage that, 10 hours a week is probably even ambitious.   At that rate, if I stick with it, I’ll be really great by the time I’m 72 years old.  Probably too old to start touring, but maybe some time during the next 20 years I’ll at least get to the point where I can play for people without shaking.  Currently there are only four people I can play for without shaking—the teacher I’ve had for the last three years, my husband, and my parents.  And I have to play in front of the entire piano class for the mid-term and final.  So it would be nice to at least make a little progress on that stage-fright thing.

Family Tree

A few months ago, after my Uncle Jim died, I spent a weekend reading through a bunch of personal letters and work memos that Jim had saved over the years.  The best stash was a box of letters he had written to his best friend over 40 years.  His friend’s daughter returned the letters to my uncle after her own father died.  I learned so much, in my uncle’s own words, about his life.   I only wish he were still here so I could ask him some questions!

After I did that, I decided to attack another box of memorabilia that my dad had given me awhile back.  This box was filled with letters, photos, and other items my mother had saved.  (For those of you who are new to my blog, my mother died when I was 16.) 

In this box I found some paperwork about her own adoption.  She was adopted as a baby, and when I was a teenager, she had thought about trying to find her birth mother.   Something that wasn’t as easy back then.   Ultimately, my mom was too afraid to contact her mother.  She wasn’t sure what kind of response she would get, and she didn’t think she could face it if it wasn’t a happy reunion. 

But with the internet, I found my biological grandmother in about 10 minutes.  Unfortunately, she died a couple of years before my mom did.  So I contacted her daughter--my mother’s half-sister.  In spite of the pretty great shock, my newfound aunt and cousins have been very welcoming and are interested in getting to know each other better.  This is the beginning of an exciting chapter for me!

Politics

And finally, I wouldn’t be totally honest if I didn’t tell you I waste an incredible amount of time each day following the presidential election.  Yes, time I could be blogging, or working on that 10,000 hours of piano practice.  Time that would be much more well spent in any number of ways.  But I can’t help myself.  It is the most interesting race I’ve ever watched.  I’ll leave it at that.

Thanks to all of you who have sent me so many nice emails lately!

Related Posts:

 How to Get Nothing Done in Retirement

How to be Lazy Without Even Trying

How Much Time is Too Much Time to Waste?

 

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The Unwelcome Visitor

(Nope, this one is welcome.  Just not ON my computer.)

OH MY GOSH. 

This morning the cat let me sleep in until 5am.  I was so happy.  I got up and did the usual routine, feed her, open the cat door, go to the bathroom, go back upstairs to bed.  About five minutes later we heard a commotion downstairs.  I said, "Doug can you please go down and see what that was?”  

No, argument, he got right up since I had just been up.  I just thought she knocked something over.  I heard it again as Doug went down, so I thought maybe her most unfavorite cat-brother made his way in the cat door and there was a kerfuffle.

Then I heard Doug making stomping running noises.  So I got up and yelled down the stairs, “What is it?” 

    "RACCOONS!!!"  He stomped some more.

    I yelled, “Don’t try to chase them out.  You’re supposed to lock yourself in a room with your pets until they find their way out.  They are MEAN!”  

So he grabbed the cat, who was perched up on the back of the couch just a few feet away from the raccoon.  The one raccoon that was in the house was in the corner behind the conga drums—just a couple feet from the cat door.  Doug carried Fia upstairs and we barricaded ourselves in the bedroom.  Doug said that there was a whole family of raccoons outside of the cat door, but the rest ran off when they saw and heard Doug charging.  

Over the next 15 or 20 minutes we never heard the raccoon rummaging through the kitchen, which is what I’ve heard they do.  So Fia and I stayed in the bedroom while Doug slowly ventured down.  He saw that the raccoon was not in the corner anymore.  So he looked around to make sure it wasn’t anywhere else:  under the downstairs guest bed, under the couches, in any other corners downstairs.  For good measure I checked the upstairs bedrooms in case he had ventured upstairs.  

The coast was clear and we all went downstairs and had breakfast at command central.  I read stories on the internet about raccoons in the house.

The plumber came at 8am to replace our water heater circulation pump.

I moved my internet reading to the back deck.  I was intending to start trying to write in the mornings, but no way could I write with all the left-over stress/excitement.  I read all the Donald Trump news, the Brexit news, and why you shouldn’t eat raw cookie dough.

After the plumber left, I told Doug, “I’m trying this new thing to just not worry about things that might happen in the future.  We will just not open the cat door in the mornings until we actually get up (when it’s light outside).  We’ll figure out what to do when we are gone for a night or two.  But probably, if we just keep the cat door closed all night (and morning), the raccoons will learn it’s usually closed.  Probably they won’t try on the one or two nights we happen to be away.  After all, we’ve had Fia for a year and a half now, and it’s never happened before.”  That type of conversation.  I was proud of myself for almost having let this whole thing go.  For moving on.

I came inside and unloaded the dishwasher.  Now it’s about 9:30.  Fia was in and out all morning.  While I was unloading, I noticed her pawing at the little cube chair under Doug’s desk in the kitchen.  Then she darted away.  I thought maybe she had brought a lizard in.  Although that seemed weird since she would usually meow and not dart away if she brought a lizard in.  So I pulled the chair out (which is really a little ottoman cube that I slip covered with nice fabric.)

There was that raccoon!!!!

Hiding behind the little ottoman I slipcovered.  All morning.  While we were eating breakfast at command central just two feet away.  While I was READING about raccoons on the internet.  While the plumber was here, while I was outside binging on news.  While I was unloading the dishwasher.  

    I jumped back and shrieked, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!”  

    Doug yelled down the stairs, “What? What? What?”

    “It’s still here, the raccoon is still here!”  He raced downstairs and I showed him.  The raccoon was actually kind of cute.  Scared, huddled in the corner under the desk.  He didn’t know what to do either.

So we opened the back door, closed off the doors to most of the front of the house, the dining room has no door so we put up a child gate there.  At one point we saw the little guy making his way to the open back door, but then he saw us and darted back to his corner. 

So I got on Doug’s iPhone, took the cat outside to the front of the house, and called the Humane Society to see if I could get advice on what to do.  I was not calm.  I was assured that I was first in the hold queue.  I was on hold for what seemed like forever.  But they know how important my call is.

After about 10 minutes, while I was still on hold, Doug came out front where I was keeping my eye on Fia so she would not go to the back yard and back into the house.  He said the raccoon was gone.  Doug saw him leave, and then followed him out to watch him disappear over the back fence.  

Just to be sure he didn’t have an accomplice, I checked every single room, what I think is every single possible hiding place.

I think we’re all clear.  I hope.

Related Posts:

 

The Dog Free Retirement (Or Becoming Cat Parents—Part One)

Meeting Fia

Keeping Fia

 

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Can I Still Retire if I Hate Golf?

(Photo Details:  Hawaii--Doug without his clubs)

I receive a lot of requests from people wanting me to write a guest post on their blog.  I know I will never get around to that, I barely get around to posting on my own blog!  So I have learned from experience to just say no to that.  

I also receive many requests to publish guest posts on my blog.  Usually from investment companies or insurance companies, or someone else trying to sell something to my readers.  I also say no to that.  But I will usually publish a guest-written post to introduce a new retirement blogger.

The following is a guest post by Jared Scharen.  Jared is an MBA student at Northwestern who has started a website dedicated to helping boomers figure out where they want to retire.  His website eRetirements has a fun quiz to help you pick a place to retire, and also a retirement blog.  It's fun, but truth be told, that's not why I agreed to a guest post.  When he introduced himself to me he said that his parents read my blog.  And that made me happy.

So here is Jared's post: Healthy Hobbies for Retirement:  Active Alternatives to Hitting the Links.

It comes as no surprise that many people associate the word “retirement” with “golf.” Early tee times with friends followed by a midday lunch at the clubhouse seems to be a common stereotype of how retirees spend much of their free time.  This is a common fallacy that forces many people to unwillingly pick up the game and end up finding absolutely no pleasure in it. So what should you do if golf isn’t your thing?

Despite the common perception of golf as being the main hobby for retirees across the country, there are tons of other activities that offer a unique combination of exercise, shared connection, and most importantly, satisfaction. They can also shape your decision on where to retire. A few of them include:

Softball: Softball is great way to be outdoors while staying active and competitive. It is also a sure way to engage in social bonding, especially if you miss the comradery of your office team. 

Swimming: Swimming offers multiple benefits for your body including improved flexibility, built up endurance, and stronger heart muscle. It also provides the social benefit of meeting others during exercise classes or general lap swims.

Hiking or Walking: According to a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a steady routine of walking can greatly reduce the chances of disability at old age. Walking or hiking also helps prevent or manage certain conditions like heart disease and high blood pressure, and can be done with your friends or significant other in remote areas of nature. 

Yoga: One of the many benefits of yoga is that it can help protect you from injury by increasing your muscle strength and tone. It also enhances your respiratory and energy levels in addition to being a huge stress reliever.

All of these exercises can improve your quality of life by enhancing your strength and improving your overall mood, both of which can be attributed to a longer, healthier life. Exercise classes offered at various community centers provide manageable training with specialized teachers who understand the limitations of your body. It is therefore crucial to explore these avenues when selecting your eventual retirement location.

So you have already heard this advice from your doctor…over and over again. And quite frankly, you just don’t care. Well, you are not alone in that mindset. According to a report conducted by the Merck Manual, at least 75% of people over the age of 65 do not exercise at recommended levels despite the known health benefits of exercise. Whether it is an issue of ignorance or more practically a problem of physical limitation, there are still ways to maintain your welfare outside of simply moving your arms and legs.

One of the beauties of retirement is that it allows you to finally undertake those projects that previously seemed impossible due to prior commitments to “the job.” It gives you an opportunity to pursue something exciting and fresh. So maybe that means a trip to Europe? Or a quick excursion across the country to see relatives? Or possibly the start of your memoir? You certainly do not have to pick up a golf ball or put on a bathing suit to stay active. Instead, try considering personal projects like the following:

Home Projects: Build a garden in your new home or decorate your backyard porch so you can invite friends over for dinner or drinks. Often, retirees have commented on how much gratification they receive from projects around the house.

We talked with Kathleen from Chicago, IL who could not agree more, “I’d really like to challenge myself during retirement by finally taking an advanced class in horticulture or possibly joining a local gardening club. This would keep me active while not forcing me to travel too much either. And it would impress all my new guests!”

Volunteering: Volunteering is another excellent activity that can bring you satisfaction while benefiting those within the community. This could involve tutoring children in academics or arts and crafts, or assisting patients in hospital outreach programs, just to name a few.

Theater and Arts: Reengage your artistic side and audition for a play or musical at the local arts center. This would allow you to make new friends while displaying your talents in front of a local audience. And anyone who has experience in theater knows that on stage performances are a workout in their own.

Regardless of the hobby that you choose, it is essential to always be cautious with your body as you decide on what new activities to begin, or what sports and games to continue to engage in.  It is important to do something that does not overly strain your body or your mind.  Instead, find something that is safe, manageable, and allows you fully enjoy the free time that you’ve worked so hard to attain. 

eRetirements.com is devoted to solving the problem that millions of baby boomers face each year: Where should I retire?  Our users enjoy a personalized retirement quiz, comprehensive location info, and a variety of blogs and advice to assist in discovering, and enjoying their ideal retirement location.

 

Related Posts:

Am I Really Getting Old Like Everyone Else?

Middle-Age Fitness

What Does Yard Work Have to do with Retirement?

 

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Then and Now in Retirement: Health Insurance

(Photo Details:  Crossing precarious bamboo bridge in Bali)

A reader recently asked me to address the issue of health insurance and how the experience obtaining health insurance in retirement compares to when I first retired.

Then

As I mentioned in a recent post, travel was the thing I was most excited about when I retired.  The thing I was least excited about, or should I say most worried about, was getting health insurance.  I was even more worried about that than money in general.  With money, you can make adjustments to limit your risk—cut back on expenses, take on a part-time job, downsize your house.  Without health insurance, the downside risk could be bankrupting.  Without health insurance, no amount of money can make you feel secure.  That reality was even more scary to me than having to weather a tumultuous stock market. 

Back in 2008 when I retired, the only guaranteed insurance for a retiree younger than 65 was to continue under your employer’s plan under COBRA.  Outside of that, insurance companies could turn you down for any reason.  And once you had insurance changing plans might be impossible.  So if your network changed, you could just be out of luck.

I wrote a post about our dilemma here.  COBRA was insanely expensive when I retired, and the insurance broker I was working with told us that no insurance company would cover us because Doug was on three medications (one of which was only for allergies!)  I had to do a lot of digging on my own, but eventually I was able to find a policy outside of COBRA that cost a lot less.  But it was our ONLY alternative.  And I was always worried about the possibility of getting dropped for some reason, if we ever got really sick.

Now

The good news is that anyone can buy insurance now, irrespective of your health issues, irrespective of the number of medications you are taking.   So at least you know that you will be able to limit the unlimited downside of not having insurance.  That peace of mind is most important to me.

This peace of mind does not come cheap however.  We now pay double the premiums we used to pay.  The insurance covers more, but I’m not a heavy user of health services anyway, so overall, we pay more.   That’s a big downside for many people.  While I would love to be paying less I don’t begrudge the changes.  I know a lot of people do.  But I think guaranteeing insurance to anyone willing to pay for it (and subsidizing insurance for those who truly cannot afford it) is a worthy achievement.  So I don’t complain.  To me it’s just like paying property taxes for the schools I don’t use because we never had children.  It’s to the overall benefit of society, so I’m good with it.

Part of the reason my insurance is more expensive though, is that we selected a plan offered through one of the more expensive carriers because Doug and I really wanted to keep our own doctors.  If we were willing to find new doctors, we could have saved significantly on our premiums.  Kind of a get-what-you-pay-for issue.

My only complaint about the post-Affordable Care Act environment comes from my experience helping people enroll on the insurance exchange.  There is what seems to be a significant hole right in the middle of the affordability scale.  People who can afford to buy insurance are guaranteed to be able to get it, that’s great.  People at the lowest income level can qualify for Medicaid coverage now (unless of course you live in one of the states that did not expand coverage, in which case you are part of another big hole.)  And people on the lower end of the income spectrum are eligible for premium support tax credits on a sliding scale based on income. 

But I worked with several people stuck right in the middle of all that.  Their incomes were just high enough to disqualify them from premium assistance, yet the cost of insurance would be as high as a quarter of their take-home pay.   These folks don’t owe the penalty for not having insurance, because the premiums would exceed 8% of their income.  But that’s sorry comfort for a family that actually wants health insurance.

So if you retire before you reach Medicare age, you may take comfort in the fact that you can’t be turned down for coverage, but you should definitely run the numbers before you retire to make sure you can actually afford the coverage!

Related Posts:

 

            Shopping for Health Insurance on the Exchange

            Navigating the New Health Law

            Comparing Health Insurance Deductibles

 

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Having A Great Time, Wish You Were Here Instead of Me

(Photo details:  Chinatown Shophouses, Singapore)

Ok, I’m going to be honest.  I didn’t want to go to Bali.  At all. 

Doug and I met a new friend when we went biking in Southeast Asia two years ago.  April is her name.  She lives in Switzerland but she also owns a home in San Francisco where her kids live.  So over the last couple of years, besides being Facebook friends, we’ve also been real live friends.  And April wanted to do another bike trip with us.

I was not excited.  First I didn’t want to travel because my uncle was sick and I wanted to be here for his remaining days.  April got that and proposed a trip for way out in the future, which we all knew meant when my uncle would be gone.  We didn’t have to say that out loud.

But after Jim died, I still didn’t want to go on this trip.  After we sold our Calistoga house, I wanted to stay home with my cat and relish the fact that I only had one house to take care of.  I did not want to fly to Singapore by way of Tokyo.  To Bali, then Lombok, then Tokyo by way of Bangkok, then home by way of Los Angeles.  I did not want to live out of a suitcase in six different hotels over two weeks.  I did not want to get on a bike in humid heat.

I wanted to nest.  I wanted to do yard work, clean my windows, unpack the few belongings I kept from our Calistoga house.

So on the morning we were leaving, when Doug said, “Do we really have to go?”  I understood.  I reminded him that it was HIS idea to go, and I hoped he would remember this feeling next time our friends proposed a trip.

On the plane ride to Singapore, I counted down how long it would be until I would get to go home.  Only two more weeks.

When we finally arrived in Singapore, I was so happy to see the hotel bed, but I wished I could turn around and get in my own, snuggled up with my kitty.

What happened next was that I had the most amazing time over the next two weeks, despite my constant refrain, “Can we go home yet?”

It is no secret that I’m a control freak.  I feel best when I feel in control of all aspects of my life.  I guess most people do.  But, as we all know, we don’t really control much.  On this trip, I relinquished control and basked in the freedom of it.

In Singapore, we were traveling with our friends Kevin and Art.  Art should be a trip designer, it’s his natural talent.  Well one of many.  He planned out the first 48 hours of our trip.  The first day we learned about Singapore’s history, culture, and culinary delights on a street food tour of Chinatown.  I tried so many new delicacies, although I drew the line at frog porridge.  Note, I didn’t say frog-leg porridge.  In Singapore they eat the whole damn frog.  I ate the porridge part.

(Frogs at the market--no not for pets, for eating.)

I’m not going to take you hour by hour through the whole 48 hours, but they included the Gardens by the Bay--with their solar power, water collecting supertrees--the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, Little India, eating at a wonderful dive cafe where I was sure I would contract some horrible disease, shopping, drinking at a speakeasy that required us to guess the password to get in, and more eating and more drinking.

(Popcorn infused bourbon with a shot of popcorn at The Library)

By the time we flew to Bali, I felt like we had been gone for a month.

In Bali, our biking group consisted of six women and Doug.  We called ourselves the sister wives, or Doug’s harem depending on the mood. We biked, hiked and snorkeled our way through Bali and Lombok’s temples, rice fields, and waterfalls. 

(The reason for Doug dressing in drag, we had to cover our knees to enter the temples)

We went to a Balinese family’s home and learned how to cook Balinese cuisine.

(Cooking class)

On the last day of the bike trip I was so sad to leave these women and our wonderful guides.  Yes, I was still looking forward to going home, but I didn’t want the trip to end either.  How do you reconcile those two things?  I don’t know.

In Singapore, in Bali, in Lombok, in Tokyo, I planned nothing.  I went with the flow.  I relinquished control and loved every minute of it, even while I was hating some of the minutes of it (the early ones, the hot ones, and the ones riding bikes on scary terrain). 

The day we finally got home I was so happy.  I was so happy to see my kitty.  I was so happy to go on a walk in my neighborhood.  I was so happy to sleep in my own bed and play my piano.  I vowed not to leave my house again until 2018.

And then this morning I found myself perusing the bike-tour company’s website for our next trip.

Related Posts:

 

            Happy to be Home

            Is it Worth It?

            Then and Now in Retirement:  Travel

 

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Am I Sad to Sell Our Vacation Home?

(Photo Details:  Croquet at Meadowood—July 2006)

 A lot of people have asked me if I’m sad to have sold my wine country vacation home.  I do get very attached to my real estate—it’s personal to me.  So it’s surprising that I’m not sad at all.

For 15 years we’ve made wonderful memories there.  Each year my girlfriends and I would go up for spa weekends.  Most years Doug and I would go for Fourth of July, no one does Fourth of July better than Calistoga.  Friends would join us once or twice a year for Silver Oak’s release party.  We played croquet at Meadowood, picnicked at Sherwin Family Vineyards, and housed wall-to-wall guests the night we celebrated a friend’s milestone birthday at The French Laundry.

We used the house to swap for vacations to Australia, Montreal, Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Vermont, and of course year after year in New York City.  We made wonderful memories in other places by virtue of owning our house in Calistoga.

We escaped bad weather when we lived in San Francisco.  We donated the house to charity auctions.  We gave the house to friends for weekends.  We made some money renting it out on occasion.  We met wonderful neighbors.  I was introduced to my favorite writing teacher by taking classes at Napa Valley college.  We took beautiful walks with our dog on Bennett Lane. 

We made many wonderful memories.

But here’s the thing.  We get to have those memories whether we own the house or not!  And we weren’t creating new wonderful memories at the same pace over the last couple of years as we were over the first decade or so.  All I can really remember over the last year is getting the house ready for sale:  backbreaking yard work, window cleaning, trimming shrubs and scrubbing ivy off the side of the house, packing, moving, fixing.  And traffic jams driving back and forth.

Most of the new fond memories we’ve been creating are here at our main home.  Pizza parties with friends and family, playing bocce until the sun goes down.  Gathering family for Christmas.  Smoking ribs for our annual rib-fest with friends.  We don’t need a vacation home to create wonderful new memories.

And with all the money we are saving on carrying costs of that house, we are off to Bali to ride our bikes through rice terraces, snorkel in crystal waters, and hike tropical trails.

Nothing to be sad about.

Related Posts: 

Making New Memories in New York

Building a Relationship with Your Home Exchange Partners

In Praise of the Staycation

 

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Then and Now in Retirement: Travel

  (Photo details:  Our lodging on Ha Long Bay 2014.  The trip that was too long even for me.)
 

This post is one in a series I promised comparing my concerns in early retirement with how things are turning out now, eight years later.  My first in the series was about boredom in retirement.  Since I’m on my way to Singapore on today, I thought I’d tackle travel next.

Then:

When I first retired the thing I was most excited about was the freedom to travel more frequently and for longer stretches of time.  While working, I only had three weeks of vacation time each year.  And I used some of those days for short trips or personal days here and there.  So really I had more like two weeks and even then, I didn’t want to “spend” it all at once.  We usually took two vacations during the year no longer than a week each.

One year though, I negotiated a month-long vacation.  I would take two of my weeks of vacation and go without pay for the other two weeks.  That way we could spend an entire month in New York City.  That was my first taste of such a long trip and I loved it.  Doug was exhausted, but I was invigorated.  I couldn’t wait to retire so we could do more of these types of vacations, living for a month at a time in various major cities around the world.

When I retired, it became clear that this travel-fantasy was not shared by Doug.  He was a trouper and accompanied me on two more month-long trips to New York, a bunch of three-week trips:  to Australia, to Southeast Asia, and a few more to New York.  But it was too long for him to really enjoy being away and on our last lengthy trip something new happened.  It was too long for me too.

The first eight years of my retirement, I was willing to downgrade the luxury level of our trips so we could afford more days of them.  No longer confined to two or three weeks, I wanted to be away as long as possible and I didn’t care if I had to clean my own apartment or move a few times during our stay.  All I cared about was being gone for as long as possible.

Now:

We leave today for a two week trip to Indonesia.  And that’s all I really want.  For the entire year. 

And since I really only want to be gone for two weeks this year, I’m willing to spend the entire year’s vacation budget, a budget that used to fund several months’ worth of trips, on just two weeks.  No home exchanges, we’re staying at luxury hotels, travelling with a luxury bike-tour operator, and flying business class (well that’s on free miles of course.)

I’ve come full circle.  I’m now happy with the measly two weeks I was allotted during my working life and I’m back to blowing the wad on those two weeks. 

Why is that?

I guess because I’ve finally figured out I’m not trying to get away from my life.  I’m not looking for the antidote to work.  The truth is, I love being home.  I love having a glass of wine in my wonderful back yard after a day of gardening.  I love entertaining friends here.  I love going on my walking dates, my lunch dates, and being with my kitty.

I’m totally looking forward to experiencing Bali, Singapore, and Tokyo, and sharing that with some wonderful friends.  But I’m looking forward TO that rather than looking forward to being AWAY from the stresses of the workplace.

Don’t worry.  It doesn’t mean I want to work again.

 

Related Posts:

Looking Forward

Have Miles, Will Travel

Will Work for Wine

 

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Is a Vacation Home Worth it?

(Photo Details:  Murphy Brown in Calistoga)

Is a vacation home worth it?  Let’s just cut to the chase.  No, it’s not.  I mean, unless money is of no concern to you.

Of course it’s not always about money, is it?

Vacation with your pet

I have been joking lately that I bought my vacation home in the Napa Valley for my dog and sold it for my cat.  That joke is not really far from the truth, in that it actually is the truth.

Fifteen years ago, when we bought our cute little cottage in the wooded hills of Calistoga, I did have more in mind than just vacationing with my beagle Murphy.  We lived in San Francisco where the weather is cold and foggy in the summer.  I would commute home each evening from the sunny peninsula into a bank of fog, don gloves and a knit cap, and brave the wet wind to walk my dog after work.  All while knowing 30 minutes in any direction it was 80 degrees.

The idea of owning a vacation home some place warm was appealing. 

Add to that the fact that I was only allotted three weeks of vacation each year to get away, and a weekend get-away property just seemed dreamy.  The icing on the cake was that we could bring our doggy to our home-away-from-home and so the whole family could be on vacation together.

Vacation with your friends

Not only that, our vacation house became a great gathering place for our friends.  Friends would come up for winetasting weekends.  We’d dine al fresco on the warm summer nights and play games by the fire in the winter.  And of course our friends loved it even more because we often loaned it to them for their own getaways, even without us.

Life changes and you still own that house

A few years after buying that house, we moved down to the peninsula so I could eliminate my grueling commute.  That put us 1) farther away from our vacation home, and 2) in a spot where the weather was just as good as Calistoga, if not better.  We didn’t go quite as often.

And also our friends’ lives got busier with kids and life in general, and those wine-tasting weekends dwindled. 

Retirement

After I retired, we figured it was only a matter of time before we would be selling the house so we decided to move there for two years and convert it to a principal residence so we could sell it and exclude the gain from our taxes.   We could kill two birds with one stone--save some taxes and get our fill of the place before we sold it. 

That was 2008-2009.  The housing market tanked and so that tax plan turned out to be irrelevant.  There was no longer any gain to worry about if we sold the house.  So we held on until now.

Back to pets

So here we were, using the house less and less, when the neighbor’s kitty decided to move in with us.  Cat’s don’t like to go on weekend getaways like dogs do.  And if I’m going to be away from my cat to go on a little trip, I’d rather it be somewhere else, not the same place I’ve been going to for 15 years.

The money

So there you have it, I bought the house for the dog and sold it for the cat.  But when you read a title like is something worth something, you’re thinking about money, not pets, right?  So let me tell you about the money.

Yes we sold the house for more than we paid for it.  That would make you think it was worth it wouldn’t it?  Wait a minute.

Don’t forget all the money we put into it, taking out dead trees, rebuilding a damaged bridge on our private road, the new water-heater, the kitchen and bathroom updates, the landscaping, the furnishings, I could go on and on.

Not to mention, it costs money just to keep a house, property taxes, insurance, utilities.

Basically it was a wash.  After considering all the net costs, we walk away even.  Which sounds great really, right?  Because that means you got free vacations for 15 years.  Sort of.

The other way of looking at it is if we took all the money that we put into that house and instead invested it, the earnings on that money would have paid for all those vacations and then some.  Even at the Four Seasons.  Oh, and at the Four Seasons you don’t have to do yard work or clean up after yourself when you’re done.

But then I couldn’t have vacationed with my doggy.  So I guess it was worth it after all.

Related Posts:

Penny Wise and Pound Foolish (or Stupid Tax Tricks)

Two Dumb Financial Decisions I Made--and Why I Made Them

My Short Career as a Landlord

 

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