ScaredtoQuit
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2007
- Messages
- 211
Hi everyone!
Long time no post. Thought I would drop a line to let everyone know how I’ve fared over the past year.
You may recall that I ER’ed from a very stressful job at MegaCorp at the end of August last year at the age of 55. September 2007 was my first month of freedom and I was on Cloud 9. This was the first time I was either not working or going to school on a full time basis since I was fourteen years old. That first month was ORGASMIC! DW and I celebrated with a trip to Myrtle Beach. When I got back, I started walking five miles each day and working on improving my health. In a fairly short time, I was able to significantly lower my blood pressure, reduce my weight, and make a lot more room in my trousers!
In October, my son bought his first house. He was 25 and still living with us at the time so actually this was more my idea than his. I think if I had left the decision of moving to him, he would one day be one of those 40 year-olds that still live with Mom and Dad. He didn’t have a lot of money so when he was house shopping, my wife and I encouraged him to buy a fixer-upper. As part of the deal, I agreed to do the “fixing upping” – at my expense! So for the next two months, I spent every day rehabbing his new house. This turned out to be a great deal of work, but it also turned out to be extraordinarily satisfying. As I returned to my blue collar roots, I continued to lose weight and become more physically fit because of the hard work I was doing. Two months later, an old run down house had been transformed into a beautiful home and in the ensuing refinancing we learned that even in this market the value of the house had gone up by more than 30%.
In December, my wife and I took another vacation to the Caribbean and between that and Christmas I stayed totally occupied.
But then January hit! My wife was still working at this time and it seemed that all of my friends had gone into a bunker to hibernate through the winter. I just wasn’t getting enough human interaction. It wasn’t bad enough to call a clinical depression, but during the month of January, I certainly wasn’t enjoying my retirement.
The doldrums continued through the first half of February until I purchased another run down property. “Why not?”, I thought. Rehabbing my son’s house was one of the most satisfying experiences I’ve had in years. I figured I could do it again and this time make some extra dollars so that I could slow the withdrawals from my retirement nest egg which by this time was starting to show some stress.
So I started working every day as a carpenter/plumber/drywall contractor/painter/chief cook and bottle washer. Once again, I found the physical labor very satisfying and watching the transformation of another run down property into a beautiful home was like magic. This time it took almost four months to complete the job. Half way through the process, my wife retired (at the end of April) and she promptly joined me with hammer and paint brush in hand. The week after she retired, we took a week off to take our first Caribbean cruise.
Work on the rehab was going so well and the projections were looking so good that DW and I had visions of maybe turning all this into a second career. But then we went to put the house on the market. Everyone who saw the house was very impressed. But week after week started going by with no offers. We finally broke down, lowered the price significantly, and agreed to sell it to a family member. At the moment, I am sitting with my fingers crossed hoping that the family member will get approved for a mortgage. If she does, we’ll end up netting about $25K on the deal – not totally horrible for four months of work but much less than what I had originally anticipated.
As I was putting the finishing touches on the rehab, I got a call from my Church. They desperately needed someone like me to put their financial house in order. By this time, I was really feeling the financial downturn. I had chosen the “Norwegian Widow” strategy for my retirement portfolio and had about 80% in equities, mostly individual stocks. When I got the call in early June, I was about 15 to 20% down from my October high. For someone of my temperament, I think I was coping quite well. Instead of focusing on market value, I was reassured by the approximately $80,000 in interest and dividends the portfolio was generating. But I was still succumbing to a few bad thoughts and I was overly ripe for something that would reduce my insecurity.
I decided to give it a try. It’s not the total freedom that I had lusted after for so many years but all in all it’s not bad. The Church is only 15 minutes from my house and I work from 9 to 5, and 9 to 3 on Fridays. If I want additional time off, I can take as much as I want without pay. The work is considerably more satisfying and the stress is pretty much gone. The pay is not up to Corporate America’s standards but it’s not horrible either. My compensation package is enough to enable me to leave my retirement portfolio unscathed plus throw a few more bucks in the kitty.
My absence from this board for almost a whole year has not been an accident. I’ve thought many times about touching base with a progress report but each time, I’ve backed off because I didn’t want to give a report that wasn’t 100% idyllic like all the rest of the stories that I read here. More importantly, by embarking on a money making venture and more recently actually getting a job, I have once again proved my moniker, ScaredtoQuit.
Long time no post. Thought I would drop a line to let everyone know how I’ve fared over the past year.
You may recall that I ER’ed from a very stressful job at MegaCorp at the end of August last year at the age of 55. September 2007 was my first month of freedom and I was on Cloud 9. This was the first time I was either not working or going to school on a full time basis since I was fourteen years old. That first month was ORGASMIC! DW and I celebrated with a trip to Myrtle Beach. When I got back, I started walking five miles each day and working on improving my health. In a fairly short time, I was able to significantly lower my blood pressure, reduce my weight, and make a lot more room in my trousers!
In October, my son bought his first house. He was 25 and still living with us at the time so actually this was more my idea than his. I think if I had left the decision of moving to him, he would one day be one of those 40 year-olds that still live with Mom and Dad. He didn’t have a lot of money so when he was house shopping, my wife and I encouraged him to buy a fixer-upper. As part of the deal, I agreed to do the “fixing upping” – at my expense! So for the next two months, I spent every day rehabbing his new house. This turned out to be a great deal of work, but it also turned out to be extraordinarily satisfying. As I returned to my blue collar roots, I continued to lose weight and become more physically fit because of the hard work I was doing. Two months later, an old run down house had been transformed into a beautiful home and in the ensuing refinancing we learned that even in this market the value of the house had gone up by more than 30%.
In December, my wife and I took another vacation to the Caribbean and between that and Christmas I stayed totally occupied.
But then January hit! My wife was still working at this time and it seemed that all of my friends had gone into a bunker to hibernate through the winter. I just wasn’t getting enough human interaction. It wasn’t bad enough to call a clinical depression, but during the month of January, I certainly wasn’t enjoying my retirement.
The doldrums continued through the first half of February until I purchased another run down property. “Why not?”, I thought. Rehabbing my son’s house was one of the most satisfying experiences I’ve had in years. I figured I could do it again and this time make some extra dollars so that I could slow the withdrawals from my retirement nest egg which by this time was starting to show some stress.
So I started working every day as a carpenter/plumber/drywall contractor/painter/chief cook and bottle washer. Once again, I found the physical labor very satisfying and watching the transformation of another run down property into a beautiful home was like magic. This time it took almost four months to complete the job. Half way through the process, my wife retired (at the end of April) and she promptly joined me with hammer and paint brush in hand. The week after she retired, we took a week off to take our first Caribbean cruise.
Work on the rehab was going so well and the projections were looking so good that DW and I had visions of maybe turning all this into a second career. But then we went to put the house on the market. Everyone who saw the house was very impressed. But week after week started going by with no offers. We finally broke down, lowered the price significantly, and agreed to sell it to a family member. At the moment, I am sitting with my fingers crossed hoping that the family member will get approved for a mortgage. If she does, we’ll end up netting about $25K on the deal – not totally horrible for four months of work but much less than what I had originally anticipated.
As I was putting the finishing touches on the rehab, I got a call from my Church. They desperately needed someone like me to put their financial house in order. By this time, I was really feeling the financial downturn. I had chosen the “Norwegian Widow” strategy for my retirement portfolio and had about 80% in equities, mostly individual stocks. When I got the call in early June, I was about 15 to 20% down from my October high. For someone of my temperament, I think I was coping quite well. Instead of focusing on market value, I was reassured by the approximately $80,000 in interest and dividends the portfolio was generating. But I was still succumbing to a few bad thoughts and I was overly ripe for something that would reduce my insecurity.
I decided to give it a try. It’s not the total freedom that I had lusted after for so many years but all in all it’s not bad. The Church is only 15 minutes from my house and I work from 9 to 5, and 9 to 3 on Fridays. If I want additional time off, I can take as much as I want without pay. The work is considerably more satisfying and the stress is pretty much gone. The pay is not up to Corporate America’s standards but it’s not horrible either. My compensation package is enough to enable me to leave my retirement portfolio unscathed plus throw a few more bucks in the kitty.
My absence from this board for almost a whole year has not been an accident. I’ve thought many times about touching base with a progress report but each time, I’ve backed off because I didn’t want to give a report that wasn’t 100% idyllic like all the rest of the stories that I read here. More importantly, by embarking on a money making venture and more recently actually getting a job, I have once again proved my moniker, ScaredtoQuit.
.
