Before we retired, from a job that was somewhat stressful,... my retirement dream was... and this is not an overstatement...
A log cabin near the top of a mountain in the Adirondaks, surrounded by barbed wire.
In truth, a wish to be a hermit.
That's about where I was, except for dealing with upper management, but law enforcement and simply living in the Washington, DC area has its own stresses.
And in fact after I retired and we moved for the first year I did little more than sit on the back porch and catch up with long-deferred visits with relatives that I and DW do care about. One SIL, the smart one, told DW that I was "decompressing", in hindsight a fair-enough description.
And it slowly dawned on me that perhaps this relative isolation wasn't the ideal way to spend the next 30 years. But I didn't have a good idea of what to do or where to go next. Admittedly getting a job was a stopgap measure until I figured out where to go from there, the unplanned-for income gave us more options, and DW needed time to deal with an aging, stubborn, but much-loved parent. That issue is about to be resolved.
More recently I'm seriously considering a CCRC (continuous care retirement community) for ourselves in light of how well that worked for my mother and how well (Not!) staying at home worked for FIL. When the dust settles on selling FIL's house next month we'll take a tour of one in PA, chosen in part because of easy access to family, they have SF homes with garages, the weather is 2 only degrees cooler than here, and there would be no state income tax on our retirement income. DW is okay with the idea but is more focused on her immediate family crisis.
The downside is that it takes a six-figure commitment amortized over a period of years, but basically it is something we can afford to do only once unless we bailed soon after moving. In return for the six-figure commitment they promise to never throw you out if expenses exhaust your resources. And I am thoroughly impressed with the care FIL is getting at the same organization's facility close by. I do not impress easily.
There is a social structure there that is both easily accessible and from which we could easily withdraw when we wanted to. That part worked very well for my mother, who was in a CCRC for almost 12 years.
Another issue is that I've realized that when older (meaning 75+) relatives moved to digs that were less work to keep they had a lot of help from children and younger family, such as myself and DW. A couple of others have adult children living with them to provide the assisted living help.
We will not have that help available. There are some nephews and nieces who could give us a weekend or three but other than that we're on our own. So we think we need to make a move long before it becomes a crisis, unlike FIL, who stayed in his house until he literally couldn't walk.
And as I wrote to one sister, I'm 62. That means in 20 years I'll be 82. (Sometimes I really hate math!
) I rather doubt I'll be up for another move then. So I'm thinking bite the bullet and do it now since it isn't going to get any easier the longer we wait.
