Warning! this is long and rambling....
Yeah, 10 years ago today was my official retirement. I have not w@rked a day for a wage since. Looking back it was not nearly as scary and we originally expected. DW and I originally planned to retire when I turned 58. Then the recession of 2008 & 2009 happened, so we continued to work another 3 years.
We lived and worked most of our careers in an expensive Chicago suburb. We knew we did not plan to stay in that area after we retired but we could never decide where we wanted to go. As it turned out we inherited my family home back in rural Iowa. Since DW's dad still lived there we decided we would move back to help him out.
After he passed away we decided that we just didn't like Midwest winters so we started to snowbird to Florida. By chance we first rented in The Villages Florida and discovered that we loved the lifestyle. After two years of snowbirding we decided we would look for a house the next trip down.
In January 2019 we arrived in The Villages and planned to start looking for a new home but we were not sure if we wanted a small home to only use in the winter months or if we wanted to buy a bigger home to live in full time. As it turned out, even before we started house hunting I received a call from a total stranger asking to buy our house back in Iowa. They heard from our neighbor that we were looking for a new home in Florida.
As it turned out we did find a house we liked and purchased it. We made the decision to move to Florida full time. We arrived back in Iowa on March 9, 2019 and we did all the packing and arrangements necessary to move to Florida. We arrived in our new home on April 22, 2019. Whew! we completed a cross country move in about 6 weeks. By the way, the total stranger did buy our house. It was a cash sale and no realtor fees!
Looking back, the move to The Villages is one of the best decisions we ever made. We truly love it here. We have a very large group of friends and we are involved in many activities. We plan to stay here as long as possible.
As far as finances go, we were, of course, concerned about the money end of things when we retired. We were always good savers but we have never been all that savvy on the investing end of things. Our portfolio has always been a bit on the conservative side. That is why it took us so long to reach FIRE. We lived the first five years of retirement almost entirely on interest and dividends from out after tax investments. No pensions and no Social Security.
Since I was born before 1954 I was able to start drawing half of DW's Social Security when I reached PIA at age 66. I delayed filing for my Social Security until age 70. Now, between our SS and interest and dividends from our after tax investments I do not envision a time where we would ever need to tap into our IRAs and 401k but of course we will be forced to take RMDs in a couple more years. We look at all that money sitting in our pre tax and after tax investments as our insurance policy for long term care, if needed. We hope that we will have a decent chunk left over for DD to inherit.
The one decision we made that I still question, we never considered ROTH conversions during these low income years. Part of the reason we did not consider it was because we wanted to keep income as low as possible to qualify for ACA subsidies until we reached Medicare age. It worked out O.K. as we paid very little for very poor health care insurance during those 4-5 years. Fortunately, we are healthy and had no big medical bills during that time.
Now one of our largest expenses is health care. I always heard that Medicare was really good and inexpensive insurance for seniors. Well, between the monthly Medicare deductions from our SS and the cost of Medigap and part D drug plans cost us around $8,000 per year. At least with Medigap F and G plans we don't have to worry about the possibility of huge medical bills in the future.
I think it is important to have a good plan for activities to keep busy in retirement and keep your brain engaged. We like to travel in the summertime, we will be going on a big trip in June up to Illinois and Wisconsin to visit family then to Wisconsin dells to spend a week. We love Wisconsin, at least in the summer and fall. We will then be heading to Virginia to visit friends then travel the entire length of the Blue Ridge Parkway on the way home. This fall we will take our annual trip to The Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We love Tennessee/North Carolina mountain area. That would probably be our second choice where to live other than The Villages. We play a lot of golf. I still have my classic car that I like to take to shows and cruise nites. I play guitar 1 to 2 hours every day. That really keeps the brain working to memorize all that music and play from memory. I challenge my brain with puzzles and memory exercises. How many of you can recite the names of U.S. Presidents in order?
I have to say that DW and I have been very fortunate. It's been a lot of hard work and a lot of luck along the way. We were fortunate to be born in, in my humble opinion, the greatest country in the world. We were both born into middle class families with mom's and dad's who taught us strong work ethics and values. They also supplied us with good genes so that we born with reasonable intelligence and good health. There have been bumps on the road of life for us but we have persevered. We met in high school and have been together ever since. We will be celebrating our 50th anniversary this coming August. Like the Joes Walsh song lyric goes "life's been good to me so far". That pretty well sums it up for me.
Yeah, 10 years ago today was my official retirement. I have not w@rked a day for a wage since. Looking back it was not nearly as scary and we originally expected. DW and I originally planned to retire when I turned 58. Then the recession of 2008 & 2009 happened, so we continued to work another 3 years.
We lived and worked most of our careers in an expensive Chicago suburb. We knew we did not plan to stay in that area after we retired but we could never decide where we wanted to go. As it turned out we inherited my family home back in rural Iowa. Since DW's dad still lived there we decided we would move back to help him out.
After he passed away we decided that we just didn't like Midwest winters so we started to snowbird to Florida. By chance we first rented in The Villages Florida and discovered that we loved the lifestyle. After two years of snowbirding we decided we would look for a house the next trip down.
In January 2019 we arrived in The Villages and planned to start looking for a new home but we were not sure if we wanted a small home to only use in the winter months or if we wanted to buy a bigger home to live in full time. As it turned out, even before we started house hunting I received a call from a total stranger asking to buy our house back in Iowa. They heard from our neighbor that we were looking for a new home in Florida.
As it turned out we did find a house we liked and purchased it. We made the decision to move to Florida full time. We arrived back in Iowa on March 9, 2019 and we did all the packing and arrangements necessary to move to Florida. We arrived in our new home on April 22, 2019. Whew! we completed a cross country move in about 6 weeks. By the way, the total stranger did buy our house. It was a cash sale and no realtor fees!
Looking back, the move to The Villages is one of the best decisions we ever made. We truly love it here. We have a very large group of friends and we are involved in many activities. We plan to stay here as long as possible.
As far as finances go, we were, of course, concerned about the money end of things when we retired. We were always good savers but we have never been all that savvy on the investing end of things. Our portfolio has always been a bit on the conservative side. That is why it took us so long to reach FIRE. We lived the first five years of retirement almost entirely on interest and dividends from out after tax investments. No pensions and no Social Security.
Since I was born before 1954 I was able to start drawing half of DW's Social Security when I reached PIA at age 66. I delayed filing for my Social Security until age 70. Now, between our SS and interest and dividends from our after tax investments I do not envision a time where we would ever need to tap into our IRAs and 401k but of course we will be forced to take RMDs in a couple more years. We look at all that money sitting in our pre tax and after tax investments as our insurance policy for long term care, if needed. We hope that we will have a decent chunk left over for DD to inherit.
The one decision we made that I still question, we never considered ROTH conversions during these low income years. Part of the reason we did not consider it was because we wanted to keep income as low as possible to qualify for ACA subsidies until we reached Medicare age. It worked out O.K. as we paid very little for very poor health care insurance during those 4-5 years. Fortunately, we are healthy and had no big medical bills during that time.
Now one of our largest expenses is health care. I always heard that Medicare was really good and inexpensive insurance for seniors. Well, between the monthly Medicare deductions from our SS and the cost of Medigap and part D drug plans cost us around $8,000 per year. At least with Medigap F and G plans we don't have to worry about the possibility of huge medical bills in the future.
I think it is important to have a good plan for activities to keep busy in retirement and keep your brain engaged. We like to travel in the summertime, we will be going on a big trip in June up to Illinois and Wisconsin to visit family then to Wisconsin dells to spend a week. We love Wisconsin, at least in the summer and fall. We will then be heading to Virginia to visit friends then travel the entire length of the Blue Ridge Parkway on the way home. This fall we will take our annual trip to The Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We love Tennessee/North Carolina mountain area. That would probably be our second choice where to live other than The Villages. We play a lot of golf. I still have my classic car that I like to take to shows and cruise nites. I play guitar 1 to 2 hours every day. That really keeps the brain working to memorize all that music and play from memory. I challenge my brain with puzzles and memory exercises. How many of you can recite the names of U.S. Presidents in order?
I have to say that DW and I have been very fortunate. It's been a lot of hard work and a lot of luck along the way. We were fortunate to be born in, in my humble opinion, the greatest country in the world. We were both born into middle class families with mom's and dad's who taught us strong work ethics and values. They also supplied us with good genes so that we born with reasonable intelligence and good health. There have been bumps on the road of life for us but we have persevered. We met in high school and have been together ever since. We will be celebrating our 50th anniversary this coming August. Like the Joes Walsh song lyric goes "life's been good to me so far". That pretty well sums it up for me.
