The balancing act

[claire]

Thanks Shiny for your post

love

claire x

 

[BigMoneyJim]

Helen, my first thought when reading your post is how are you going to enjoy the place in retirement if you're not enjoying it now? I can see that not having to commute daily might make it more tolerable, but still....

I say enjoy your life now. I ticked away 5 years paying off debt and not really living, and it's hard to get back into the groove afterwards. After paying off debt and having a long-term vaguish plans about early retiement I find myself saying "now what?" I'll figure it out, but it sounds like you've already figured out what will make you happier now.

Any chance you can rent your country place out or sell grazing rights or logging rights (for part of the property) or something? Just tossing out some income-generating ideas if you might be able to hang onto the place without a cash drain. That is, if you'd like to keep it.

 

[Helen]

Wow, that brought back some memories. I'm a city guy. I live in the heart of town and will probably do so until I die. But that description took me back to a friend's family's cabin on a trout stream in Michigan somewhere south east of Travis City that I visited a couple of times aboy 35 years ago. The setting was absolutely gorgeous exactly as you described. The cabin itself was a warm, roomy, homey affair that made you want to just sit back and relax. You could hike up the stream in either direction and see no one (that has probably changed over the years). I learned to fly fish (poorly) there and caught a couple of brown trout (at least I think that is what they were). I still wouldn't want to live there but it would make a great get-away place. C-T - you would be in heaven at this place.

My family and I spent a lot of time in the Traverse City area when I was growing up. It is beautiful up there ! A bit too much snow for my taste during the winter, but the Summers and Falls are fantastic.

Helen, IIRC you're in Oregon right? I was just in the Portland area this weekend and like it a lot. Good move! (although the place you're moving from sounds lovely, too bad you can't keep both) What do you think of the Lake Oswego area? (seems nice, but it is full of PUDs?)

The North West in general is fantastic and Portland is a great city. It's small enough to get around without too much in the way of traffic, yet big enough for entertainment and nice dinners. Lake O. is a very expensive subburb filled with McMansions. We were thinking of being right in the city as opposed to a burb.

Helen, my first thought when reading your post is how are you going to enjoy the place in retirement if you're not enjoying it now? I can see that not having to commute daily might make it more tolerable, but still....

I say enjoy your life now. I ticked away 5 years paying off debt and not really living, and it's hard to get back into the groove afterwards. After paying off debt and having a long-term vaguish plans about early retiement I find myself saying "now what?" I'll figure it out, but it sounds like you've already figured out what will make you happier now.

Any chance you can rent your country place out or sell grazing rights or logging rights (for part of the property) or something? Just tossing out some income-generating ideas if you might be able to hang onto the place without a cash drain. That is, if you'd like to keep it.

Since the house is paid off we do have some options, like renting this place and taking out a mortgage on the new place. I don't know if I want to get into the rental business. One house is enough to keep up with. Also, we were thinking of retiring in the city for a better social life and better access to the airport and medical facilities, so we had planned to sell at some point..

We need to do some things to the house whether we sell or not, so it would not be a waste of money or time to do this. It's also a good motivator to get rid of crap ! We won't move while we have the Great Dane as she would not do well in the city, so we have some time to prepare and decide what we want to do.

Right now we are busy with the aftermath of our recent wind storm. We had five huge trees fall over. Two landed on the car, one took out a chunk of our fence and the other fell onto the car port. We lucked out though, one tree was a foot away from hitting our kitchen. The car has minimal damage (I think the fence took most of the weight). The neighbors have been over with their chain saws helping us to clear a path. There is easily ten + cords of wood out there ! We lost the gutters on one side of the carport (I had new gutters installed six months ago ..), but the roof is in good shape. All in all we are very lucky.

 

[Linney]

Helen -- Five trees down? Wow, and here we were griping because our trees dropped 3 big branches. We got the chainsaw out and gave the resulting firewood to one of our neighbors who was out fixing his roof after part of a large-leaf maple tree landed on it. Another tree was partially uprooted, is leaning precariously and has our fence in its sights so hopefully the owner will get it down before it falls onto the fence.

Glad to hear that you came through in pretty good shape given the possibilities . . . !

Getting back to the topic at hand . . . I have co-workers who live in the Portland metro area and they really enjoy the lifestyle it provides -- they walk to local restaurants, occasionally bike to work, take the transit system to get downtown. I'm a suburbs gal myself, but if I were a city gal I would seriously consider a move to Portland.