Preparing for a new life

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other. ~Douglas H. Everett

I’ve decided to create a blog to document our retirement life and all the new adventures to come – like selling our home and building a custom home 170 miles away.

Here’s a little background. It all began during our 2008 summer family vacation at Emerald Isle, NC.

Bill and I had always talked about retiring and living by some beach in North Carolina. We loved vacationing up and down the coast when our two children were little and then again when our children were married and had families of their own. Living in Indiana we craved the ocean sounds, the smells, the waves, and the fishing that were so delightful when we took these trips. So, during this summer trip with 3-6 years before our retirement dates, Bill and I found a house for sale in one of the real estate magazines and decided to call the realtor and scheduled a time to look at the house during the week. When we pulled up to the home, I couldn’t picture myself living there. It was a long modular house with a front porch the length of the whole place. And, it looked just like a trailer. I’m not a snob, but Bill has always teased me that he would buy me a big ‘ol trailer that we could live in during our golden years. This was not the dream retirement home I had envisioned. The asking price was $250,000.

We toured the home and told the realtor we’d give it some thought. Driving back to our rental home by the beach, Bill teased me endlessly about buying me that trailer. But then we talked about maybe we really didn’t want to retire close to the beach – miles and miles away from either of our children and their families. The next morning, much to our family’s surprise, Bill announced that he felt that both of us wanted to retire close to one of our children. We’ve been empty nesters for 16 years and both of our children lived far from us. So, we started to think whether we wanted to retire to Virginia (where Bryan and Vicki live) or stay in Indiana and retire to the SW Indiana area (where Jill & Jim live). That was tough. We love our kids equally. It basically came down to the fact that by the time Bill and I were going to retire, Bryan and Vicki’s kids would be older and moving away from home (haha – that hasn’t happened yet!). We figured Jill & Jim’s kids would still be young and we’d be able to share in some adventures with the younger grandchildren on regular basis. And, maybe Jill would take care of us when we got too old. 🙂

That’s how it began. We spent quite a bit of the summer of 2008 down in SW Indiana looking at property. We always had the intention to build because we wanted some acreage. Then one day while Bill was searching online he found some property which was going up for auction. He called Jill and Jim and asked if they knew where it was and their opinion of the location. Jim reported back in a couple days that he had driven out to the area and he felt it was a beautiful piece of property. However the property was being sold in three different tracts and we’d have to decide which of the three tracts we might want to bid on. We got excited and planned a trip to look at the property at the open house on September 28, 2008.

Would this be our retirement property? You’ll have to wait until the next installment. 🙂