found my dream home...

[Red20170]

If you don't have a Realtor for your current home . My wife would be happy to help..

[Dave-S]

Ken.......Nice house and nice piece of property too. Good luck with it if you decide to persue it and the early retirement thing.

Just as a side note, do a real thorough job of looking of your expenses in the years ahead as well as how they will be affected by inflation. I retired early and then moved to the Charlotte area. My only regret is I could have done a better job in the financial planning area. Got it under control now but made a lot of mistakes too. Carefully looking at your upcomming expenses over the next 25 or so years is the important thing.

[wolfdogs]

Ken,how close is it to work? Is it a situation where you could commute for a year or two if you couldn't afford to retire right now? What's Mary say?

stal city is a good 1.5 to 2 hr drive....if i did that, i would drive to stafford and take the van pool in.......but man..thats alot of driving...and i'd need to buy another beater where as now i dont need a beater, cause i have the van itself...

[wolfdogs]

Ken.......Nice house and nice piece of property too. Good luck with it if you decide to persue it and the early retirement thing.

Just as a side note, do a real thorough job of looking of your expenses in the years ahead as well as how they will be affected by inflation. I retired early and then moved to the Charlotte area. My only regret is I could have done a better job in the financial planning area. Got it under control now but made a lot of mistakes too. Carefully looking at your upcomming expenses over the next 25 or so years is the important thing.

i heare ya man, thats just what we are doing..
actually, im eligable to retire, ive got 34 years counting my military... of course, the longer I work now, the more % i get later....

[Red20170]

You could always drive to Fredericksburg and catch the VRE to Crystal City. J ust a thought..

[Joe 1320]

i heare ya man, thats just what we are doing..
actually, im eligable to retire, ive got 34 years counting my military... of course, the longer I work now, the more % i get later....

That's a big delimma. Collect earlier or collect a higher percentage later. Makes me wonder if really does pay off. Does the higher percentage make up for all the dough you can start collecting early?

[Dave M]

stal city is a good 1.5 to 2 hr drive....if i did that, i would drive to stafford and take the van pool in.......but man..thats alot of driving...and i'd need to buy another beater where as now i dont need a beater, cause i have the van itself...

My mom made a 2 hour commute each way for a good 2 years before we moved. Of course, that wasn't with D.C. traffic, but I think if you love the house that much, and it is a nice house, but needed to put a few more years of work in to be comfortable with the finances, then it could be done. t wouldn't be any fun, for sure, but the house may very well be worth it.

[wolfdogs]

If you don't have a Realtor for your current home . My wife would be happy to help..

just might take you up on that. hang tight.

[wolfdogs]

all good pro's, guys....

mary just noticed the in ground pool whirl pool and sauna.... the pool is an excellent thing to have for treating golden retrievers with hip problems...

of course..the whirl pool and sauna will make my post work outs feel better too....

[Dave-S]

A couple more thoughts Ken about some things that we don't tend to think about much when we are younger....(and anything under sixty is younger these days )

We had a 46 acre farm in Ohio. I retired and thought that would be great having the farm and being able to keep busy. But all I was ever doing was working and putting up with the crappy Ohio winters drove me nuts as well. So we moved to Charlotte and bought a 3100 square foot home on 1.3 acres.....much easier to care for and we could be boating and enjoying nice weather instead of working all the time too. Welp, now my wife is already having a few problems cleaning and caring care for the inside of a 3100 square foot house and in another 10 years it could be a real burden. And while my lot is much smaller, my aches and pains tell me that outside work will be an issue for me as well. So we are thinking of going even smaller in the not too distant future. I always talk about the "add 10 years" scenario to keep things in perspective and it gets scary sometimes. In other words if your 60, add 10 years and you will be 70 . Once we get a bit older we all know how fast 10 years go.

Anyways, enough rambling. Just don't sell short the importance of thinking about how you might be able to deal with a place like the one you are considering in 10 years and beyond. It may make no difference to you and for sure it is each individuals own choice on what they do but I just thought I would mention it.

[Steel2686]

One more thing to add...

Make sure the resale value is steadily climbing in that neighborhood just in case. If the need to sell it ever came up, you would want to make sure you had some equity in the house. Hopefully that would never have to happen, but it never hurts to plan ahead as others have said.

The most important thing, do what makes you and Mary happy. You have worked hard through your life and earned the right to enjoy yourself. When everything is said and done, that's all that matters.

[wolfdogs]

thanks yall.

yes, remember one thing, our "dream" is to operate a foster wolfdog and golden retriever operation, and board wolfdogs. thats one reason ive been dedicated to working out almost everday for years now, and doing all the herbs and vitamins that have been proven to "take care of you"... so I can stay in shape and keep on truckin...

the farm part of this thing i plan on selling off the "share" to the other share holders, I have no desire to farm and dont want the equipment responsibility that comes with house. the realator said that would not be any problem at all........(of course...LOL) of course....

what if mary becomes disabled....or i do......... then...we would sell the house and move to a town house somewhere....or something small........

I've delt with alot of moves and different circumstances in my life.... as Ive gotten older, I do see the importance of future forcast, as opposed to my younger years of "flying by the seat of my pants fear no evil bullet proof"...LOL

Ill keep you guys informed as I plot this thing carefully, and post questions when they arrise, thats for sure...........