You may recall I wrote a blog called “Downsizing to a Larger House” some years ago. If not, maybe you’ll want to check it out first, before reading this post.
In 2015 or so, I started thinking about moving again. Within the same year as we purchased the big house to host family and friends and grandchildren, everyone moved away. My kids, my best friend and our “couple” friends. Poof! All gone. And there we were with this awesome house (which I still dearly love and sometimes wish I still owned) but there wasn’t anyone to share it with.
The big house was a 7-10 year plan, with the thought of growing its equity and then selling it and hopefully having a bigger down payment for the next home in a place where we’d finally be around family.
We were at a fine cusp of time where we weren’t staring at retirement, but we would be wise to position ourselves to move with that goal in mind. I wanted to be closer to our youngest child, who was talking about starting a family.
Since my entire life has been about children and I’d been unable to be around the other 4 grandchildren, I was really excited about moving closer and being part of the new grandchildren’s lives. It is, after all, the further step in my preferred career. I’d always said I wanted to be a wife, a mother and a grandma. I’d been the wife and the mom…. but being the quintessential grandma had eluded me.
We sold the big house and made a little. Settled our debts so we could be free an clear and found a place that rented to people with animals, although for more than most of the surrounding units. The thought being that if we were debt free and unencumbered by anything here, it would be fairly easy to move and possibly take jobs that paid less, but had room to grow into. Since the cost of living was a bit less in PA and PA is favorable to retirement funds… it made perfect sense. At least to me.
This is where we hit a snag. Hubby has a job he likes and wasn’t really looking for a job elsewhere. Oddly he was willing to look at purchasing a home in PA, but not really looking for a job, which would mean he would be homeless in MD. I couldn’t understand how he expected that to work.
We took our down payment for our ‘forever’ home and put it into a townhouse in the same community we rented in which decreased our payments quite a bit. Then we renovated – which was kinda frustrating because the requirements from Hubby for a house in PA was NO RENO needed. Sigh…in any case the townhouses in the area are appreciating some, and we’d talked about this maybe eventually being a rental unit, but if I’m being honest, I think it would be better to sell it and put the money down on our forever home… though I see the window for that being monetarily wise narrowing. Unless Hubby finds an awesome job in PA. Which he could.
So time moves on and now we are mid-fifties and while I travel as often as I can to see the two newer grandchildren, I’m feeling the pull more than ever to head north. So much so that I am leaving my job in June and will find one there if need be. I have a place to stay with my daughter, but ultimately would like a place of my own.
I’m in the process of culling belongings down even farther. Funny, when I started out in my first place it was a townhouse and I had very little in the way of possessions. And now, I feel like I’m back to where I started – is that going backward, or is that just full circle? No matter which, it’s humbling and contemplative.
Snippets and Tidbits 