The Search (In Brief)

Henri and I became travelers, the cats were part time orphans and not only was are sense of adventure wearing thin, we were more confused than ever!

We explored the South, the West, Central America and the Caribbean. We hit beach towns, mountain villages, high desert and the tropics. We verified that nothing is perfect.

The idea of being expats was seductive: low cost of living, maid service, cheap medical care and adventure. The balancing points were language barriers, distance from kids and grandkids and isolation.

The South has it's charm. We would be close to at least on of our kids, the cost of living is low if you stay on the flatlands and people are friendly. I, however, have big problems with hurricanes, alligators, scrub pines and muggy days.

The more we saw the more I realized that I don't particularly like flat lands. I want to look across flat lands and foothills. I like open vistas punctuated with mountain.  Surprisingly I didn't really like being far away from the family. Henri started jonesing for his garden. The cats were getting feral and surely.  And frankly, we were sick and tired of indecision!

One day we decided that the only way we were going to stay sane was to "Just Do It". I mean really! We were planning to rent for at least a year no matter where we went. So if we moved somewhere and hated it we could always move on within a year.

We knew if we kept exploring, made more plans or waited to sell the house that months would pass and we would still be in the same old place, doing the same old things.

Over time there was a place we kept returning to. We had fallen in love with the town, it was relatively close by and they had a Trader Joes “coming soon”.   So we packed up, put the house on the market, said our goodbyes and headed out.

Looking at the absolutes

 

Temperate year round climate--I pulled up a map of the US and drew a line across the country and divided it neatly in two:

Town of 40,000-100,000 people– California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, George, South Carolina and Florida.  I don’t want to offend anyone, but somehow I couldn’t see my Blue State self fitting into the Red State South (with the possible exceptions of South Carolina, and Georgia). I briefly considered Fairhope, AL but it’s population is only 17,000 so it falls outside my range.
I zeroed in on Arizona, New Mexico, Texas along with Georgia and South Carolina.  Then I pulled up www.city-data.com and went to work. I finally zeroed in on:

Town	Population	COLA*	Med. Home	Hi/Lo Temp
Prescott, AZ,	42,749	101.1	325,573	81.0/29.3
Tucson, AZ	548,555	89.0	181,300	86.6/51.3
Rio Rancho, NM	82,574	87	186,000	73.9/33.8
Las Cruses, NM	93,570	88.7	156,200	95.0/28.5
San Antonio, TX	1.373688	80.6	114,500	49.3/85.0
Athens, GA	85,116	90.1	172,189	90.2/32.9
Greenville, SC	61,782	86.8	164,861	78.2/40.1

 The moral of the story??  Nothing is perfect!


So what's next???


*COLA:  Cost of Living – average in the US is 100; where we live in California it is 126.5

You’re Kidding! Right?

I got up from the computer and waltzed into the library -- ready to explain it all to Henri.  You know, all about the same standard of living; average monthly expenditures for food, transportation, medical bills, entertainment, clothing, and personal care at the same level; and the $1000 for household expenses. 

He just stared at me.  I think he may have actually been speechless for a few seconds. 

Then he laughed, “Where did you have in mind, dear?  San Francisco?  New York?  Boston?”

I rushed on, “Funny!  We can have a Plan B which means that we can live on our Social Security and figure out a way to make extra income for travel and extravagances.  It shouldn’t be that hard.”

He shook his head as he regained his power of speech.  “You’re kidding right?
”
"No!  There HAS to be places where we can live for that" I said. . .  I want you to remember as you read this that I have been accused of being an incurable optimist. 

The sixty four million dollar question was would we want to live in one of them?  I have never lived in any place where there is snow. For the last 40 years I have lived in Southern California I don’t do cold.  I’ve never lived in a rural area, I like people.  I am an unrepentant populist and agnostic. 

Henri grew up in a rural community with lots of snow—he claims he walked to school barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways throughout his child hood.  . He isn’t about to start shoveling snow again.

After a serious discussion we agreed that we had nothing to lose.  If we went come place, rented for at least a year we could try it out with a minimal amount of risk.  So we sat down and created some criteria to guide our search:

The absolutes:
          Temperate year round climate
          Town of 40,000-100,000 people
          Low crime rate
          Adequate medical care
          Decent houses for rent in the $700/month range
          Residential properties available for Sale under $200,000

The preferences:
          College town
          Walking town (not dependent on our car all the time)

We were off to start the search. 

I never expected to wake up at 62 years old in this condition!

I figured that I would glide into my golden years feeling wealthy, whole and energized.  I even dared to hope for wise.

And yes; I have been accused of being an incurable optimist. 

Life, God, the Universe (whatever you call it) evidently, had a different idea for Henri and I.  Like lots of other Boomers we are facing our Golden Years with no gold and very little silver.   

As much as it pains me to say this; ours is an ordinary late 2000’s story.  You know, investments gone bad, home value sinking, a couple of business setbacks and oops. . our stash is gone. And life begins to sound like a bad roll-in-misery blues rift. 

We seriously need Plan B.

The place to start is to figure out how we could live on our now vastly reduced expected retirement income -- roughly 1/3 of our current income.

I like our basic life style.  Aside from occasional splurges, we do not live extravagantly and aside from our mortgage we really don’t owe anything.

The problem is that our household (mortgage, taxes, insurance, upkeep and utilities) and our medical bills are our biggest expenses.  And they are fixed.  Everything else is “discretionary”.  You can always juggle food, transportation, entertainment and personal care on a monthly basis. 

So I started thinking. . . What if we kept our average monthly expenditures for food, transportation, medical bills, entertainment, clothing, and personal care at the same level?  What would we have left over for housing costs with our new reduced income?

I brought up Excel and started figuring . . .

The answer is that we have $1000 per month to spend on housing.  Figure $300 for utilities which includes phone, internet and cable and that leave $700 for mortgage/rent plus any taxes, upkeep and insurance.  Our current HOA dues, insurance and taxes are pretty close to that!  So merely paying off our house wouldn’t really do it. 

We need to sell the house and move but where the hell can you possibly rent or buy a place for $700 per month?