Category: Retirement

A Bird in the Hand…

While we weren’t planning on starting to sell our house until much later, the sale of a couple properties near our home piqued our interest. The home across the street sold for significantly more than we had believed our our was worth at the time and we had spent significant money upgrading our bathrooms, installing solar and putting a pool in, among many other upgrades.

I’m sure most folks in the World have probably heard how notoriously expensive Bay Area Real Estate is and how competitive it is to buy a house. We’ve been very fortunate. When we purchased our first home in 2005, we paid way more money than I ever thought we’d pay for a home…and it was a VERY modest home. Suffice it to say, that even with the Pandemic and the 2008 housing crisis, that home (which we still own) is significantly higher than what we paid.

Homes pretty much sell themselves here….at least they used to. As such, we teased the idea of selling our home by ourselves and avoiding the sum 4.5%-6% Real Estate commissions. But, we ultimately decided not to.

In March, the market was hot. We listed the home as “COMING SOON” but as a started to prepare for my trip from St. Augustine to Norfolk, VA, I began to get worried. We had the continued lockdowns in China, the Ukraine crisis and now crazy high inflation. We needed to get it on the market FAST!

After some 48 days or so, we finally got an offer on August 2! However, it was way below what we were hoping for and it was with contingencies, something relatively unheard of in the Bay Area.

After a couple of counters, the Buyers put their final offer in and Sherine and I needed to make a decision. Selling a home can often be an emotional experience. When the market is in decline, comparing our home value to others that were sold weeks and months earlier is a challenge, to say the least. Trying to convince Sherine that while she may be right in thinking our home is worth more than what was being offered, that doesn’t mean there’s buyers ready, or able, to spend the money we think it’s worth.

We can’t complain although sometimes we all do. God willing, the house sale will go through but we have a little less than 3 weeks to go to see if the Buyer’s house will close. Assuming it does, we’ll walk away and would have done alright. It’s good to not make home buying/selling personal, in my opinion and in times of a market decline, A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Exciting times await!

Having Dreams & Living in the Moment

I woke up, at 4:47am this morning, as I most often do. I don’t know why my brain awakens early in the morning. My alarm clock is set for 6am during the weekdays but I can’t remember the last time it actually woke me up.

I reach over, put on my glasses and check the latest headlines. What’s the stock futures today? What’s the latest on Ukraine? Mass Shootings. Political bickering. Rarely do I put my phone down before I get in the shower happier than when I picked it up. Why do I do that? The algorithms that constantly feed us articles on the same themes, ideas and topics that we’ve visited before is a cancer on society.

I’m at Apple Park now. It’s 7:22am. While some may consider this early to be at work, this is actually late for me. I spent the last 18 years of my career arriving by 6:00am. It all started in Chicago when I had kids, lived in the suburbs and worked downtown. The commute was horrible and I wanted to be home when my kids were still awake. This carried over while I worked for Apple for the first 15 years or so. Traffic in the Bay Area has gotten horrible…although the pandemic has really helped for the time being. Anyway, I digress…

Retirement is one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. I left Apple before but at that time I guess I never thought it was permanent…even though I had told myself it was. However, this time is different. It’s been 8 or 9 years since I returned to Apple (holy cow!). I’m 53. This time is for good…until it’s not.

Selling the house has been a huge undertaking. Packing and storing stuff in different locations. Labeling them. Some packed for garage sale. Some for taking to Florida. Some for taking to the boat. Some to be stored long-term until we decide to quit cruising, buy our “forever home” and move again. On top of that, I have three of my kids’ stuff to deal with and each have their own limitations as to what they can take now.

But, back to the topic of this blog. I’m struggling to live in the moment while also needing to work so damn hard to get to my dream of over 20 years to cruise on a sailboat. How do I take a deep breath and appreciate the life I have right now, enjoy the little blessings and be content when so much of my time, energy and mental capacity is going into making this big move. Add on to this the fact the changing jobs (or leaving) and moving are rated very high in terms of anxiety generating life changes, it’s hard.

6 months ago, I had thought by this time, I’d be winding down work and would have more time to invest in myself and Sherine. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Our life is pretty crazy right now…which, when I think about it, will probably be a good thing. It’s just going to make finally getting on that sailboat cruising down the east coast so much sweeter. I just have to try to remember this.

Am I doing the right thing? I have no idea. I’ve so invested by this point it’s going to happen. The house is going on sale the week after I get back from delivering While One to Virginia. All I know is this: Sherine and I have made many challenging decisions and life decisions over our 32 years together and I can honestly say, I don’t regret a single one of them. Sure, some decisions have been better than others but, in general, we come out the other side better than when we went it.

I don’t know what this new life is going to give me but, we’ll be alright. Life’s too short to stand still.

Epiphany

So it’s been a rather turmoil month on the stock market with Apple really taking it on the nose. Then we have the invasion of Ukraine by madman Putin, the lockdown of Shanghai and Beijing due to COVID as well as cases rising everywhere. Suffice it to say, for someone who’s nearing retirement in 5 months, it has me uneasy.

I have a lot of anxiety about retirement and the future. To list them all, in no particular order:

  • Nuclear war
  • Running out of money in retirement
  • Running out of time on Earth
  • Health and inability to do the things I want to do
  • Walking away from an awesome job, at an awesome company and all the comp and benefits that go with it
  • The fear that I am so blinded by desiring a change in my life, that I’ve discredited the life I have and what I’m walking away from, only to find what awaits me isn’t all that great…or worse, it sucks.

There’s probably a plethora of other fears but those are what come to mind this Saturday morning. However, I had an epiphany in the shower on Friday on the money and job fears. I had read years ago a number of articles on a study on happiness which basically suggested that after about $75K/year, happiness generally declines. Now, I’m not saying that’s my number, because clearly the ability to retire at 54 on a brand new Catamaran took considerably more money than that. But, it does remind me that I really don’t need to maintain my current standard of living to be happy. Sherine and I have been through many financial phases in life and while we’ve been so fortunate to have never lost our home, we did go through a phase where we had to put cash in a drawer at the beginning of each month and when it was gone, it was gone. No more spending.

So, I’m confident we can get back to that, if need.

My father passed away in February. I will miss him. However, this did open up an opportunity for us with his home. So, after talking it over with my sister, she’s going to allow us to buy her out from his home and we can then make it our primary residence. The home is modest. It’s about 1/3 the size of what I live in now. But, it’s comfortable and I think we can make out home…at least until we figure out our next “forever home”. It also will enable us to change domicile from California to Florida. While I’m not super happy with the political climate of that state, I do see that as an opportunity to vote against what I disagree with in that state.

Anyways, I don’t want to talk politics other than: Can’t well all start talking and respecting people with differing opinions again?

This modest house is going to allow us to significantly cut our expenses and weather this financial storm and bring us closer to our boat and a most excellent cruising stomping ground.

Further, since we’re planning on selling our primary residence here, the stock market decline is an opportunity for us to reinvest the net proceeds from our sale.

I have to remind myself sometimes, perspective is everything. We don’t know the future. We can’t predict it so I should stop worrying about it.

The First Boo Boo

My broker’s house has a fixed concrete dock.

I have exactly no experience in tying up to a fixed dock. This spot in the rear of his house is at the end of a finger and While One is just a tad too long. Apparently one neighbor is cool but the other, not so much.

Upon getting read to take off, I looked over the Starboard Hull and notice that the hull were too close to the concrete dock. Upon further, I saw While One had experienced at least 1/2 of a Tide with its hull on the concrete. To say that concrete is quite effective as a coarse sandpaper is an understanding. It was deep.

Ken pulled me aside later and commended me on how calm I was. As I thought about my response, I began to think “better him than I.” I think I’ll feel a lot more upset if it were my mistake.

Red Eye from SFO to MIA

Since the November/December anchor out, I’ve been looking forward to this trip. The deal with my broker has come to an end, the Miami boat show behind him, I needed to remove While One from the broker’s home.

Allen picks me up at 7 and then my friend, Ken, at his home. By morning of March 2, we should be landing in MIA. Shawn will meet us at the boat around 10am.

I reserved a car to pick Ken and I up at MIA, drive us to a grocery store and then on to While One.