We own our home and made $30,000 profit selling our former home and after buying this one. Our CDs generated $45,000 after 18 months that we used on this new house, to get it to the point where we wanted it, although we did not have to do anything.
My wife is 70 and I am 75 and we both have back issues and I think her's are worse than mine. Now we are living on one floor with only two steps and we are inside. Our yard is small and takes less than an hour to mow and trim.
My wife and I have been retired since 2015 and plan on living another 20+ years if we are lucky. My wife's parents lived into their 80s. My father died at 88 and my mother died just shy of her 96 birthday. She was relatively mobile up until the end which I thought was amazing.
Once we retired, we have gone on numerous cruises: Caribbean, Mediterranean, Alaskan, Hawaiian Island and have flow to Europe several times as well as to various places in the USA. We are toying on making ONE FINAL BIG JOURNEY but we don't know where nor do we know when, although its gotta be in the next couple of years.
We both eat healthy and used to exercise regularly by walking but our back problems have curtailed that activity. We do yard work but that is about all and I trust that we will convince ourselves to start walking again.
We have saved enough money to pay our bills until both reach 95 years of age, which also includes one of us dying early and the other one needing a caretaker of sorts or a home for the elderly. Many people our age do not have that kind of financial security. We are not wealthy and never wanted to be. Too many negative issues associated with being wealthy.
My wife likes to watch K-dramas and I like to write and maintain two blogs daily. I sometimes watch a movie or a series but there is not much worth watching these days. We used to have cable but now we have a fiber optics connection to the internet and have a ROKU with a subscription to HULU, Netlflix, and Prime.
We usually go out to eat once a week which is typically an early dinner to avoid waiting in crowds of to a weekend brunch at a local restaurant called Perkins or IHOP. Our dinners are usually at Panera Bread, Cheddars, O'Charleys, Olive Garden, or Texas Roadhouse... although, we have visited others but don't return very often.
In two weeks, we will drive to Myrtle Beach, SC for a week, staying in a condo with a kitchen; however, our dinners will always be in restaurants, with breakfast and lunch at the condo. We rent two chairs and an umbrella. My wife is out under the umbrella from 9am until 5pm but I might spend a couple hours in the morning and a couple in the afternoon and the rest inside the condo out of the sun.
Our entire trip include condo fee, groceries, meals out, and gasoline is usually between $1,500 and $2,000 but never over $2,000. Most of the time we are $150 on either side of $1,500. After being under the umbrella until 4pm, we get cleaned up for dinner and window shopping. Every once in a while we will buy something. We are usually back in the condo between 9-10pm.
Our new neighbors are friendly when we see them but we don't see them that often. The community is basically composed of retired couple with a few couples not even close to retirement. A few houses down from us is a Eddie who claims to be retired from organized crime and spent some time in jail. Just tales, no real proof but they are interesting stories to listen to. He has the New York accent.
Inside our home there is a fan in every damn room so there is air blowing around all the time. The AC is on now but we don't have to keep it that low. There is plenty of room inside but there is no wasted space because we have too much.
The Tennessee Valley has been good to me much better than the Piedmont of North Carolina would have been.
