THE GREAT MOVE…HALFWAY THERE

If you have been following Marc’s Blog since mid-summer you may have caught one of my postings on “The Big Move.”  After  23 years in our current house, Rosemarie and I decided to uproot ourselves and become pioneers in the wilderness…well, I suppose South Florida can sometimes be interpreted as the wilderness.  We accepted an offer on our house today which means we are halfway through the process: one house sold, now one to buy.  More on that later.

I refer to us as pioneers because, for the first time in our lives, we do not know where we are going. We’ve always been super organized, acutely aware of our compass heading and never without a plan.  We have none of those things this time.  I look at it as a great adventure.  Rosemarie views it as a disaster that has given her more angst than raising teenagers. She’s not happy right now…too perplexed. She needs a timetable, a GPS heading and knowing she has enough gas to get there.

Actually we have a rough idea of where our next home will be.  It’s just a two-hour drive across “Alligator  Alley” which is the highway that runs east-west between the Fort Lauderdale area of Florida on the east, and Naples on the west.  We have visited several communities in the Naples area, one of which will more than likely be where we find our new home.

So why did we undertake such a monumental mission at our age?  We are both retired and should pretty much have a carefree outlook on the years ahead.  Well, that is exactly what we are doing–looking ahead, but with  our eyes focused and our minds clear on what is important.  Two things influenced our decision. I suspect there are many people going through the same process.  We looked at our expenses and realized if one of us was no longer here, it would be a rough ride for the one remaining.  It made sense to reduce our cost of living to the level where half our current income could keep up. Reason #2 was a lot easier.  It had to do with pain and the increasing amount both Rosemarie and I are experiencing going up and down the stairs in our two-story house.  A one-story house would serve us a lot better.

Our  house has been on the market for just over eight weeks.  We have had a constant flow of potential buyers, one or two silly offers, but nothing we paid much attention to…until this weekend.  We wound up hosting a bidding war between offers, one local and one from another state.  One was texted to our agent at 2:30 in the morning.  One offer screamed loud and clear, “accept me!”  So we did.  And now we have a budget for the new house and a specific date for leaving this one.  Rosemarie is a little happier.  I’d say we’re halfway there.

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