Leaving A Place Called Home—One Step In The Retirement Process
This was the first Father’s Day without my dad. Consequently, I’ve been reflecting on his life and the retirement model he provided for our family. When he was 62, he retired from the Elmira, New York City School System as an administrator. He bought a second home in Florida and for the next 20+ years, he and my stepmother spent May to October in Elmira, New York, and the rest of the year in Florida. I always liked the versatility of his lifestyle and hoped I could do something similar in my retirement.
Our Version Of Semi-Retirement
The seed was planted because in 2007, my husband and I created our own version of the same concept. We bought our second home in Tampa, Florida and for the last seven years we’ve enjoyed a variation of my dad’s lifestyle. Although we consider northern Virginia our home, we travel to our urban condo in Tampa the last 10 days of each month, September through June. We have thoroughly enjoyed this arrangement and I consider it my dream retirement come true. We especially enjoy the urban environment, which provides a never-ending array of entertainment possibilities, restaurants, and Tampa Bay vistas off our 19th floor balcony.
A recent Washington Post article talked about more boomers being attracted to an urban lifestyle. AARP along with Chris Leinberger, Professor at George Washington University School of Business and Fellow at Brookings Institute, said although the data hasn’t been fully analyzed, the shift towards urban living is the largest social trend of the early 21st century. Boomers are trending away from suburban living and moving towards urban living. Factors influencing this change are walking distance to local attractions, ease in getting around, and being “where the action is.”
Two years ago, Tom and I did an overdue evaluation of our retirement lifestyle. We realized having two homes was becoming overwhelming for us and we needed to downsize our primary home in Virginia. Having a large home on a half acre lot was not only expensive and time-consuming, it was impractical for two people who are away 30% of the time. Our goal was to downsize but still have enough room to entertain and host family visitors.
Our House Selling Saga
Friends and family raved about how beautiful our house was and predicted it would sell in days or weeks. However, we still spent an incredible amount of time and expense getting our house ready to sell in the spring of 2013. We thought we had done all of the preparations needed but we were not getting any acceptable offers. After several months, it became apparent that we had not staged our home in a way that a buyer could actually imagine seeing themselves in our home. Disappointed, after six months without success, we took our home off the market.
I can’t begin to tell you the range of emotions Tom and I experienced while going through this process. Depending on which day you might ask, we felt stressed, worried, angry, hopeful, excited, and then back to feeling sadness and disappointment. I felt very stuck because I was unable to embrace our future home without having found a buyer for our current home.
Six months later, with the help of a new agent, we began the process all over again. Before going through this experience a second time, a friend told me something that really resonated with my husband and me. When you buy, you turn your house into your home. When you sell, you must first turn your home back into a house. That made so much sense to me. We’d become so attached to our lovely home, we thought it would sell itself. Wrong! We had to detach emotionally and stage our home in a way that buyers could make our house into “their home.”
During the six months our house was off the market, we proceeded to de-clutter and depersonalize our home. We repainted all of the rooms with neutral colors. We changed brass fixtures to chrome throughout the whole house and removed all area rugs. We removed some of the gorgeous, handmade draperies that obscured sunlight. The list went on and on. As we made these changes, our home began to open up, brighten up, and feel more neutral. To our surprise, we found we liked this look and will incorporate some of these changes into our new home that we are in the process of building.
Finally, A Buyer
Fortunately, in less than two months after putting our house back on the market for the second time, we were blessed with a couple who loved our house and made an acceptable offer. Tom and I felt excited, relieved but also sad because we would be leaving a home we truly love. However, the reality was our current lifestyle had outgrown our home. It’s a relief to know that everything finally worked out, even though it was not within our original time frame.
Our New Chapter
As we leave our home at the end of this month, we’ll be taking with us a lot of wonderful memories we’ve had here. Visits with family and friends, parties to celebrate special occasions, and my home office where I started my new business, Retirement Lifestyle Strategies. Hopefully, the new owners will enjoy all of the upgrades we did as much as we have. If you have a similar move in your future, planning, flexibility, and organization during that period of time will be essential.
Unfortunately, everything didn’t line up perfectly because our new house won’t be ready until the end of July, so we’ll be in transition for a month after we move out. We have arranged for temporary housing and are organizing our belongings so that we have what we need. We intend to stay flexible just in case something unplanned happens.
We are downsizing to a single-family home with a little less space and no yard to take care of. My husband is really excited about that. We will be in a town center environment where we can walk to stores, restaurants, and movie theaters. We’ll be in a mixed community where there will be families of all ages. This environment is just right for where we are in our lives right now. It is truly a whole new chapter that we are looking forward to with excitement.
Lessons Learned
The following lessons are what I have learned through this extended process:
- Know why you are moving and set goals for your move.
- Educate yourself about the selling of your home. Trust your agent and listen carefully to what he/she tells you to do and then take action.
- Be able to let go of your emotional attachment to your home and some of your belongings as you neutralize it for potential buyers.
- Allow for flexibility in your thinking and outlook as you downsize.
- Make sure you keep open communication with your partner.
- Have patience with the range of emotions you will experience.
- Trust the process as you gain clarity on what you are letting go of and what you are moving towards.
Many of you may begin to think about and make plans to downsize your home and modify your lifestyle to accommodate your evolving needs. I hope that our experience and lessons learned will help you to make the best decisions for your situation and create a successful outcome.
Now go make the best of the rest of your life.
Dee
Dee Cascio
Author, speaker, Licensed Psychotherapist, Certified Life Coach, Retirement Lifestyle/ReCareer Coach, and Life and Work Transitions Strategies Coach.
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