Do a Reality Check Before You Retire to Your Dream Location
by Susan Dunn
The house I was looking at was beautiful. It had
everything I was looking for and I was telling
the realtor about it when the deck shook beneath
my feet and my words were drowned out by a 747
seemingly about 7' over my head. "You'll get
used to the sound," the realtor said, gamely. I
didn't think so. A house in a flight path, I
decided, was not the house for me.
Living on the North Shore of Chicago, I did
get completely insensitive to the regularly
passing elevated trains, but they weren't going
right over the top of my house.
"Well, do you entertain outside much?" the
realtor continued. Hey, keep your head about you
when you're looking for a new house!
BEWARE THOSE RETIREMENT FANTASIES
Any time you're buying a new home, but
particularly if you have fantasies of moving
somewhere "different" when you retire, get your
emotional intelligence going which includes a
reality-check.
City folks are retiring to Ottawa County
Michigan, to "get away from it all," and there
is trouble in paradise.
Ottawa County is a major farm community with
dairy cows, beef cattle, chickens, turkeys, and
hogs. To try and give the city-folk a clue, the
County Planning Commission has created an
introductory brochure complete with a
scratch-and-sniff patch with the odor of manure.
How shall I say this
okay, how's this? The
city-folk who move there ARE in Kansas now.
They call and complain about the dust, the
smells, and the sound of the tractors. And yes,
Virginia, farmers do start work very early in
the morning.
Think you could adjust? There used to be a
chicken farm within a mile of the recreational
club I belonged to, and when the wind blew the
wrong way, you could miss a serve and lose the
tennis match.
Get out there with your brain and your senses
wide open, test it out for yourself, and see how
it works for you.
LET'S RETIRE TO FLORIDA
Here are some things I've heard from clients.
You live in San Antonio and you want to go
somewhere with a milder climate (less heat), but
the place you choose has 98% humidity, when
you're used to 50%.
You live in Minneapolis, Minnesota and want
to go get warm, so you move to the Gulf Coast of
Alabama, where the population density is half
the national average, and you can't find any
people.
You're retired, ready to play with your new
friends, and you move to a community where the
median age is 32.6.
You live in New York City and want to retire
to beautiful San Antonio and when you get there,
you, a female with post-graduate education, find
out this demo puts you in 1% of the population
of this town of a million.
You live in Florida and you want four seasons
so you move to Durham, North Carolina, which has
spectacular seasons, it is true, along with a
major mold problem, and you're allergic to
molds.
You live in Malibu and you long to return to
your roots where you can own some land and hunt
and fish, but after one year the goats on your
ranch in Fredericksburg, Texas are no longer
holding your interest. (Check it out rarely
can you "go home" again.)
You long to live on the beach
and after 3
months you find you cannot tolerate sand in the
butter, sand in your underwear, sand in your
grandchild's diaper, sand in the shower, sand on
the floor, and sand in your teeth.
You move from Chicago to Dallas, and ask
about the radon not about the foundation. (No
basements in Texas, but foundations that crack,
yes.)
It was the ground cover in that place on
Hilton Head Island that made you fall in love
with the place. What's it called? Oh, yes,
kudzu.
You bought that quiet, secluded place on Ono
Island in August, and what a surprise when the
tourists arrived in January.
WHAT TO DO?
Spend some time investigating if you can (and
have a choice), and get the blindfolders off,
the "tourist mentality." New places, especially
when they're new, and you've fantasized about
them can be mesmerizing. Force yourself use
your emotional intelligence to go through the
motions of a real day there. It is different to
visit somewhere than to live somewhere.
Oops, do you want to have to drive 30 minutes
for a can of coffee?
Oops, it isn't just your neighbor with that
adenoid Dallas drawl, it's all the women there.
Oops, do I really want to drive an hour to
the nearest hospital and airport?
What do mean there's no restaurant in this
town that serves beef barbecue (bagels and lox,
crθme francais, smoked salmon, vegemite...)
IN ALL CONDITIONS
If you visit San Antonio in November, go back
in August. If you visit St. Paul in August, go
back in February.
The meta-theory here is to use your emotional
intelligence to make a good decision. Avoid
impulsive buying. Do your homework, use reason
and logic, test out how you feel there,
anticipate consequences, and remain flexible and
open-minded. It's especially keen to develop
your intuition, because these are questions you
can't ask other people about. "It's a great
place to live," means something entirely
different to each person who says it.
Remember there are things that are different
that are nice (no snow to shovel) and there are
things that are different that aren't nice
(there are bees in my what?).
Be especially careful if you're planning to
"go back to your roots," or "retire to
paradise." It is quite probable neither goal is
achievable.
Here's a
great website for checking important things
out.
Good luck!
Susan Dunn may be contacted at
http://www.susandunn.cc
sdunn@susandunn.cc.
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