Hi gang, long time no see. I was bored, clicked on piggington that still is in my “favorites” list and started to read a little. This comment pulled me out of retirement. First off, so glad to see Paramount has stuck it out up here, if he kept both houses his balance sheet thanks him.
Now to the retirement comment. I’m not too far from it and recently conducted an inventory of the good and bad as far as staying put once retired. For those who don’t remember me, I bought at a fairly lucky time and got a 5/4, 3 car garage at the tail end of 2008 for 270k that was a repo originally purchased for the mid 600’s. Houses on my street are going for the high 400’s to low 500’s, so I’m a happy camper right now and have about 50% equity and a sub 2k mortgage with impounds included. Now that the backstory is complete, I have about 5 years until I retire. I did find a soon to be Mrs. TG and the kids have lived at college for quite some time with the oldest graduating in December. BTW empty nesting is awesome.
So retirement is something I think about more and more and the thought of downsizing or relocating is in those thoughts. The problem is that the future Mrs. TG has grown kids (and some grandkids) who live north and mine live South, we rarely get a weekend that someone isn’t visiting. They all love the wineries, old town, pechanga and the endless festivals and events. I’ve had to declare “no visitor weekends” every few months just to get some errands done and to rest my liver. As far as wanting friends to visit for weeks not days, I make people tell me when they are leaving before they come because weekends turn to weeks because they always have more fun than they thought and extend their stays.
As far as travel, I think it is ideal, we are an hour or so from 4 or 5 airports. SD is not a perfect hub for travel and sometimes is costlier than the other other airports. I don’t mind paying for parking and I’m a direct flight junkie, I hate transfers with the luggage and logistical issues. being under 90 minutes from LAX, SNA, ONT and SND gives me the opportunity to go most anywhere directly on our airlines of choice. We’ve been traveling a lot lately and SD is my least favorite airport for many destinations.
Sometimes I’ve pondered a move but everyone I care to have in my home likes coming here and I’ve got 4 queen beds in the 4 guest rooms, most with private bathrooms, they all want me to stay here.
Finally, I’m a numbers guy and the greatest drawback to Temecula is it’s distance for commuters, so why would I pay more to be closer to a job that I wont be going to. Seems to me, the low overhead is the greatest reason to stay. I have done all the math and if i stay, I’ll have 70% of my retirement income be discretionary. Wasn’t that the beauty of all the hard lessons we learned from the great recession.
Another anecdotal example of retirement is my parents, they sold their LA home and paid cash for a temecula home with their LA equity and then retired. They are never home, all they do is travel and they love it.Sure they had to pay $12 a day to park at LAX on their last 30 day trip to Europe. That’s $360!! and their mortgage is $0, not 3k. In fact they brag that their flight, hotel, parking and expenses were less that 2 months mortgage in their former centrally located house of the same size as their current one. So yeah, I’m retiring in Temecula.
