Preparations Part 2

The House:: As many of you know, in anticipation of this complete life change we have been trying to sell the house for the last year and a half. (Wasn't our timing impeccable??) We love the house but it is just too great a burden having to heat, cool, landscape, maintain, pay taxes and insurance on nearly 6000 ft of living space (2000 of which we hardly ever use) on nearly one acre of land--especially as we contemplate almost complete retirement andconsidering the fact that we don't plan on living here at all for much of the next year and possibly more. For a long time now I have wanted to sell and buy something, like a patio home, ( No townhomes--I've had enough "communal living" in our townhome in Vail) that we can lock the door and walk away from for extended periods without worrying about pool maintenance and yard maintenance and huge absentee utility bills------BUT-----it just didn't happen. I suppose we could sell it if we just kept lowering the price, but we don't need to give it away and I'm not about to. It's too nice of a place.

So, unless a miracle happens in the next 60 days we'll keep the house, lock her up tight, pay for pool and yard maintenance and hope she survives our absence. It would be nice to have someone rent it while we're gone so we could kill two birds with one stone---someone in the house to keep an eye on things, and some rental revenue coming in to help defray some of the expenses----let us know if you know of anyone interested.

Other issues that we're having to plan for:

The cars---Suspend insurance and keep them locked up in the house. But if we rent the house we'll have to find a place nearby to keep them. We'll want them somewhere near the airport for our occasional trips back to Kingwood

Bills---We're in the process of getting everything on auto pay or pay on-line, but we'll need to be sure we have internet access wherever we go. This could be a problem in the Bahamas, but more on that later.

Mail---We think we'll just have Lupe (our once every other week cleaning lady--and dear friend) come by every couple of days and gather the mail, sort out the junk, forward on anything that looks urgent, and send the rest of the relevant stuff every week or so----to where? This is the hard part. We'll have to plan ahead and make arrangements to retrieve our mail at different locations as we progress down and around the Fla. peninsula--different privately owned mail drops like the one here in Kingwood in the HEB center.

Climate control---We'll need to keep the air and then heat on so we'll need someone to come by every now and then and check on things---Ed?? Are you reading this??

Personal Belongings---If we rent the place we'll need to move our stuff (everything but the furniture) out. We have climate controlled storage at our building in Humble where my office is and there's plenty of room, but what a hassle, especially if we don't get it rented until after we've left---we'll have to fly home and spend a week moving "stuff"

Stuff---That brings me to a conclusion that I've come to as a result of all this planning. I'm tired of "stuff". I don't want to own anything anymore. If you own it you've got to make room for it, maintain it (I spend an inordinate amount of my time and/or money either fixing "stuff" or paying someone else to fix the "stuff " that I can't.) You have to insure it, pay taxes on it and then move it when it's time. It's that insurance and taxes thing that really irritates me---sorry Ed---. Imagine a world where you owned nothing other than your clothes and personal effects---No insurance, no taxes, no maintenance time or costs,---When something breaks you simply call the guy that owns it and tell him to fix it. All you have to do is make the rent payment on time and go traveling. Hmmmmm! Might get boring--Oh well, I guess there really is no perfect answer.

Well, we just keep adding to our lists of things we have to do before we take off, and believe me I've only touched the surface of the obvious things in this post. Kind of begs the question, doesn't it?? Is it worth it?? We sure hope so.