Thread Drift

[Catrin]

Good luck Murieen, how exciting!

Pax,.so glad to read you are happily ensconced on the beach

Crankin, I doubt that I will ever be able to afford to retire. That is just the way it is. That being said, I've not had good experiences with volunteer work myself so I totally get what you are saying. I would like to do some volunteer work if I can find a good fit with my skills and interests, but that remains to be seen. I will likely just have a change of career at some point and cut my working hours.

[Catrin]

Congratulations Crankin, and good luck with everything!

[OakLeaf]

Good luck! That's a big step. It's nice there are condos with space for all your toys - that was the limiting factor when we were shopping. We don't need the living space of a house, but there just weren't condos with storage space, and a lot of them only even had one parking space, so we'd have had to use that for motorcycles and park the car off-site, never mind they usually forbid wrenching (even wrenching on bicycles that don't have a lot of potentially toxic fluids) in shared garages.

FWIW, I kept my license active for two biennial cycles before I came to terms with being retired. It was worth the expense and hassle of taking the CLE, just to be able to process the decision at my own pace.

[Pax]

Sounds like a nice place, Crankin. Plenty of room but less yard stuff to deal with, sounds like a great choice for retirement.

[Crankin]

Oak, we will not have a garage. Some of the units have one; we do have 2 parking spaces, and the lot is plowed by someone else! I have come to terms with cleaning snow off of my car, because it has everything else. The basement is huge. We will be taking a couple of bigger pieces of furniture to store down there (dining room table for one), as well as all of our tools/outdoor clean up stuff, as we may end up buying a small house, instead of a condo in the Berkshires. It seems silly to get rid of this stuff now, when we have room for it. The only furniture we need to get rid of is the kids' bedroom sets and the 2 chairs in the living room, which I know my son here will want. We will use our living set for the smaller sunroom (can't believe it still is in good shape after 35 years) and our family room stuff will be perfect for the living room. We will have to buy a couple of chairs, for that.

[shootingstar]

Good luck! That's a big step. It's nice there are condos with space for all your toys - that was the limiting factor when we were shopping. We don't need the living space of a house, but there just weren't condos with storage space, and a lot of them only even had one parking space, so we'd have had to use that for motorcycles and park the car off-site, never mind they usually forbid wrenching (even wrenching on bicycles that don't have a lot of potentially toxic fluids) in shared garages.

FWIW, I kept my license active for two biennial cycles before I came to terms with being retired. It was worth the expense and hassle of taking the CLE, just to be able to process the decision at my own pace.

You mean your license for lawyering?

My partner gets ticked off at engineers who have long given up (many years) of being an engineer but still wear the iron ring. He believes it's wrong and false, they would have difficult doing certain fundamental engineering calculations, applying certain technical concepts, etc. He himself gave up renewing his license about 1 decade into his working career before moving into pure management.

As for condo storage..yes it's tighter.
I don't have a car but I rent out my parking space. Covers the annual property tax and much...more for the parking space itself.

[Crankin]

There is ample parking (2 spaces or a garage+ one space) for everyone at the condo, and it is only 15 units, so no renting out spaces needed here. I think that is a thing done in cities.
We are moving along in the process. Signed the P&S last night; the closing is 9/28. Our agent is coming over early Monday morning before work, to make a final decision about setting the selling price for our house. After her tour on Wednesday, she said we don't really need to do anything, except get more lighting in the kids' bedrooms (they've never been used, really), which we have already ordered and move DH's shoe tree somewhere else, out of his closet. It was pretty funny when I told her he is the male version of Ismelda Marcos. He had already taken all of his other shoes off of the bookshelf in DS #2 room. DH is doing a bit of touch up painting, too.

[emily_in_nc]

Congratulations, Crankin -- that is exciting! Hope everything goes well with the condo purchase and house sale.

[lph]

Well, we did actually sell fast, and for a very good price. But there's no way of knowing if all that staging was necessary or not. I think the idea of giving the house a clean and uncluttered look probably does help some people a lot with visualising how they can live there, it's sort of like dressing up for a nice occasion to look your best. But the extreme staging some people do, bringing in completely different furniture, paintings, etc... Well, maybe it's worth it if you're trying to sell a nice place that has been treated like a dump, otherwise I can't imagine it's worth the effort.
All this does make the few places that are not presented this way really stick out. I remember seeing photos of an artist's flat for sale, complete with dirty dishes, messy clothes and a ton of pictures on the wall :-)

[lph]

Re our intimidating agent: I remember her telling me we needed white pillows, white towels and preferably a bedspread. I was a bit taken aback, as we already had a rather minimalist style, just not pure white. I caved and bought some white pillow covers, and some new ice blue towels. She sighed. I found a tatty fake fur white pillow hidden somewhere, and she was quite pleased. "See, you DO have something white."
Luckily the weather was a bit damp the day we were showing the house, which camouflaged the itty bitty white pawprints caused by our cat tracking fresh paint all over the newly oiled patio.

[Crankin]

Love it, lph!
DH told me last night that the stagers said we needed to get a palm tree plant for the living room. He put his foot down to that. This is Massachusetts, not Florida. It is true our minimalist look and contemporary furniture/prints of the southwest might look different, but I don't do indoor plants. Had them for years, too much work.

[lph]

I am sorry, Oak. Death has a way of raking things up that you thought were long done.

[Crankin]

We closed on the condo today. And we actually had 2 semi interested prospects for our house yesterday.

[Catrin]

We closed on the condo today. And we actually had 2 semi interested prospects for our house yesterday.

Congratulations!!!

[emily_in_nc]

We closed on the condo today. And we actually had 2 semi interested prospects for our house yesterday.

That's great Crankin! Know you're ready to have your house sell.