Old Lady Makes A Five Year Plan

First, this blog is not about dancing, although I do that, too. I'm in Year Three of my Five Year Plan, and it's getting more real. I'm planning to sell my house and move from Los Angeles to South Carolina. It's still two or three years down the road, but there's so much to do, and I want a place to save my ideas, hear new ideas, and journal the journey.

The First Year of my Five Year Plan, before I even had a Five Year Plan, I was confronted with some challenging home repair needs: my asphalt driveway was cracked and crumbling, the exterior needed paint, the air conditioning had been out for two years, the skylights were leaking, and termites had gotten in to the hardwood kitchen floors. Too much fencing and dancing, too little time spent tending the house.

Fortunately, I have a generous mother/stepmother/mother -- Jeanette, for short -- who gave all us "kids" a nice cash gift. It couldn't have come at a better time. I've been retired for some time, and funds were depleting. The gift gave me the confidence to spend what needed to be spent.

I called a friend who is a handyman. He was my second god-send. He is skilled and knowledgeable and experienced enough to be a licensed contractor, but he's an off-the-grid kind of guy, doesn't like "licenses" and such. I was already painting the outside of the house myself, but he helped with all the other major issues, then some extras: He repaired and resurfaced my driveway, worked on the roof, installed a driveway gate, and replaced light fixtures in the house. He was also someone I could trust to call with new problems, kitchen and bathroom faucet leaks, etc.

I did use specialists for the skylights (they needed to be replaced and the surrounding roof area needed to be re-sealed) and for the the kitchen floor (only a few boards needed to be replaced, but the floor had to be refinished and, although the termite guy said the problem was local, the termites probably flew in an open window and just chomped around a small space, such that a local treatment would suffice, I was so freaked out I had the whole house tented). I also called a contractor to fix some rotten wood I had found at an edge of the roof where I was painting. The area was small, but it was at a corner that looked difficult to work with, and that might require roof construction. Those three projects alone cost over $7,000. (I really think I got rolled by the roofing contractor -- $3,000 to repair an area of only about two square feet, and only a few board pieces needed replacing.)

At the same time, I realized I needed to get real with my life. I was an old lady in an old house with two old dogs with only my dwindling IRA reserves for income. My major asset was my house; if I couldn't afford to keep up with it, I should sell it while I was still able to get it in a nice condition. So, I decided I should start moving towards selling my house. I could move to South Carolina, where I grew up, where most of my family are. My house would probably sell for three or four times what a comparable house would cost to buy there, the difference would be quite a nice nest egg. At the time, I was about 60, so I chose five years as the goal, so I would be on Medicare when I moved there. Even then, when Obama was still President, I was concerned about losing my access to affordable health care. If the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") were to be repealed or weakened, unless I had an alternative, like Medicare, I'd rather be in a blue state than a red one. So that's how the Five Year Plan came to be.