Coasting


What's New and What's Not

As I alluded to in December's entry we have entered a waiting phase before the coming big life changes actually arrive.

The first of those changes was to be my retirement at the end of January, but we're now in February and I am still working. And the biggest reason for that is simple: there are not enough things to do here in central Oregon to keep me busy (at least during the winter months) and so I might as well work, which provides both income and health insurance. The new plan is to work until the end of February. Our scouting trip to Sacramento is the second week of March and after that I will be busy preparing the house to put on the market by April (at the latest).

My employer would prefer that I keep working indefinitely and so they are happy for the extra month and are in fact hoping for additional bonus months. Rather than resign at the end of February I agreed to take a personal leave of absence, which keeps my position open and allows me to easily revisit employment in August after trying out retirement for six months. I suspect that retirement is going to agree with us and that in August I will resign, but it is good to have options. It also means more of my granted shares of stock will vest, and so it is a win/win situation for both Oracle and us.

We have continued to research the details of retirement and life in Sacramento. I worked up an estimated monthly budget that includes all expected expense, plus more for unexpected costs and extra for travel. I met with our financial advisor at the end of January and he reviewed our estimated monthly income requirement and said we could easily increase that amount. I have been looking at listings on Zillow to see what is available in our targeted Sacramento neighborhoods that meets our budget and needs, and I have been monitoring home values in central Oregon to track what we can expect to get from selling our home.

I have also indulged in a bit of future planning/day dreaming for things to do in retirement. Locally there are plenty of places to ride our horses, lots of restaurants for nights out, sailing and scuba clubs, plus regularly scheduled gaming meetups. There are regional places to drive to like downtown San Francisco, the various redwood forests, Yosemite, Death Valley and the like. Further afield the Grand Canyon continues to call as do other western scenic adventures (such as a trip on Amtrak's Zephyr from Denver to San Francisco). And because we have a regional airport (or can easily get to a major hub) the big trips are now more accessible -- New Zealand, The Galapagos Islands, the Sea of Cortez, Hawaii, the Caribbean and so on.

I am looking forward to our new life and can't wait to take the next steps.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

So France, Maybe?

Image
It has been eight months since my last entry and in that time we have traveled a great deal including various horse camping/riding extended weekends, a visit to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, a trekking trip to England and the Channel Islands, and a diving/snorkeling trip to Raja Ampat Indonesia. Fun times.  We also watched in horror as a third of our country voted for a narcissistic convicted sex offender and con man who has since inflicted his fascist and authoritarian rule over the country, all the while a Republican controlled congress looks on with approval and seventy seven million Americans cheer him on. And still another third just looks on passively while the rest of us try to resist and insist our elected officials uphold the constitution, which they swore to do before taking office. Alarming times. Had the shit not hit the fan I would be posting now about our move back to Oregon this year, but that course of action seems doubtful with the current state of ou...
Read more

So France, Probably

Image
  That didn't take long. Less than a week in office and the current fascist regime managed to reduce the US to a kleptocracy. Another week saw him drive our economy (barely recovered from the orange shit stain's first tenure) into a rapid downward spiral. Three weeks in and he has betrayed our allies and effectively made us a vassal of Putin's Russia. And yet seventy seven million Americans still think everything he does is great and will somehow benefit them... or maybe they are just so small minded and shallow or ugly that this is exactly what they want. We will not live with this and have decided to immigrate to France. We have signed up for French lessons and begun to research the details we will need to make the move. The plan is to make a scouting trip to France in September and focus on the areas we think will work best for us and our horses. Given our desire for mostly clear skies and not too cold or damp winters we are looking primarily at southwestern France. We w...
Read more

Focus on Montpellier

Image
  In my last post at the beginning of March I outlined a potential itinerary for our September scouting trip to France. We only have thirteen days to spend in the south, and this schedule would result in a lot of driving and no deep dives into local culture. We have since revised our plans and have decided that we will focus on Montpellier, which is a moderately sized city a few kilometers from the Mediterranean. Now we will have almost two weeks to explore one city and the areas surrounding it. Montpellier is a modern, liberal university town with a thriving expat community. The core city is set up for walking and it has an excellent public transit system centered on trains, trams and buses that connect the various districts of the city proper with one another as well as the surrounding communities. The climate is warm and dry in the summers and moderate in the winters, with mostly clear skies for much of the year. The city boasts a major medical university (it is home to Europe's...
Read more