OK, Pages didn't work the way I thought.  If there is a way to make another entry to that page, I can't find it.  I also can't figure out how to move the entry from that page to the main page.

Oh well.  Live and learn.

Texas, or????

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I'm from Texas.  I miss Texas.  But then I'm not terribly well traveled, but I really liked Florida the couple times I was there, and Louisiana, especially New Orleans have an undeniable charm.  Even Colorado and New Mexico, the beautiful mountains and much nicer summer weather (though winter in the mountains kind of scares me).  It makes me wonder if it's Texas I miss, or the South and West?

That's where the RV/Motorhome would be nice.  It would give a chance to wander around a bit, and see other places, to decide where we want to live.  Hell, I might even like Alaska or Washington state if I even went there. But that doesn't alter the economics.

There are also time restraints.  Our goal is to retire in about 7-8 years.  Maybe 10?  Five years would be nice, but be hard to do.  If we buy the land in Texas, we'll need to pay for the land in a couple years.  That doesn't give a lot of time to decide.

The land in Texas has a number of drawbacks.  While it's half an hour from the beach, it's MILES from the mountains, and not even that close to the Texas hill country (my favorite part of Texas).  I don't recall a lot of lakes in the area either.  It's rivers and gulf.  What it does have is a chance to help out family and some sentimental attachment since it's the house my parents died in.  They hadn't lived there long, so it's not a deep attachment, but it was a place my mom loved. It does have an old premanufactured home that I hear is going to need torn down and hauled off.

That part of Texas (for that matter most of the state) does have some drawbacks.  Summers are killers, frequently hot and humid, Tornadoes are too common through most of the state, and the Gulf area catches more than it's share of hurricanes and tropical storms.  But I guess most locations have their drawbacks.

I just discovered that Blogger allows multiple pages!  I'm sure that wasn't there when I started this.  But since I did discover it, I'm putting all the retirement stuff from now on on its own page.

None of us have a 100% guarantee of waking up in the morning.  After a certain age, the % chance of waking up gets less and less.  As we're planning for retirement, I have to keep that knowledge in my head.  

If we work for another 20 or 30 years, we'll have a much better nest egg to retire with.  The catch is I'll be pushing 80-90 years old!  I would have saved all this years for I could sit on a porch and die, IF I even lived that long (most don't).

Retiring earlier, means less money.  Since I'm relying on social security for the biggest part of my retirement, I'm stuck working at least to 62, and at 62 there will be a significant drop in benefits from working 5 more years until I'm 67.  The almost double sized paycheck at 67 would be nice, but at 67, how many more years will I have to enjoy my retirement? And compared to Kay, I'm in good health!

It's a shame that the best we've been able to come up with is a system where we spend most of our life working so that we can afford to sit by ourselves and die at the end of our lives.  It's frightening how many I know that even after working, don't see a way to retire, and face working until they are so used up society can't milk anymore from them, and them will dump them on relatives that don't want them or state programs only have enough funding to neglect them.