Letting Go, Moving On

Letting Go of Yesterday, Enjoying What We Have and Looking Forward to What Comes Next

We're enjoyed 35 years together, and we've seen .. done .. and enjoyed it all. Even thou we all must let go of yesterday, we remember it all.

As in our past, Paulina and I have lived our life and have had our ups and downs, we moved on. While we remember the good times, and enjoy our blessings, it's time for us to "move on" again.

Up until 2016, we spent too much time, effort and money enjoying "the good life". Besides all the responsibility for managing our home and business, we have been thinking about a "better way". Our expenses for our good life, were $400k for 2016.

And, despite our setting up our beloved home, son John wants a simpler life too. So, the simple facts were that we could sell our home, reinvest the proceeds, and enjoy all of our remaining days seeing the USA and ridding ourselves of the time, effort and money.  More specifically, we've decided to invest the proceeds in our tax free bond portfolio, as well as cut our expenses current expenses by $135k (for our home in Tucson, real estate business, vacations, Paulina's BMW. As a result of both our expense reductions, as well as our additional bond/real estate income ($100k-$150k), we will have lots more freedom to spend our time, effort and money enjoying a better "good life".

Our projected expense for our new life is about $100k/year with the rest of going into our savings and investments! 

With our Real Estate holdings liquidated, it's time for us to let go of our beloved home in Tucson. We're moving towards living a more country style life in both Schroon River and a winter home in the Southeast. This will allow us to enjoy "Endless Summer". 

Besides our personal goals, we decided that it will simply be a better life. We can eliminate the high overhead, reinvest the proceeds in our bonds and new real estate holdings. In addition, we've learned that we really like "living out of a suitcase" and staying at various hotels while we're on the road.

​The average night's stay is about $100/night, and it includes everything .. big breakfast and snacks as well as cable tv, pool, etc). Well, we have owned a timeshare (SPG) since 1999 and get 2 weeks of stays each year. (click on the link for more info).
If and when our house sells, we'll be spending $3,000/month staying at our hotels either until we find a new place or, maybe, for the coming years!

Besides we have accumulated 190,00o points in the "bank". The cost of a night's stay averages about 4,000 points with some of the resort/upscale nights costing as much as 10,000 points. So, the point being, is that our road trips are already being paid for, all we pay is about $500 for our gas between Tucson and Schroon River Road. Since we now eat less, as we grow older,

​Checkout the show, Warrensburg, NY to Texas for some fun memories of our trip back from Schroon River, it includes our stay in Hot Springs, AR.

No rush, although we too hope it sells, we're already moving on .. We now also love our place upstate and we'll be enjoying both homes. We also want to find a new Winter place that will let us visit John in Tucson as well as return to Schroon River. While it's premature, we think that somewhere between AR and KY would fit the bill. Meanwhile, as the saying goes, we'll continue to enjoy what we have.  💑🐾☕️🛣

March Madness

Besides our adventures in the "Brave New World", we've been having fun. Some fun times and our work (Taxes, Home Prep, etc). Come see some fun memories.

My "Hobby Business" was setup, now the infrastructure will allow me to work on the fun stuff over the coming 4 months, adding my Papa's Recipes and lots of our samples. My goal is to create my online education courses between now and August (Fall Semester opens in September).

We invested about $2,000 for the addition of a 2nd server (backup and development), as well as most of March in setting up the infrastructure to setup and maintain my websites, HomeBASE hosting, and my HomeBASE University. Hated doing all the work, but now I can work on the fun stuff, my recipes, online courses, and more of my personal interests, i.e. recipes, movies, photography, etc. Paulina is now free too, and can spend her time without the hassle of us at home and work.

I'm also busy working on our Plex Server to house all my movies and TV shows. In the past, I used both iTunes and other approaches, but now I want to use Plex to enable us and our extended family to view our library anywhere. I've got about 1,000 movies and 3,000 tv shows to move .. work, but worth it to me. I love my movies, recipes, music, etc.

Paulina, Lucky and I (The We 3) leave for Schroon River on May 1st. So, watch for our new sight seeing adventures next month.

More April Showers Coming Next Month

Hey, We'll be busy in April. First, we already had one home showing and we've got another one setup for today (Broker Preview for his client).

I'm already planning on shipping some more personal stuff (clothes, my movie library, my cookbooks, etc). These will be shipped after we leave, but in time for our arrival.

The more we get done now, the easier it will be when the time comes for the "big move". I've already gotten an estimate from the guys who moved us from SaddleBrooke in 2011, .. if we move it all, the expense will be about $8 to $10k. However, we now plan on letting son John keep what he wants, selling some and moving what remains to Schroon River and/or our new home in the Southeast.

Back to the Good Life, we've already got our plans and reservations for some fun stuff too.

Paulina's Birthday (April 4th) at Downtown Kitchen (same as my birthday on March 5th.
Easter Sunday (April 16th). with the family again.

Checkout some memories of both below!