The Best Is Yet To Come

Looking Forward to What Comes Next

When I was 17 I dreamed of what life could be. Then, I spent most of my life trying to make it happen. And, it happened. However, most of my dreams were about building a family, home and business that could accommodate the best life it could be.

My dad provided for us, as well as his grandchildren. My daughters Victoria and Nicole have long ago moved on with their lives and families. Son John has also now gotten his life underway and is assuming our remaining family business as well as his own, new endeavors. He, too, sees the time, effort and expense with maintaining our current lifestyle as too costly in terms of time, effort and expense. So, it's time to divest ourselves of all the unnecessary items that were so important until now.

Now, we realize that we just don't need what we thought we did. So, we have become determined to re-think and re-do it all.

We've almost totally gotten out of our real estate endeavors .. with only a few investments remaining. And now, we're selling our home in Tucson, my beloved Mercedes, as well as most of our personal belongings. With all of the proceeds going back into our bond investments.

The only real remaining other item is my Dad's home. However, since my nephew Rod is using it, we won't be doing anything about it. Simply put, son John will either live in it or consider selling it when the time comes. While my old home in Forest Hills Gardens, NY holds lots of memories, it no longer serves any real purpose.

Simply put, we're putting as much of our assets into the family trust for son John and his decedents.

Paulina and I realized that we not only found a "Summer Place", but that we especially enjoyed the layback, simple life and time filled with the great outdoors.  We especially realized that it already has what we need, with some minimum work/improvements yet to be done. We're considering the possibility of upgrading our house #1 and/or in building a log cabin, but even those are now viewed as "nice to haves" rather than real needs.

It's amazing, even to us, just how little we really need. Our taxes are $8,000/yr and our now greatly reduced living expenses will allow us to maximize our income/savings potential. Having worked and substantially increased our net worth, we are now about "wealth management" rather than "wealth building". We're reducing our income/growth potential but actually doing better because of our simple needs vs grand lifestyle. This lesson was also a theme of my Dad's. He built his home, family and finally had most of his assets invested in bonds (having divested his real estate holdings back in '96).

And so, we've become focused on using our 2nd home and property as our home base .. with about 3 months on the road. Frankly, we'll be using our timeshare to travel and see the USA as well as plan some special vacations. Each year, we have about 1 month of vacation using our timeshare. In addition, we now have about 4 months of unused time in the bank, which we can use either for a very special vacation or as part of our ongoing 3 months "away from the cold".

Having been away from NY for 18 years, we're also looking forward to spending more time with family and friends. However, that too, will be more "home BBQ" than days of old. We're just more into the simple life .. and low cost lifestyle.

Slowly, we've been withdrawing from our more extravagant life style even thou we're doing much less home cooking. But, I'm still hoping to continue my home cooking (just less than I might have done in younger days). Our main interest is in enjoying our Golden Years with Mr Lucky enjoying nature. Nights and rainy days will include more movie watching, home 

​Checkout some memories of my last enjoyable visit with Dad. I took the train cross country and spent time just talking, eating and catching up with life. Bitter/sweet times, eh.