<p>Ha, Ha! I just woke up from a beauty nap. H isn’t home yet, and D wants us to wait until she can get here so She and I can go out to the yard, do a primal scream, then swim and have Champagne.</p>
<p>Spain July, France September, Spain for the winter. I’m sure going to be celebrating!</p>
<p>Fantastic! Congrats.</p>
<p>congrats</p>
<p>Congrats, gloworm! Retirement is wonderful. Enjoy every minute!</p>
<p>just enjoyed another monthly lunch with the folks who retired (and some who still work) at H’s workplace. He was there for 45 yeras–I was never at a workplace long enough to develop deep bonds. It was fun and they all get along pretty well. </p>
<p>I have to admit, it was pretty tough living on less than 1/2 of our net income for years while we waited for pay raises and reduced interest rates to help make our housing costs a smaller portion of our total household income. Fortunately, our kids were young and fairly inexpensive. </p>
<p>Congrats Gloworm! We’re two and a half weeks into retirement. No complaints:)</p>
<p>I think that the loss of friendships from work will be the biggest downside to retirement. My work family is as close as my real family. We love and support one another like sisters. No matter how much we will promise to keep in touch, once I retire, I won’t be part of that family. </p>
<p>I see my retiree former work friends at least once a month. The ones I was closest too are either retired as well, or have left work to raise young children.</p>
<p><a href=“FHA Mortgage Calculator - How Much Can I Afford?”>FHA Loan Refinance and Home Purchase Loans at FHA.com;
Scroll down for assumptions on income. When we applied, it was 28% for PITI, 36% overall. </p>
<p>HIMom, we didn’t buy our first house until the kids were in elem school – had to pay off the student loans and get past the mega child care bills first. Raises and refinancing at lower rates helped over the years, too. Am still glad we didn’t figure on my income as essential to the mortgage, since I started having major medical issues 3.5 years later.</p>
<p>Here’s an interesting and cool free tool for retirement from our Department of Labor. It is said to have interactive worksheets. This particular publication is especially for folks that are about 10 years frrom retirement. There are a lot of other resrouces relating to retirement at the <a href=“http://www.dol.gov”>www.dol.gov</a> website as well.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/pdf/nearretirement.pdf”>http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/pdf/nearretirement.pdf</a></p>
<p>We didn’t buy our house until we had lived in our apartment for many years as tenants. When we first bought it, we rented it out because we could’t swing the mortgage payment and the rent at our apartment was amazingly low. We really squeezed for many years to pay the mortgage but were relieved to finish paying it off before H retired! We never counted on my wages, fortunately because I did take many years off to help raise them and volunteer with PTA and other things that we felt were very important. When I returned to the labor force, I was only part-time, which was important so I could go to my medical appointments and get the kids to theirs and stay home with them whenever possible – they and I had some chronic health issues. It did reduce our household income, but since we lived below our means, it was OK anyway. </p>
<p>The money I earned was very helpful in paying for tuition–for private school and private U for our kids, and allowed us to put more towards retirement as well.</p>
<p>About the night vision, mine got better lately. Is it possible?</p>
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<p>WOW. How awesome. Have a great time. </p>
<p>When I eat more carrots, my vision got better.</p>
<p>THIS is what scares me about retirement:</p>
<p>We had our wonderful contractor come today to fix the wet patch under a window in the dining room. Of course we wanted him to diagnose the cause of the wet patch, and fix whatever problem that was.</p>
<p>Long story short: All the siding on the entire side of the house has water damage. We’re talking $10K.</p>
<p>Is it covered by insurance?</p>
<p>@PackMon: have you already gotten tired of people asking what you do with yourself all day? ;)<br>
Whenever dh and I even mention the idea of retirement, there are a few friends who act as if we plan to spend our days in rocking chairs plotting how to poison each other because the togetherness has become too much. They can’t believe that dh is really looking forward to not having a schedule filled with too many things to do.</p>
<p>@VeryHappy: Oh, that’s painful. We’ve had to deal with water intrusion in several houses and I have a deep seated fear of mold. The frustrating thing is that it’s too often caused by contractors failing to properly install house wrap and window flashing, and could have easily been prevented. So glad you have a good contractor to do your repairs.</p>
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<p>Maybe…or maybe you’re car has those new brighter ultra lights.</p>
<p>jym, that’s a very good question.</p>
<p>Oh brother, VH!</p>
<p>VH…ugh!!!</p>
<p>oh and ugh to my own post…should be:</p>
<p>Maybe…or maybe your car has those new brighter ultra lights.</p>