My wife and I retired early. At that time, the kids were figuring where the jobs were and whether they could buy a home. Grandkids were close but a few years off. At that time, we thought "quick visits" were best and hotels were perfect in combination with maybe spending a night at their residences. I am a former financial person and the "traditional" traits are ingrained. I did numerous cost analysis on second homes to arrive at a hard NO while my wife easily surmised the same from observing others. However, we do have second properties, but they are former residences that were turned to rentals, paid off and now float a substantial part of our retirement activities. I managed these in the early years, but relegated all to property management as I approached retirement and late career challenges. My conclusion was that we could easily resist the second home (residence) cost and "save" for hotel in combination with short stays in our kids homes for most visits; but, also would "save" enough to pay or subsidize family get togethers in the future. We are now in that mode! It is sometimes like herding cats, but they do get creative when the offer is made for a week at a resort etc.. . We've done Hawaii, Mexico and cruise venues with a ton of memories, completely relaxing for all (once the ladies zero on timeframe coordination) and dad/grandpa and grandma could not finance a better option, I think, to enjoy our time with next generations. The income from the rentals will float most any long term care preference selected by the surviving spouse. We have done some homework here with some alternatives reviewed for their potential selection. These are documented in our Trust papers, but we are leaving the final selection to a later date. We were never going to be the "babysitting" grandparents due to our penchant for travel. Our kids understand this and love that we get out and "do-it". We are finding that not being bound by a second residence also frees us to consider renting properties in all kinds of locations for a more "local" experience as we transition from "go-go" to "slow-go" in our retirement lives! I believe that even if we had not lucked-out with "collecting" good rental properties for a buffer over many years, we would still opt for the no second residence; albeit, the family vacation venues would have a different threshold or maybe splitting cost with our kids...
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My wife and I retired early. At that time, the kids were figuring where the jobs were and whether they could buy a home. Grandkids were close but a few years off. At that time, we thought "quick visits" were best and hotels were perfect in combination with maybe spending a night at their residences. I am a former financial person and the "traditional" traits are ingrained. I did numerous cost analysis on second homes to arrive at a hard NO while my wife easily surmised the same from observing others. However, we do have second properties, but they are former residences that were turned to rentals, paid off and now float a substantial part of our retirement activities. I managed these in the early years, but relegated all to property management as I approached retirement and late career challenges. My conclusion was that we could easily resist the second home (residence) cost and "save" for hotel in combination with short stays in our kids homes for most visits; but, also would "save" enough to pay or subsidize family get togethers in the future. We are now in that mode! It is sometimes like herding cats, but they do get creative when the offer is made for a week at a resort etc.. . We've done Hawaii, Mexico and cruise venues with a ton of memories, completely relaxing for all (once the ladies zero on timeframe coordination) and dad/grandpa and grandma could not finance a better option, I think, to enjoy our time with next generations. The income from the rentals will float most any long term care preference selected by the surviving spouse. We have done some homework here with some alternatives reviewed for their potential selection. These are documented in our Trust papers, but we are leaving the final selection to a later date. We were never going to be the "babysitting" grandparents due to our penchant for travel. Our kids understand this and love that we get out and "do-it". We are finding that not being bound by a second residence also frees us to consider renting properties in all kinds of locations for a more "local" experience as we transition from "go-go" to "slow-go" in our retirement lives! I believe that even if we had not lucked-out with "collecting" good rental properties for a buffer over many years, we would still opt for the no second residence; albeit, the family vacation venues would have a different threshold or maybe splitting cost with our kids...
Post: The Homing Pigeons
Link to comment from March 29, 2023