We retired early (50s) and our three homes during the next 20 years all had elements we sought of “universal design,” such as single level, wide doorways, walk-in showers, open floor plans. It turned out that we remained nimble - the real beneficiaries were our elderly parents & siblings (we are both the youngest in our families), and my nephew who has has lived in a motorized wheelchair following an accident at age 20. For him, we installed a ramp from the garage into one house which had about 5 steps up from ground level. Of course, the physical plant is one thing, but a big element of aging in place is how to maintain necessary services. By our mid-70s, we researched CCRCs and found one we’ve loved ever since we moved in three years ago. Maintenance, housekeeping, menu planning, cooking, etc are very well managed. Extras such as a library, salon for haircuts and a fitness center with an array of classes are 5 minutes away. The beauty of a well-run CCRC isn’t just that someone will come to our home to fix something - it’s that pre-screening is done by someone else, their faces are familiar, we know their names, they’ve likely worked here for years, and they fix problems quickly. For me, the best part of our CCRC has been the opportunity for friendship and volunteerism. We all read the articles that stress the importance of social contacts, and this setting is like a congenial village.
Without debt to service (no more mortgage, car, or credit card interest payments) we were liberated. We retired early, left our retirement accounts untouched to grow for years, and were enabled to make choices based on fulfilling dreams. Those choices led to lasting friendships and some priceless experiences. So I’m a believer in saving for retirement starting in your 30s, keeping cars a long time, paying cash to replace them, paying the balance every month on a credit card, and paying off a mortgage before retiring. Not always easy but, even with bumps in the road, that plan worked for us.
We used to have a binder labeled “Emergency” with the basics updated before each trip for our nephew/executor to easily find. (We have no children.) Last year, I bought an all-in-one-place organizing system called the NOK (Next of Kin) Box when it was on sale. I’ve gradually had to take over our financial tasks as my husband has become unable to manage. This has slowly revealed the minutiae he took care of, and can no longer easily remember. Some info/paperwork has been simple to add such as our wills, powers of attorney, CCRC contract, etc. Other additions are less obvious such as insurance renewals, auto-payments, medical info, keys, etc. I continue to work on filling these folders, backed up by digital records on an external hard drive. I know from serving as a personal representative (executor) that a person taking over needs to be able to answer many, many questions quickly without hours of tedious searching. The NOK Box people provide an actual box filled with dividers and folders, or people can use their own boxes or filing cabinets.
This made me think back to 1969 and my first full-time job out of college as a secretary earning $400 a month, $4800 a year. I was oblivious to the value of my employer-provided free parking in downtown Atlanta and health insurance. I had a college loan of $500 to pay off. My dad found a solid used Plymouth Valiant and loaned me the money to buy it. I found a 2-bedroom apartment in a decent neighborhood for $100 a month. Those were the days.
A perfect normal day for me starts with awakening at 5, after 7 hours of good sleep, greeting my spouse who has already made the coffee, reading the local newspaper. Do a few puzzles on the NYT website, check headlines and read some articles. Same for the Washington Post (my home town paper). Local TV news for weather info. Around 7, I have fruit & yoghurt for breakfast and watch the sun come up over the Gulf of Mexico outside my 11th floor windows.
Every day, I am glad we waitlisted at our CCRC for 3 years to get an apartment with a view - we are grateful for that and many reasons to live here. We’ve been here for 3 years and like it better every day. Around 8, we walk around the 15 acre property, checking on the ducks and other birds in the pond, and admiring new blooms in the volunteer-managed orchid garden. There are the usual medical appointments to keep, and challenges to meet in the years ahead, but we are blessed with fairly few health problems at this point (approaching 80s). There are financial accounts to monitor and occasional meetings with advisor. Saving for retirement starting in our 30s was a good idea. I check in with friends & family by email and seek to regularly make plans together. Also I send or answer emails about volunteer committee meetings and activities. I belong to the Health & Wellness Committee here and serve as my floor’s representative to the Resident Council. I work a two-hour shift one day each week in our library - my favorite volunteer job. It's a great place to meet new people and catch up on news of other residents. Not to mention first crack at the latest books. We eat a hearty lunch in the dining room most days and take home leftovers - so luxurious to not have to plan, shop for, and prepare meals. We get together for early dinners on Sundays with a dozen friends here in one of the private dining rooms. There are lectures, concerts, classes, etc to round things out. It’s a wonderful life and I am grateful for it. And I know that life can change in the blink of an eye.
I have our emergency fund in Fidelity’s money market. I had been keeping a big chunk in CDs, but as the rates dropped to 4%, I moved the proceeds into the MM pot.
I’ve also got a nice chunk of my retirement money in TIAA-CREF, a 403(b) investment vehicle for nonprofits, as opposed to a 401(k). My employer had a good match which helped build it in my working years. I’ve not yet taken the annuity option, and it has grown very well, even as I have taken the RMD each year. Eventually I’ll convert it to an annuity.
After my spouse went through a medical crisis in his 40s, he began thinking of an eventual early retirement in his mid-50s if he were to live that long. (Spoiler: he’ll be 80 in a couple of months.) I was on board and ready to leave my high-stress job, especially since I had progressive hearing loss from age 32 that was worsening. We had vacationed in and liked the US Virgin Islands where several of our friends were living, and a five-year plan emerged. We were already debt-free and started maxing out our contributions to retirement accounts. We cleaned up loose ends, selling a few real estate investments. We bought a fixer-upper house on the island and found renters until we needed it. We put all our worldly goods into a shipping container and moved down at ages 53 & 55. Our “tropical retirement” came in stages. I easily found an interesting & enjoyable full time job with a modest salary and health insurance (and later I went part time.) My spouse renovated our island house, and then took his own low-stress, part time job rather than play golf every day. We met great people who are still our best friends. It was an idyllic time in our lives. We moved back to the continental US eight years later because the health care facilities in the islands were poor, and because our parents in the US were aging. We never did go back to high stress, high-paying full-time jobs working for other people. We took SS at 62. My spouse stopped working for good ten years ago. I freelanced as an editor and writer at my own schedule for 20 years. We went on long trips around the US & Canada in a small camper van. Now we live in a CCRC and love it. What made early semi-retirement possible was starting young to build our IRAs and Roths, leaving them alone to just grow, and eventually building other brokerage accounts too. As soon as we could, we avoided carrying debts, including mortgages and car loans. If you have no debt, you have a lot of flexibility.
Thanks for an enjoyable post - I share your feelings on these topics. The loneliness factor began looming large in my mind about five years ago as I lost my closest pals. Two brothers and a sister-inlaw who was a friend of 60+ years) died. Our best friends decided to sell their house near us and move into a residential cruise ship. We do not have children. Our response was to investigate local options and then join the waitlist for a non-profit Continuing Care Retirement Community with a large endowment. We moved in three years go, and feel it was one of our best decisions ever. We are making lots of friends, mainly through volunteer activities. Many newly-arriving residents are our age (early baby boomers), but I've also found good friendships with those who are 20 years older than I am. Your concern about the economy for others who are less fortunate than we are is well-placed, and shared by residents and management where we live. Cities like ours with a high cost of living push employees a longer distance away to find affordable housing. Many service people in our state who work in farming, food service, and health care have traditionally emigrated from other countries, and now their options have changed.These are hands-on jobs that can't be done on a computer from afar. Many of our medical professionals also moved to our state from other countries in the past. Perhaps that will be changing, too, adding to the shortage of doctors. I agree with another post that many generations do have major challenges. I started thinking about 1980 when my husband and I married. We were trying to get a mortgage when interest rates were in the teens, and headlines convinced us that we shouldn't expect Social Security to be there for us when we retired. The upside was that we were propelled to open and fund retirement accounts relatively early in life which appreciated over the years.
After the CCRC called to offer us an apartment we loved, we had a full cash offer on our mortgage-free house two days after it went on the market. Our sale proceeds covered the buy-in fee with a big chunk left over to add to retirement savings. The strategy that worked for us when we moved to Florida was buying a dated fixer-upper in a good neighborhood and having modest renovations done right away so we could enjoy our updated home for the next seven years. During the last three years, we went on the CCRC waitlist and started getting rid of excess stuff. We followed the guidance of our RE agent for simple de-cluttering and staging before the photos were taken. In our neighborhood, there were a lot of houses that really needed updating and sat on the market for months, ultimately selling for far less per square foot. So my advice is not to wait for “one of these days” to do a few improvements.
Comments
We retired early (50s) and our three homes during the next 20 years all had elements we sought of “universal design,” such as single level, wide doorways, walk-in showers, open floor plans. It turned out that we remained nimble - the real beneficiaries were our elderly parents & siblings (we are both the youngest in our families), and my nephew who has has lived in a motorized wheelchair following an accident at age 20. For him, we installed a ramp from the garage into one house which had about 5 steps up from ground level. Of course, the physical plant is one thing, but a big element of aging in place is how to maintain necessary services. By our mid-70s, we researched CCRCs and found one we’ve loved ever since we moved in three years ago. Maintenance, housekeeping, menu planning, cooking, etc are very well managed. Extras such as a library, salon for haircuts and a fitness center with an array of classes are 5 minutes away. The beauty of a well-run CCRC isn’t just that someone will come to our home to fix something - it’s that pre-screening is done by someone else, their faces are familiar, we know their names, they’ve likely worked here for years, and they fix problems quickly. For me, the best part of our CCRC has been the opportunity for friendship and volunteerism. We all read the articles that stress the importance of social contacts, and this setting is like a congenial village.
Post: “Too Much House” vs “Not Enough House”—But Through the Lens of Aging in Place
Link to comment from January 22, 2026
Without debt to service (no more mortgage, car, or credit card interest payments) we were liberated. We retired early, left our retirement accounts untouched to grow for years, and were enabled to make choices based on fulfilling dreams. Those choices led to lasting friendships and some priceless experiences. So I’m a believer in saving for retirement starting in your 30s, keeping cars a long time, paying cash to replace them, paying the balance every month on a credit card, and paying off a mortgage before retiring. Not always easy but, even with bumps in the road, that plan worked for us.
Post: The $8,000 Cost of Peace of Mind
Link to comment from January 20, 2026
We used to have a binder labeled “Emergency” with the basics updated before each trip for our nephew/executor to easily find. (We have no children.) Last year, I bought an all-in-one-place organizing system called the NOK (Next of Kin) Box when it was on sale. I’ve gradually had to take over our financial tasks as my husband has become unable to manage. This has slowly revealed the minutiae he took care of, and can no longer easily remember. Some info/paperwork has been simple to add such as our wills, powers of attorney, CCRC contract, etc. Other additions are less obvious such as insurance renewals, auto-payments, medical info, keys, etc. I continue to work on filling these folders, backed up by digital records on an external hard drive. I know from serving as a personal representative (executor) that a person taking over needs to be able to answer many, many questions quickly without hours of tedious searching. The NOK Box people provide an actual box filled with dividers and folders, or people can use their own boxes or filing cabinets.
Post: Your two best investing books—and do you also keep an End-of-Life “family binder”?
Link to comment from January 5, 2026
This made me think back to 1969 and my first full-time job out of college as a secretary earning $400 a month, $4800 a year. I was oblivious to the value of my employer-provided free parking in downtown Atlanta and health insurance. I had a college loan of $500 to pay off. My dad found a solid used Plymouth Valiant and loaned me the money to buy it. I found a 2-bedroom apartment in a decent neighborhood for $100 a month. Those were the days.
Post: Fifty-seven years and counting and it’s snowing…again.
Link to comment from December 15, 2025
A perfect normal day for me starts with awakening at 5, after 7 hours of good sleep, greeting my spouse who has already made the coffee, reading the local newspaper. Do a few puzzles on the NYT website, check headlines and read some articles. Same for the Washington Post (my home town paper). Local TV news for weather info. Around 7, I have fruit & yoghurt for breakfast and watch the sun come up over the Gulf of Mexico outside my 11th floor windows. Every day, I am glad we waitlisted at our CCRC for 3 years to get an apartment with a view - we are grateful for that and many reasons to live here. We’ve been here for 3 years and like it better every day. Around 8, we walk around the 15 acre property, checking on the ducks and other birds in the pond, and admiring new blooms in the volunteer-managed orchid garden. There are the usual medical appointments to keep, and challenges to meet in the years ahead, but we are blessed with fairly few health problems at this point (approaching 80s). There are financial accounts to monitor and occasional meetings with advisor. Saving for retirement starting in our 30s was a good idea. I check in with friends & family by email and seek to regularly make plans together. Also I send or answer emails about volunteer committee meetings and activities. I belong to the Health & Wellness Committee here and serve as my floor’s representative to the Resident Council. I work a two-hour shift one day each week in our library - my favorite volunteer job. It's a great place to meet new people and catch up on news of other residents. Not to mention first crack at the latest books. We eat a hearty lunch in the dining room most days and take home leftovers - so luxurious to not have to plan, shop for, and prepare meals. We get together for early dinners on Sundays with a dozen friends here in one of the private dining rooms. There are lectures, concerts, classes, etc to round things out. It’s a wonderful life and I am grateful for it. And I know that life can change in the blink of an eye.
Post: What’s Your Perfect “Normal” Day?
Link to comment from December 12, 2025
I have our emergency fund in Fidelity’s money market. I had been keeping a big chunk in CDs, but as the rates dropped to 4%, I moved the proceeds into the MM pot.
Post: Where to Keep Cash
Link to comment from December 6, 2025
I’ve also got a nice chunk of my retirement money in TIAA-CREF, a 403(b) investment vehicle for nonprofits, as opposed to a 401(k). My employer had a good match which helped build it in my working years. I’ve not yet taken the annuity option, and it has grown very well, even as I have taken the RMD each year. Eventually I’ll convert it to an annuity.
Post: The annuities are coming, the annuities are coming‼️
Link to comment from December 5, 2025
After my spouse went through a medical crisis in his 40s, he began thinking of an eventual early retirement in his mid-50s if he were to live that long. (Spoiler: he’ll be 80 in a couple of months.) I was on board and ready to leave my high-stress job, especially since I had progressive hearing loss from age 32 that was worsening. We had vacationed in and liked the US Virgin Islands where several of our friends were living, and a five-year plan emerged. We were already debt-free and started maxing out our contributions to retirement accounts. We cleaned up loose ends, selling a few real estate investments. We bought a fixer-upper house on the island and found renters until we needed it. We put all our worldly goods into a shipping container and moved down at ages 53 & 55. Our “tropical retirement” came in stages. I easily found an interesting & enjoyable full time job with a modest salary and health insurance (and later I went part time.) My spouse renovated our island house, and then took his own low-stress, part time job rather than play golf every day. We met great people who are still our best friends. It was an idyllic time in our lives. We moved back to the continental US eight years later because the health care facilities in the islands were poor, and because our parents in the US were aging. We never did go back to high stress, high-paying full-time jobs working for other people. We took SS at 62. My spouse stopped working for good ten years ago. I freelanced as an editor and writer at my own schedule for 20 years. We went on long trips around the US & Canada in a small camper van. Now we live in a CCRC and love it. What made early semi-retirement possible was starting young to build our IRAs and Roths, leaving them alone to just grow, and eventually building other brokerage accounts too. As soon as we could, we avoided carrying debts, including mortgages and car loans. If you have no debt, you have a lot of flexibility.
Post: Happy Hour, or The Panic Button? Why Early Retirement Anxiety Is Real.
Link to comment from December 1, 2025
Thanks for an enjoyable post - I share your feelings on these topics. The loneliness factor began looming large in my mind about five years ago as I lost my closest pals. Two brothers and a sister-inlaw who was a friend of 60+ years) died. Our best friends decided to sell their house near us and move into a residential cruise ship. We do not have children. Our response was to investigate local options and then join the waitlist for a non-profit Continuing Care Retirement Community with a large endowment. We moved in three years go, and feel it was one of our best decisions ever. We are making lots of friends, mainly through volunteer activities. Many newly-arriving residents are our age (early baby boomers), but I've also found good friendships with those who are 20 years older than I am. Your concern about the economy for others who are less fortunate than we are is well-placed, and shared by residents and management where we live. Cities like ours with a high cost of living push employees a longer distance away to find affordable housing. Many service people in our state who work in farming, food service, and health care have traditionally emigrated from other countries, and now their options have changed.These are hands-on jobs that can't be done on a computer from afar. Many of our medical professionals also moved to our state from other countries in the past. Perhaps that will be changing, too, adding to the shortage of doctors. I agree with another post that many generations do have major challenges. I started thinking about 1980 when my husband and I married. We were trying to get a mortgage when interest rates were in the teens, and headlines convinced us that we shouldn't expect Social Security to be there for us when we retired. The upside was that we were propelled to open and fund retirement accounts relatively early in life which appreciated over the years.
Post: What’s Really on My Mind These Days
Link to comment from November 26, 2025
After the CCRC called to offer us an apartment we loved, we had a full cash offer on our mortgage-free house two days after it went on the market. Our sale proceeds covered the buy-in fee with a big chunk left over to add to retirement savings. The strategy that worked for us when we moved to Florida was buying a dated fixer-upper in a good neighborhood and having modest renovations done right away so we could enjoy our updated home for the next seven years. During the last three years, we went on the CCRC waitlist and started getting rid of excess stuff. We followed the guidance of our RE agent for simple de-cluttering and staging before the photos were taken. In our neighborhood, there were a lot of houses that really needed updating and sat on the market for months, ultimately selling for far less per square foot. So my advice is not to wait for “one of these days” to do a few improvements.
Post: Is the value of your home an important part of retirement plans?
Link to comment from November 24, 2025