<p>According to the contract and my lawyer, the buyers lose their $10000 escrow amount if they do not close after receiving the commitment. The buyers definitely want to close since the wife is pregnant with their first child. I guess the nesting instinct is pretty intense. Plus they have a low interest rate and they also bought at what is likely to be the bottom of the market. Housing sales and prices seem to be edging upwards in this area.</p>
<p>Good luck to you edad!
Just rejoined the corporate world after being on my own for almost 10 years. Felt isolated at home and also needed benefits since hubby is semi-retired. Got a senior level role pretty quickly. Felt lucky. OMG. This is crazy. Way too many hours. I have no life. I will last one year…no more. Ready to downsize. Light at the end of the tunnel makes it OK. I feel lucky that I can pack it in soon. Keeps me sane. This is crazy…</p>
<p>Many blessings edad!!! Way to go!!! </p>
<p>However- I second the caution to wait at least until a closing date has been set. You never know what might happen. </p>
<p>I also think that if you are offered a higher salary- you might want to think about taking it for a while- wouldn’t that effect your overall retirement income from pension- if you have a plan that averages your last several years of income?</p>
<p>Good luck, edad! I guess I’m very risk adverse and would wait until AFTER closing to turn in my notice with the economy the way it is. I have seen/heard of many sales that failed for many reasons. It still must be an amazing feeling of relief, knowing that you can start counting down the days before you leave the unfulfilling job! Congrats!</p>
<p>Thanks for all the warnings. We have been under stress for a long time. The verbal offer was in early November and it took this long for “pre-qualified” buyers to get a loan commitment. If the loan fell through we would have lost a lot of months. We would have needed to “re-stage” the house and relist. Now if that happens we keep the escrow deposit and since the market is improving we are very likely to get a higher offer. Hopefully, none of that happens.</p>
<p>I have been stressing for many, many months. Downsizing our stuff and cleaning up the house took well over half a year and was a rough experience. Then there was the long wait to get a commitment. Now we need to handle lots of loose ends such as income tax, medical issues, selling two cars and moving into the camper within a few weeks. My wife has told me it is past time to stop stressing and to just do what needs to be done on a daily basis.</p>
<p>There is a lot of change and excitement coming in my life. Retirement is a big life event. In addition we are making it even bigger by selling the house, leaving the 10 month old grandkid and taking off full time in a small RV. There will always be things to worry about and things that do not go well. I am determined to change my attitude from constant worry and caution to a more positive outlook where I can enjoy the good things in life.</p>
<p>Anyway, I get to enjoy turning in my resignation… another point of no return.</p>
<p>We are usually 1-2 years ahead of general business when it comes to down/up turn. Two years ago we went through a drastic cut, and many people’s pay went down 20-40%. I wasn’t happy with my job- aside from trying to keep going with my own job, I also had to keep my staff’s morale up. I did a lot of extra events to keep them connected and motivated. I paid for a lot of it out of my own pocket - wine tasting, pizza lunch when they worked late the night before, extra day off for employee of the month. </p>
<p>For myself, I networked within my firm to get into a more profitable area. It took me 6-9 months before I landed my current job. I am happy with the new direction of my career, it is a bigger job and better match my skill. I think if there was no down turn, and with people leaving (fired), I don’t think I would have landed this position. I think for some people who don’t want to retire yet and want to take on more responsibility at work, this maybe a good time to start networking to try to land that next job. With the up turn of economy, firms will want to fill those positions that they have eliminated.</p>
<p>edad, that is wonderful news. Enjoy every minute of your “lame duck” status at work. Many people will be very jealous of you. </p>
<p>How much notice are you giving? You indicated earlier you’d give the “minimal” – is that two weeks??</p>
<p>I hope to follow in your footsteps in around eight months or so, but I’ll continue working – just not at anything as unpleasant as my current job. My mantra these days is “Downsize my house, downsize my job.”</p>
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<p>edad - This statement resonates with me. H and I have a business coach who has emphasized that we need to stop “just trying to survive” and focus on “living in abundance”. Because of the environment the last 3 years and the fact that I pay the bills, this is very hard for me. It will be 20 yrs before we can think about retiring. I do not mind working, but the stress is sometimes debilitating. I am very excited for you and your new adventure.</p>
<p>Congrats edad!
I have a dumb question- we are fortunate that our house is paid for. We dont need the big house, but watching friends go through the stress of getting their house ready to sell and moving, itts hard to want to go through the hassle of downsizing. Thoughts?</p>
<p>great that your house is paid for. We have a plan to pay for two properties we own in the next six years. That said we likely still won’t have enough to retire on without downsizing and I am concerned that the older we get the harder it will be to downsize. Ran through retirement stuff with our financial guy. His comment I will never forget was “you can’t eat your front door.”</p>
<p>We’re not going to be downsizing any time soon but like jym26, I am also curious about how you go through that process - from a house to a camper, no less. After years spent accumulating things, how do you decide what to keep and what to toss?</p>
<p>The thought of eventually downsizing to a condo in a downtown area where you can walk to everything is very appealing but then I get hung up on trying to go from a 3,800 sq ft house to a 1,500 sq ft apartment (or whatever we could afford). How in the world do you do that?</p>
<p>When I took my current job I expected to work about 2 years and then retire. H retired for good when we moved for my current job. It’s great having a stay at home husband. He is VERY busy. We thought we were going to downsize when we moved here (4 1/2 years ago), but we basically needed lots of garage space for all H’s projects/hobbies/bicycles and it turned out that the houses that came with 3 car garages were larger. We really needed a garage with a house attached. We like the space, and housing costs weren’t bad here. Of course, the market has fallen since we bought. Anyway, I like my job, we like the benefits and it allows us to not cut into retirement savings, so I’m still working and will hang on as long as it keeps being enjoyable.</p>
<p>Think about it–if you don’t sort through your stuff, you will leave behind a mess for your kids & grandkids to sort. My in-laws both passed away in time and the job of cleaning out their stuff fell to us, as the relatives in the state. For FIVE years, no one did anything until I finally said, this is nuts paying for a house to remain vacant and not being maintained. We spent a very long time going through things & donating & discarding. It was NOT fun nor pretty, but in the end, the house was able to have some long-deferred maintenance and now has been rented for many years, with positive cash flow and regular maintenance being done on it.</p>
<p>S is helping his grandparents toss and sort through the detritus in their house. My brother has also done a ton of tossing in their house, but they are definitely packrats & it never ends. I feel it is MUCH better to try to sort through stuff while we’re around to help find the right “homes” for “stuff” than having folks come along with huge garbage bags & dump nearly everything (tho easier said than done).</p>
<p>I admire my B & SIL; they spend time during each vacation cleaning & sorting. It is an ongoing thing with them, so their huge house always looks perfect. I don’t want to put in as much work, but will aspire to be more like them, especially once I can get rid of all my financial documents after we switch to new brokerage firm. We have MANY years of this stuff taking up so much space!</p>
<p>I really admire people who are able to simplify their lives and hope to emulate them.</p>
<p>I second HIMom- I lived through the sorting and ridding of detritus after my dad passed away and it was imperative for my mom to move in with us. It took the greater part of a year of full time every day work to go through stuff, listen to my mom reminisce and carry on when I suggested that we get rid of it, etc. I am an only surviving child. I volunteered to do the clean out alone- promising to set aside things for my mom to sort, but she wouldn’t let me. Not only was this physically a demanding job, it was an emotional rollercoaster as well. Needless to say, my garage is now filled with the stuff she just couldn’t part with. And I begin attacking it next week. Basta, as they say!!!</p>
<p>Yea, we can’t park a 2nd car in our two-car garage because it is full of “stuff” from hubby’s parent’s home. Most of it is older than I am and all of it is aging rapidly and badly in that spot. I’m hoping it’s not housing really nasty living things. ICK!</p>
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<p>Over the years, I have found that you need to shovel out stuff on a regular basis. I go to Goodwill with a car full of things at least a half-dozen times a year, some years twice that. Unless you are trying to fill up an empty house, for everything new you bring in, you really need to toss something. My litmus test is “Is it something I could afford to replace should I ever need one again?” Makes it easier to part with the relatively inexpensive ‘stuff’. Even with my frequent purging, we still have too much.</p>
<p>Several months ago I started a thread describing my plans including the process we made on downsizing. I think it was called “moving on.” There was a lot of follow up discussion about downsizing. It was a big, big issue for us. My wife was an art educator and also a grad student when an illness forced her into disability. I guess teachers keep everything including lesson plans for every grade level from decades in the past. She had a very hard time downsizing because getting rid of her papers and extensive professional library was an admission that she was not going to be able to return to her career. On top of that we had the usual accumulation from raising kids and living 20+ years in the same house. The downsizing took a real long time and to some extent is still not over. We are keeping a few boxes of books, a few boxes of photographs, some excess clothing, a little furniture, some tools, the canoe, etc, etc. We are probably down to 10% of what we formerly had. I suspect even that is a lot more than what we will ever use again. </p>
<p>At one time it was easy just to keep things because there was room. Then there becomes less room but since you already have so much, a little more makes no difference. Once the stuff takes over, you really need to re-examine your life. How much time are you willing to spend being a custodian of the junk? How much money are you willing to spend to store and maintain the junk? Unfortunately it seems this is a very emotional issue and logic often plays only a small part. I can tell you that when emotion is involved, change usually means pain. We had our share. </p>
<p>Very Happy, I had to give 4 weeks notice. That is an official policy in order to be paid for unused time off. In my case, I have the maximum of 5 weeks time off. That is one reason I needed to give notice as soon as possible. The closing needs to be within that time period so we will probably need to rent back from the new buyers and that can be a bit messy. We don’t want messy when it comes to selling a house. Anyway I sure have enjoyed telling people I am moving on. There has been a lot of positive and envious comments but most people just cannot believe we are moving into a small truck camper.</p>
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<p>I haven’t yet read past post #3 but am in complete agreement with it. It’s discouraging.</p>
<p>OK, you’ve all inspired me–will work on the purging. Gotta stop with the packratting & hoarding. <sigh> Accummulating is always SO much easier than judicious purging!</sigh></p>
<p>Awright edad!!! You did it!!! You must be feeling great (except for digging out of all that snow). Will you be moving to a warmer climate? </p>
<p>I congratulate you and Mrs. Edad. You have had a long prep period- now it’s time to enjoy. </p>
<p>Now, if I could just get the garage cleaned out, I’d call it a success!</p>