Hmm… sounded like she said it had houses too. Maybe I misunderstood.
@jym626 The VRBO/Homeaway fee is already in place. I paid it last month for a booking in July. It adds to the cost but not outrageous. I actually did two bookings - one I paid directly via check to owner so no fee, the other online to owner so a fee.
I read somewhere there was a way (besides direct check to the owner) – another website I think? That could be used to get around the fee increase. Anyone recall?
We talk about downsizing but really like our neighborhood filled with friends and close to both of our Ds. The house has 4,000 sf and we use it all except for the extra bedrooms. We use the formal dining room for family dinners at least once a month and a dinner club with friends. We are currently pricing out new windows and roof as the house is 30 years old. We are trying to update just in case we change our mind about moving on. We know we will have to sell at some point as it is a two story with all bedrooms upstairs but our financial planner thinks we should stay as we won’t find something for our style of living for less. The wooded yard and gardens are a bit time consuming so that is where we might have to hire out for help. We also have a lake home 90 minutes from here. I couldn’t retire there as it is too remote but it is great for weekend and holidays. I’m not ready to give up walking around the neighborhood and having impromptu visits with neighbors (wine on the deck!) 
Retirement looms in the next 2 to 3 years so we shall see what happens. Ugh…
I’m surprised nobody bumped this thread given to stock market’s big loss the other day.
The loss is not a big deal.
Thanks to Boris Johnson and Brexit, my retirement plans are delayed until further notice. I’m hoping this is just a temporary market overreaction. If I were heavily invested in British assets, I’d be more worried.
@1214mom, make money, lose money. It was a sad day, but not so much because we lost money.
@bclintonk, why are your retirement plans delayed?
My retirement plans are a bit indefinite anyway, but I figure my retirement accounts took a hit yesterday that’s roughly equivalent to a year’s payout from those accounts once I’m retired. So it pushes back my horizon a bit. I’m assuming the markets will eventually recover, but who knows when? They could even fall further in the next few weeks as we continue to see shakeout from Brexit. That all affects how optimistic and financially secure I feel,and that in turn affects how long, and how much, I think I’ll need to continue working. Of course, if it wasn’t Brexit, it could have been something else; market volatility is just something you need to live with and plan around. But a 4% drop in the market—a loss of a year’s retirement income—is big enough to make me push back the timeline a bit from where it was the day before yesterday when the value of my retirement accounts was at an all-time high.
@bclintonk, what would you do if you were retired and the stock market dropped 25 percent?
We have had two 50 percent drops in the stock market over the last 16 years. I doubt we are going to have another 50 percent drop for awhile, but a 25 percent drop could happen over the next several years.
I’d be very worried if I were retired and the stock market dropped 25 percent, though hopefully by then I won’t be as invested in the stock market. I can stand a little more exposure to market volatility now because I’m still working and have pretty much total control over when I retire (health permitting), so if the market goes down I can just plan to work a little longer to postpone drawing down retirement savings and hopefully give the market some time to bounce back. But I have been gradually backing more and more of my retirement savings out of stocks so over time I’m less exposed to downside market risk.
@bclintonk, you are a very bright person so I know you will have a cushion built up when you retire.
I thought people in your profession never want to retire.
I’m expecting this to bounce back. I am not expecting more than 2 to 3 percent earnings a year though. Retirement means being in a position to not gain or lose as much of your investments as usual. It IS harder to stay even when you are not adding some fresh money into the market though.
We have been semi retired a year + now. It has been nice sitting on some cash as the market jolts up and down. Too many computers moving too much money at the same time. These large fluctuations seem to be the new normal.
The stock market may continue going down, maybe we will make new lows for the year, which could very well be a problem for retirees or prospective retirees, but Friday’s drop alone shouldn’t have done major damage to your portfolio. If you step back and look at a chart of this year alone, (don’t you remember??) we got off to a really bad start, the S&P 500 got down to below 1820 intraday… twice! in January and February, it was down 11% for the year, in little more than 1 month! Were you panicking then? So if you look at a 1 year chart (not even a 1 year, just a current year chart) you will see that our recent high was 2120 and we closed Friday at 2030, so we are still relatively “high”… and have a long way to fall! Meanwhile, US Treasury bond rates have dropped from 3.00% at the beginning of 2016 to 2.43% Friday, so if you own some bonds you might still be up on the year.
Friday I bought some iwm in the morning. I watched the lunchtime fast money guys at noon who said not to buy, the market would drop further into the close. Unfortunately they were right. One of the 5:00 PM guys, BK who is always wrong hit a homerun. The day before he was shorting the lb at 1.48 as it rose to 1.5 during the day. He unloaded it on Friday at 1.35.
I’m getting quite concerned even though most of my positions are hedged. My concern is with other countries leaving. I expect this to last several months based on what I heard this morning from the British ambassador to the US. He mentioned this will probably take 3 - 4 months to work out what is going on.
I had some money in BP because of the great dividend. It had also finally started creeping up and I was hoping it would catch up with other oil stocks movement over the last week’s. It was one I planned to keep long term, now I’m not so sure what to do with BP. The divi is so nice, but will it be another casualty of Brexit. I lost money Friday but it was around the same I’d made Thursday on oil stocks so not too painful. I actually thought of going all cash Thursday because of Brexit, but really truly did not think it would happen. Wish I had followed that thought! I’m wondering about going all cash for a little while.
A trader is going to care what is going on during the next 3 to 4 months.
Why should an investor with a time horizon of 10 to 40 years care?
If anything, an investor who is still a buyer, would want want to see a drop in prices. Maybe, if an investor is using leverage, that is not the case.
I know bond prices rallied in the United States Friday. So my balances in my brokerage accounts look good. A lot of people in their 60’s and older are going to want to own bonds. They are going to buy more bonds.So how is an increase in bond prices a good thing?
People who think things are good and bad are not always right. 
This bond rally we have been having is not good for me. Bonds that were yielding 4 percent are now yielding 3 percent.
I am a buyer so that is not good.
Lower interest rates do help stock valuations. The cost of borrowing drops. So those are positives.
A mixed bag…
It looks like mortgage rates might stay low for a while…