Keeping my fingers crossed for you! That’s the bureaucracy in action, indeed! It took us $120 and tax (!) and a bunch of paperwork and phone calls to schedule the stupid water heater inspection… The lady showed up, tugged at a pipe, looked behind the heater, and signed off the permit. Took her less than 2 minutes. 
Are you looking at boats yet? 
Haha, it’s funny you mention boats. DW has told me repeatedly we are not getting a boat until some of the renovations we want to do have been done, like replacing the bathrooms. Yet 3 times in the last few weeks she has texted me about people who have boats for sale. One was really nice and probably way more boat than we would ever need, but the price was ridiculously good. Then she told me we weren’t buying it.
I think she is conflicted or something.
Tesla roofs and boats… Are they the retirees’ necessities, LOL?
“Every time we go to Maui the sight of those turbines makes my BP go up - not in a good way. Such an eyesore.”
Not as much as an eyesore IMO as nuclear power plants or offshore oil rigs (think Santa Barbara).
Yes, oil rigs and nuclear power plants would be places I would NOT want to be near–to live or vacation. Huge wind turbines are also not great to have in highly visible places and near where folks are living or working, especially not obstructing scenic views and possibly damaging folks’ hearing. 
Maybe because I sail but I have always liked to see wind turbines. More appealing looking to me than much of modern architecture. Haven’t spent enough time close to operating ones though to be able to comment on noise issues.
NIMBY is a common issue. But when it comes to energy, being close to people is important.
There is NIMBY and there is public nuisance. BTW, wind turbines are very, very inefficient. They do not operate if the wind is under 10-15 mph and then shut down if it reaches 50. There are better ways to supply folks with energy than planting turbines in their backyards.
@BunsenBurner - no Tesla roof but my H has been wanting a boat. Every time we go to a marina he has to stop and look at all the ads. I’ve told him buy one but mainly because I know he won’t. In our case the issue is that the slip would cost as much as a boat. In the meantime I agree to a charter boat trip every few years. We can charter all over the world many times and not come close to the cost of owning a boat.
I’m not overly worried about retirement as our income includes a steady stream of income that won’t stop when H retires. We live well but aren’t big spenders.
I was with a friend last week who just turned 69. She looks great and is in good shape both with her health and finances… She told me that she has made a lot of changes in her life the last several years as she realized she was aging and wanted to have no regrets that she didn’t do the things in life she wanted to do.
We get a large and rapidly growing share of our energy from wind here in Minnesota, and our biggest electric utility is doubling down on wind, with pretty much all their new capital investments going into it. It’s dirt cheap—cheaper than gas, certainly cheaper than coal, and cleaner to boot. The intermittent nature of wind power turns out to be no problem if you have a sufficiently widely distributed network of turbines, because even if it’s calm (or too windy) in one location, it will be appropriately windy elsewhere. It’s never too calm or too windy everywhere.
I agree that in certain settings they can be an eyesore, and I wouldn’t want to live right next to one because of the noise and the flicker effect. But we have vast rural areas of large farms, not much of a view to spoil, and low population density where the landowners are perfectly happy to lease a few square feet of land for a wind turbine, usually at a considerable distance from their own homes and the neighbors… Not a problem.
Glad to see there are others who share my concerns. I even forgot to add shadow flicker, which is definitely going to occur with a turbine as tall as 2 football fields. We have 3 county commissioners, none of whom live in the affected townships, and it only takes a vote of 2 for approval They are already zoned in–all they need is height variance approval.
Turbines only run 30% of the time due to reasons Bunsen cited. Much of the state’s wind energy s sold out of state. Low population density doesn’t mean those of us who are here want them in our backyards. There are a lot of valid concerns with industrial size turbines. That’s why an increasing number of counties throughout the US are outlawing them, including more than a few in this state. Wind farms would barely exist without the massive federal tax credits in place until 2020.
A setback 1.1x the height and dB limit of 55 are just plain unsafe and absurd. Most setbacks in this state are 1,500 to 2,500’. Many areas (not mine!) also have density setbacks so that one’s house isn’t in the middle of 5-6 turbines. Infrasound, or unaudible low frequency sound, also can greatly affect sleep, headaches, etc.
I’m not some rural newbie screaming NIMBY, but NIMBY is ok too and setbacks should be from the property line. My grandkids should be able to play on my property line (I have 100+ acres) without 55dB and without fear of blade debris being thrown. My property lines are at least 660’ from my house, so the turbine can sit directly on the neighbor’s side of my property line.
@bclintonk is correct about needing a widely distributed network. This development company is also building in 2 townships of the adjoining county. If completed ,it will be the largest wind system in the state and one of the largest in the nation.
Back to retirement, it won’t be in this house, as we I planned and envisioned. I’ll keep the farmground and sell off the house. I paid 4x farmland value for the adjoining 2 acre homesite–investment for the future or if my kids wanted to build. It just lost 80% of its value because there isn’t a residence there yet, and those 660’ setbacks are only from existing residences.
Sorry to harp. Gee, I thought healthcare would be my biggest retirement worry.
@sryrstress How are other voters in your community reacting to this development? Is there any support for this? Or efforts to fight it? At least vote those commissioners out?
Holy … Talk about governmental taking.
That brings up another good point: the land/house one picked for retirement might change its value and character at the drop of the last ballot when voters decide to build a massive public project next door. Or when the zoning changes start to creep in to accommodate someone’s interests.
@sryrstress, I don’t know how that can even be legal. Are there lawyers involved? I would sue the pants off of everyone involved, and I would also follow the money. Are the people who are allowing it to happen profiting off of this? You know what I would want to do, is get a recording of wind turbines at the decibel level they are allowing, and have it playing directly by the commissioners homes. All night. What are they going to do, call the police for nuisance noises? This is what they are imposing upon you.
I hope people are raising a massive ruckus for this one, and figuring out who is getting paid off. This is so many levels of wrong. If they are going to force this on people, they should have to be required to purchase people’s property at current market levels, at the bare minimum.
We have crunched the numbers and have decided to pay off the mortgage next week (nearly six years early). According to Quicken, we will save nearly 10,000 in interest and more importantly, can withdraw less from IRAs for living expenses, reducing our taxable income by a nice amount. The interest deduction wasn’t worth much last year, as these final years on a mortgage are mainly principal. This won’t leave us without a healthy cash emergency fund, so here we go. Do people still burn the mortgage in a ceremony with champagne like my in-laws did decades ago?
Burn? Docusigned papers?
Congrats! That is a great decision.
That’s a smart decision, the taxes owed by the extra income needed to make the payments far outweighs the tax advantages of a nearly-paid-off mortgage. Although if you had the money in cash to pay it off, why weren’t you making the payments from that instead of withdrawing from the IRA? Maybe I’m missing something.
Interesting about the emergency fund though; since you can just withdraw money from the IRA whenever you want in whatever amount you want, what is the need for a large emergency fund?
We keep very little in cash for an emergency fund but have a HELOC we can write a check against whenever we want.
Congrats! It’s a great feeling to we had no ceremony nor champagne. We probably just went out for a nice meal. We didn’t burn anything–we keep financial docs.
How long do you keep it? We paid off our mortgage about 20 years ago. Do we still need to keep papers?
@notrichenough , I don’t know why we couldn’t have paid each month out of the reserve account, we just hadn’t thought about the tax implications until recently. We have only been pulling from IRAs for the last several months and it has required a bit of a shift in priorities and mindset.
Another big step this week - we signed new wills and did some estate planning with the lawyer. Reading the “Parents caring for parents” thread has made me want to keep it simple for our kids when the day comes that they may need to make decisions on our behalf or settle our estate.
You can ask your CPA or bookkeeper. We just figure sone financial docs we keep forever. If you prefer to scan them, that may work too.