Re: moving. One of our kids lives only an hour away…and that’s great. The other lives 2400 miles away…in a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to move there.
My family is in Ohio, but my husband is not on board with Ohio. His family is all over the place with the most family members in the greater DC area. And DC isn’t my cup of tea.
We love our (too big) house mostly because we have a lake and beach at the end of our road, and we have great neighbors.
One kid lives in a very urban area that my husband and I think is hard to navigate. I see no older people there. It’s a young person’s neighborhood. The houses are multi story townhomes, even the kids hate climbing all the stairs.
They both live on the east coast, one is in the suburbs but traffic is terrible, it takes forever to get from one place to another. It’s very hilly and all of the houses are also multi story homes.
Both places feel like an area of the country that would not be easy to find new friends. We like to hike and golf and ski.
I don’t feel like I need to explain why I don’t think we would fit into. It’s not a place we would. It’s not our experience and our personal comfort level.
My mom just moved into the city my sister lives in. She found and I told her that the people she meets have family and their friends are family. It’s very different than the place she used to live in that a place where people moved into from around the country. Not people who had been there all their lives.
@deb922 I wasn’t asking to explain why you would not like to live there - I even said that in my post. I was merely curious about your comment that it wasn’t exactly a place for retirees. I was interested in what you meant by that b/c you did not give any specifics. Since you referenced “retirees” as a group, that was the part I was curious about, not you personally.
Well lack of enough 1-story homes (somewhat of an issue here) definitely makes a place unsuitable for retirees. If the housing prices and/or property taxes are high, even worse.
When we transferred to Colorado, we built a house (there were few existing homes on the market). We intentionally picked a floor plan with first floor den/guestroom with connecting bath with shower to encourage grandparents to visit. Who knew we’d somebody be eying that room for ourselves, if recovering from surgery or less able to due stairs?
Yes lack of affordable housing, lack of housing to age in to me means that a place isn’t friendly for retirement aged people.
I’ve had to discourage my older parents to even visit my children because their homes aren’t even safe for them to get in and out of. If my 80 year old elders can’t even navigate their houses and their houses are typical for the area, then I will ascertain that it’s not an area to move to. As I age.
I guess I’m the grumpy one tonight.
Yes, as we look at properties to consider buying, we are only looking at properties that are a single level and don’t require navigating a bunch of stairs to get to the property in the 1st place. One of the reasons we are selling H’s childhood home is there are 66 steps from the street to the front door. Neither my H nor kids nor I am interested in hiking to get between the street and front door. It’s just on much! There’s a lot that could be done and someone could build a story below the house. The view from the existing house is breathtaking! It’s just a tough house for aging in.
So you’re looking to move from the house you currently live in??
No, once we married, H moved out of his childhood home and into the apartment I lived in. Thereafter, we bought a house that we rented out for a while until interest rates dropped and the tenant lost his job and then we put in wooden floors and moved into the house. H’s parents were living in the house until his mom died. After that, his dad moved to SF to live with H’s sister until the dad died (we didn’t want him living up in that house alone and weren’t interested in living there). We rented that home out for years until we finally are willing to let it find a new family.
I see a couple of key categories of friendships. The first set are deep friendships and they transcend location. They are often made in what I think of as crucible periods: freshman year of college, first or second year of grad school, LaMaze class, first kid’s day care, first kid’s elementary school etc. We are all going through the same intense experience together. With some of those people we have bonded and keep in touch over as much as 50 years or more and over significant distance.
The second I call situational friendships. Our kid is friendly with their kid in HS and we live in the same neighborhood. Our kid did a weekly after school class with another kid. We have the parents over for dinner and do stuff with them on a regular basis. We had what I thought were situational friendships in our old neighborhood. We got together regularly with the parents. Our kids did stuff together. When we moved (under the cloak of Covid), we didn’t and don’t see or hear from these folks. ShawWife was surprised as she spent a lot of time with the mothers of some of ShawD’s friends, for example. But, I always thought those friendships were situational and it turns out I was correct.
@sabaray, it sounds like some of those friendships were situational. In addition, some people might be drawn to the status of your job or don’t really have any way to connect except through work-related stuff. I wonder if you can set up a new group or groups. ShawWife had a wonderful group of woman who began working out together in the gym when our kids were in HS together and the gym is right next to the HS so they would all be there after dropping kids off. This morphed inot a group she kayaks with, but as of the past year, all are dropping out (shoulder hurts, back hurts, …). She’s thinking she needs to get a set of younger friends.
I get it. When we were looking at places here we found a place we loved (it was a 2 level townhouse but we are ok with that) in a great neighborhood, but every person we saw was our kids age. I mean every single one. We figured we would love the house but not find anyone to hang out with, so we passed.
That was very observant of you. Not everyone would pick up on that.
Yes, we are looking at places that we MIGHT want to live in if we decide our house is too much to maintain in the future. The places the kids like best is in the metro area. It seems to have a mix of ages—some singles, some young families and some older folks. It’s a possibility. The area we live in now is mostly older folks and young families, not many young singles like D and young married couples like S & DIL.
My in-laws planned early. They bought a house in Florida when they were still working and would come down for a small part of the winter. But, they became a part of the community. They invited the neighbors for dinner. They joined the synagogue and went to services. They found favorite restaurants and befriended the owners. When my FIL became ill, they started coming down for several months a year. He passed away many years ago but ShawWife and I are down her with my 93 yo MIL. Although many of the neighbors have turned over, she is still has a community here because of their many years here. So, if planning to move someplace to retire, their approach of starting early even before retiring seems like a good one.
We renovated our house to create one floor living. The only rooms we use that are on the second floor are my office and a gym. The house is set up, with a little bit of work, ot have another family (ShawD or ShawSon when either has a family) live here as well. One of the daughter’s of the previous owner live in one part of the house while Mom & Dad lived in the other (an in-law suite that we have converted to our master bedroom). As they got older, she took care of them for the six months of the year they were not in Florida.
That was good planning but it requires being able to afford two homes as well as having jobs with a lot of flexibility. Not possible for most people.
Yes, affording even one home AND the maintenance is a pretty big burden for most families. This year about 1/3 of Hawaii households didn’t make as much as they spent and at least that number are thinking of relocating to somewhere less expensive.
That’s exciting to have another Gkid coming;). (I’m hoping for one or two but might get none). Are you planning to go before the due date? Or just wait til you hear she is in labor?
I was blessed to have my mother (and her parents) move to our town 6 months after our first was born. They had an apartment less than half a mile from us. So when baby #2 was born, no worries about who would watch #1.
One major thing I am very concerned about preventing dementia. If I have dementia in 10-15-20 years, none of my plans really matter. My dad died from severe dementia at 92, my mom is 84 and I think her dementia has taken a turn for the worse. We clearly wrote out when she was supposed to take antibiotics for a tooth removal yesterday, my niece lives with her and was monitoring everything, but my mom managed to take six pills when she was only supposed to take one. While visiting, I realized that not only can she not remember the last sentence I said, but she can’t count, she can’t understand or problem solve the most minor of issues. Dual degree, math and engineering major, long time engineer, in a short time it all seems to be gone. I hope that maybe it was just a bad day, but she has gone downhill quickly.
Now, not only am I worried about her, but what is my future? I don’t have the APOE4 gene (Alzheimers) from either parent, but if my parents can get this after a lifetime of healthy eating, no drinking or smoking, exercise, keeping mentally occupied and doing everything right, what are my chances? There has got to be something more useful than, “eat well and exercise”.
@busdriver11 — maybe could your mom be tested for a UTI? That has been known to cause lots of bizarre symptoms and changes, especially in the elderly.
Yes, this reminds me of the saying that friends are for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
I also read a book a few decades ago called “in the company of women”, that discusses the different levels of friendship. I loaned it to a “season” friend and never see her anymore and it was never returned.
I was a bit confused about the difference between season and reason friends. A lifetime friend said “reason” friends are a bit like users. They are friends with you if you can do something for them. Maybe we all have them or are one.
@1214mom , I’ve always been the main organizer in the past of a couple groups and grew annoyed over the years and stopped doing it. I even set up a FB page for all of us where people can initiate getting together, but no one does. Now, I’ll just get a text every year, “hi, I’d love to see everyone”, but they won’t go and do it themselves. Ugh.
Would love to know the title of that book.