<p>Has anyone been following the “tiny houses” movement? Some of these are on wheels and can be pulled by a regular truck. [JAY</a> SHAFER’S TINY HOUSES |Weekly World News](<a href=“http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/19285/jay-shafers-tiny-houses/]JAY”>JAY SHAFER'S TINY HOUSES - Weekly World News)</p>
<p>I love the tiny houses, but I can’t imagine actually living in one. I also like the little teardrop trailers.</p>
<p>These annuities…do they have inflation protection? </p>
<p>If you need $50,000 today…in 20 years you may need $100,000, and another 20 years after that…you may need 200,000 a year…to be in the same place you are now.</p>
<p>SS will help because it goes up with wages. So SS has a built in protection (if it is not mishandled).</p>
<p>I like the little houses.</p>
<p>Love the thread.</p>
<p>Hobbit - like small, inexpensively constructed houses. Love! </p>
<p>[A</a> Low Impact Woodland Home](<a href=“http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm]A”>Simon Dale)</p>
<p>Also, somewhere in the back of my mind I have a vague memory of someone claiming you get scr**** if you have annuities as well as other investments, but don’t know why or what. Anybody? DH says the rate of return is relatively low for the benefit of having a guaranteed income, and that once you die, all of your investment principal in the annuity goes to the insurance company, not to your family. ???</p>
<p>There are some annuities that will refund the remaining principal to beneficiaries. Look carefully. That is a VERY important question to ask.</p>
<p>That reminds me of other things you should think about when deciding to take your defined benefit pension plan benefits. That will require some thought and a little research (and a lot of disclaimers).</p>
<p>Curm – you’re a baby. Who knew?</p>
<p>^He’s older than me!:)</p>
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Yeah, but as my wife says …I’ve been up a lot of hours.</p>
<p>Well I’m 59. Gulp. And plan to work until 70. Double gulp. I can’t see struggling over money. </p>
<p>But luckily, a college teacher gets summers off, so I can refuel.</p>
<p>At age 60, my H has no plans to retire yet. We can’t afford it, our assets, 401K plans have lost a lot of $$$. And we plan to stay put in the Bay Area, an expensive place to retire.</p>
<p>Love that hobbit house!!</p>
<p>“But here’s the thing, to me, toneranger–obviously, the vast, vast majority of the country will not retire with 1.5 mil in the bank. And they’re not going to all be starving, roaming the streets (or in tents).”</p>
<p>After we had all of our financial troubles, an accountant friend of mine told me to concentrate on being debt free heading into retirement, including the mortgage. He said there are plenty of options if you have no debt, but almost none if you do.</p>
<p>So… even tho this sounds crazy, DH and I are saving and getting the match in our 401k, but our retirement plan is to buy a small condo for cash and an RV or something like that . In our retirement we’d like to drive all over the country in the summers and park in our kids driveways, driving them and our unborn grandchildren completely nuts. In the winter we will live in our condo in Florida.</p>
<p>We aren’t going to just annoy our children tho, we are going to look around at places that we have never been. In order to be more welcome when we come to visit, we will take our non existant grandchildren away with us for a couple weeks and park our RV in a nice spot where they can swim in lakes, catch lightning bugs, cook smores, and do things that all children should be doing instead of playing video games.</p>
<p>We will take them places like dirt track races where they have school buses crash into each other, amusement parks where they can sweat and ride roller coasters and maybe we will even go looking for the worlds tallest lighthouse or the biggest ball of twine.</p>
<p>This sounds like a lovely life to me, and someday when I am gone my future grandchildren will remember me fondly.</p>
<p>We figure that we are going to be the eccentrics in the family. :-)</p>
<p>any time you can get your grandchildren off the crack that is the digital world and let them enjoy the lakes and streams and woodlands you will be helping their little synapses and axons and dendrites to grow! But here I am getting my fix!</p>
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<p>And may you be blessed with grandchildren who will enjoy those activities! My kids’ idea of an outdoor activity is reading a book outside, which drives the inlaws (who have a lake house) crazy.</p>
<p>Vderon: that is quite a dream. I like dreams but you might want to also look at alternative plans. I hope my kids and grandkids have busy active lives. If so, the parents camping out in the driveway are likely to get old in a hurry - like about 3 days. The grandkids are likely to have their own friends and activities which might not include spending much time with the grandparents.</p>
<p>Darn. You don’t think the kids will want me for a month at a time? 
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<p>I was being funny, altho I would happily take my non existant grandchildren for vacation, and if I did I would hope they could be distracted from technology at least a bit.</p>
<p>But seriously, we would get the rv for our own purposes. And if we can’t pay cash for both the condo and the camper/rv/whatever, then we won’t do it. I would need a home base.</p>
<p>But it is a lovely dream. :-)</p>
<p>I like your dream, Vderon.</p>
<p>I think it’s still possible to give kids a sense of the real, tangible world, and not be always tied to the digital one. I think it’s much more probable if one believes it’s possible.</p>
<p>both my kids love to read, and also love the outside world. D is rarely digital, except for writing the funniest, most insightful blog I know. She only has a dumbphone, does not tweet, and hasn’t been on FB in months. She hikes and camps and fishes and gardens.</p>
<p>S is a bit more digital because he does like video games, but again, has a thriving outdoor life. Both my kids could spend a week unhooked without twitching.</p>
<p>We are trying now to give some of that outlook to our 11 year old nephew. Whenever his mom and him visit us down the shore, H takes him out fishing and clamming and generally “mucking.” We want to get him out on the kayak, if his mom stops telling him that it’s dangerous.</p>
<p>I think that in other generations, the idea of spending time doing stuff with grandparents was considered the norm, and it would be sad to assume that kids don’t want that now.</p>
<p>My hope is that if you start them young you won’t have to wrench the controller/whatever from their hands. I also hope that one day my sons and their future wives might enjoy it if DH and I gave them a few days to themselves while we enjoy our grandchildren. </p>
<p>We spent a week at a lake last summer with our 20 and 22 year old sons. Though both fairly techie (a mathematician and an engineer) they were fine without tv, internet or phone service. (They were both happy to be able to call GFs when we went for groceries.)</p>
<p>I agree, the trick is to get 'em while they’re young and take them on all kinds of treks of the beaten path. I mean this literally – my grown S still remembers fondly all the forays we made to the edges of the city. He is as digitally savvy as anyone his age, but his favorite past times still revolve around nature. </p>
<p>Vderon, your non-existent grandkids are lucky!</p>
<p>“I think it’s still possible to give kids a sense of the real, tangible world…”</p>
<p>I am not sure I even know what that is anymore. We work in climate controlled office buildings. The countryside has often turned into mono culture farms. For entertainment we are going to drive down miles of asphalt highway and take the real or non-existent grandkids to fantasy world amusement parks. Or we could go to the fake lake and fish with a graphite pool to catch hatchery raised fish.</p>