While in Mexico we decided to sell our condo in Nanaimo and enjoy the fruits of our labours. You know: a new car, a big boat, down to the casino on the weekend, that world cruise. Aaah, but no! Maybe a river cruise sometime but other than that, no!
A lot, but not all, of the people we told this to said the same thing “You have to stay in the market.” The question I have is, how long do you stay in the market and when do you sell your biggest asset and start to enjoy the product of the fifty or more years that you have worked to earn it?
Of course, you can work all that time and leave it to the kids. But we think that we have given our kids the tools to sustain themselves and shouldn’t need our help. If they were in real need we would be there to help if we could but not to make payments on their BMW. If they were that strapped, they can sell the car and get a job at Mc Donalds.
Most people we know have a second or third pension income to sustain them and can only see things from that point of view. But we went through a bankruptcy several years ago and we only have our government pensions to live on. But don’t think we’re poor. We made some smart moves along the way and can now live the kind of lifestyle that we want…but we find ourselves, at times, a little short of cash.
We are minimalists. We don’t crave the big house or the big SUV. We are more than happy to live in our trailer for six months of the year. We’ve never been about keeping up with the Joneses; we enjoy our life the way it is.
So what does it mean when we do sell the condo? First, we pay off the small debts that we still have and then invest the rest. But where to invest? Cannabis stocks seem to be all the rage but until that market stabilizes we are not going there. I’ve heard of some swamp land in Florida but someone beat us to it, too bad, apparently, we could have made a killing.
Without going into personal details, we do have a plan. I mostly have worked on it for the last several months with Rosalie being the editor, mediator and giving me a swift kick when I get over-ambitious. I have built a spreadsheet so that we can change any factor and get an idea of what direction we are going. We have followed a similar plan for the last three years and so far it’s worked fine.
For us, this is a great plan and we’re looking forward to implementing it. For all the friends who have concerns; thank you for caring, but don’t worry, we know what we’re doing; at least I hope so or else Rosalie is going to kill me.
