In Search of a new home....part 1

Once you are unemployed and living on a fixed income of $0 per year, with no annual bonus, peer bonuses, new stock grants, etc., your outlook on expenses changes a lot. I’m not quite ready to start routing through my neighbors trash on Monday night, looking for cans and bottles since I do not have a Safeway shopping cart to roll around (hey, I’ve seen people in nice neighborhoods doing that), but we do need to start looking at reducing major expenses. Unfortunately, one of those is our house. Unlike many of our friends who grew up in the South Bay or bought their homes before 2000, we purchased our home in Campbell in 2011, at a very high price (for us at least), and with a high tax rate. So, unless I follow through with my crowd funding idea (gofund me.com/richb-retirement), something’s got to give.

The problem is, where do you go when you have lived in this part of California. Where is the weather any better than this, other than maybe San Diego (still in California) or Maui (...maybe a possibility). I am very much used to having an ocean close by, whales to photograph, nice places to hike close by, and even more interesting place to explore within a few hours drive. And let’s not forget Napa, Sonoma, Russian River, Palo Robles - the places that feed my very bad (and very expensive) habit.

My wife and I have lived in a lot of places, and have moved coast-to-coast. Dallas, Chicago, Denver (3 times), Richmond VA and now the South Bay (twice). We are lucky to have found a great house which we have improved over the years and are not looking to take a step backwards, buying something that we have to sink money into to get back to what we have now. I’m hoping this will be the last relocation before we are carted off to….well, whatever that next phase of life is.

So, we have a lot of requirements to meet. Maybe I need to write a BRD, and then get a team together and pull a project plan together. Daily standups, 2 week sprints. Wow, this could be like work again.

Back to reality...I really do need post-work rehab.

So, we took step one in the great search for a new home on my second day of retirement - a trip to Folsom. Not the jail although they might have some good classes to take. And yes, Folsom is a nice place with lots to do - rafting, great bike trails, close to Tahoe and Lodi (wine!), and an easy drive to Yosemite. In fact, it is easier to get to Napa from there then where we live now. We have one specific area we have looked at before, Gold River, and drove out to look at some homes, and maybe even buy one.

Folsom is actually a pretty interesting place. Aside from the famous prison and old mining town, the American River runs through the area we were interested in, and it backs onto the trail system that the state built. There are tons of great restaurants and brew pubs, and everything is much cheaper than the South Bay. Yes, it is outside of the Great Blue Bubble of the bay area, but we survived living in the Confederacy (Richmond VA). Gold River is a planned community - houses more or less look the same, and the home owners association is very strong, a nice feature after living in an anything goes neighborhood. One of my neighbors has a batting cage in his backyard. You gotta love that.

The only problem with this area is that the home are pretty old, and never fully renovated. But we had to check it out anyway.

We looked at most everything available in the 2+ days we were there - a few were interesting and warranted a second look, but none quite met our standards. Some were absolutely awful, or just plain weird. If nothing else, we can pretty much cross this area off the list, which is something of a disappointment. And we did go to two really nice restaurants. That’s the bar from one of them.

One other comment about my first post-retirement trip. Another corner to cut when you are no longer working, is lowering the bar on hotels. No more Ritz Carleton or Waldorf Astoria. We stay at Hilton’s a lot, so chose a Hilton Garden Inn. Some are good (Napa), others are just mediocre. This was the latter. And best of all, you do not get the same level of fellow guests at hotels once you drop down from the lofty heights.

Fortunately, I did not see any of the bus passengers wandering the halls at night.