Like most people, I didn’t really start thinking about retirement until I was past my mid-40’s. Retirement looks different for everyone. Some never want to stop working for fear that work is the only thing keeping them going. Others plan and dream to retire at 65 or 70 and travel. My plan was to work until I was 65 or 70. My wife apparently had a different plan.
A Southern California native, I spent four decades working. I’m a veteran, have worked for various organizations and government jobs, and at times I built and ran companies. When the economy collapsed in 2008 I was the president of a small company. It closed as a result of the great recession so I ended up in the corporate world. Both as a manager at a national real estate firm, and then vice president of a commercial construction company.
We owned a house in the Orange County city of Yorba Linda on a large lot. The town has lots of amenities, good shops, good schools, parks and trails. My drive to work was only about 30 minutes. After raising our son, seeing him off to the army, then home for college ROTC, hosting a back yard wedding and reception for him, and seeing him off back to active duty as a commissioned officer, my wife and I had settled in to a life as empty-nesters. It was a quiet life, we always had things to do on the weekends, amusement parks, museums, hiking. But it seemed to be missing something.
In December 2020 my new daughter-in-law flew home to Orange County for a visit. My son could not make the trip because of travel restrictions for active duty military personnel. The first night after dinner she said had a Christmas present for us. I felt bad because we hadn’t gotten her anything. We opened the bag and pulled out a stuffed teddy bear with a heart on its chest. Cute, I thought, but I’m not really into teddy bears. I didn’t say anything. Also in the bag was a small curio box. She is an artist so I thought it was something she made. It was. The box contained a pair of tiny hand crocheted booties and a kind of grainy black and white photo. My wife pressed the heart on the teddy bear and we heard a muffled thumping sound. Either I’m really dense or was just in shock because it took me a few seconds to figure it all out. I was going to be a grandpa! Definitely in shock.
In 2021 my son came off active duty, he and his wife settled in the Vancouver, Washington area where she had lived as a teen, and where they both had some family and friends. They moved into their fixer-upper when they were 8 months pregnant. My wife’s elderly mother needed care and I had work obligations. But over the course of the year that followed, my wife and I took several trips from So Cal to Vancouver. Sometimes together and sometimes individually. When my granddaughter was just a year old my wife went up for a visit by herself. A few days into that trip my daughter-in-law sent me some photos of my wife with the baby, and she was smiling like I’d not seen her smile in a very long time. I knew then that my life was about to change! I just didn’t realize how much.
We started making plans to move when she returned from that trip. Though we had spent the last 15 years divesting ourselves of ‘stuff’, I was a little shocked at how much we still had to get rid of. And a little offended after having filtered my stuff down to what I considered to be our ‘best’ stuff, to have the home staging consultant come in and point at all of my ‘treasures’ and tell me that they have to go. Begrudgingly I removed my wonderful things and drove them down to the Goodwill.
By the summer of 2022 I had made arrangements to work remotely for my company and my wife’s sister had agreed to move in with their mother to provide care. We got the house listed and in escrow within a week, things were really starting to move fast. Somewhere in the middle of all of this my mother-in-law became gravely ill and passed. My employers had buyers remorse on the remote-work arrangement and I ended up unemployed. We sold what we no longer needed, made lots of trips to the Goodwill, and listed the rest for free on Craigslist. The remainder of our possessions fit in our two cars and a 16 foot moving pod. I walked through our empty house one last time, remembering our 22 years there and realized that it wasn’t my ‘home’, just a building. Two days after close of escrow, my wife and I, our dog, our cat and our stuff, arrived in Vancouver.
This Wasn’t The Plan
Back in 2002 we bought a small camping trailer and spent many summers and holidays over the next 15 years traveling the Western United States and Canada with our son. We put thousands of miles and hundreds of nights on that trailer. Have a lot of great memories. Since that time my wife had a dream of retiring and living on the road full time. She saw this as an opportunity for us to do it. I hadn’t planned on retiring early but my wife was against me continuing to work. Financially I didn’t feel I wasn’t ready to retire. I spent several months looking for work, but not finding anything where I could work remotely so we could travel, and in a role that I wanted. I felt uneasy because for the first time since I was a teenager I didn’t have a job, I wasn’t working. It felt wrong. I’d planned on working until 65, maybe 70 if I could get away with it. I hadn’t planned for this. There was this great unknown ahead of me. For the first time in my life I didn’t have a plan.
Paying For Retirement
At 58 I’m too young to start drawing from social security or our retirement accounts, so our finances were forefront in my mind. After we settled my mother-in-law’s estate with my wife’s siblings, and closing escrow on our Orange County home, I added those proceeds to our other savings and IRA’s and decided we could make her dream a reality. Most of our money is professionally managed, but I have a small amount in a self-directed account, plus a savings account. Almost a year later, my portfolio generates almost as much as I made at my last job.
I created a budget for our travels using our home accounting software. We have 20 years experience camping so I was able to create a budget that is all inclusive, even costs like using a coin laundry every few weeks or paying for a campground shower. With no house or vehicle payments, no utilities or property taxes, our investment income exceeds our budgeted monthly living expenses. So we are living off the income, not the principal.
Our New Home On Wheels
We bought a new 30 foot Grand Design fifth-wheel trailer and a Dodge Ram 2500 truck to tow it. We have downsized from a 2,400sqft house on ¾ acre, to a 280sqft trailer. We are now house-less, but not home-less. My son has a large half acre property in Vancouver, so we built a pad for our trailer on the side of his lot and ran water and power out to it. My son and I spent several months customizing and upgrading the trailer including additional storage and upgrades to the electrical system. We started taking little one and two week trips in our new ‘home’ to work out the bugs and getting used to things since this trailer is larger than our last one.
Despite its small size, it really is a home on wheels. Spacious enough for both of us and our dog. Sadly our cat, who was 20 years old, passed in her sleep a few months after we moved to Vancouver. Our bathroom is small but the shower is tall enough for my 6’4” frame. We stepped down from a California King to just a Queen bed, but with the extension it’s doable. We have a t.v. and even an electric fireplace with a little ceramic heater in it. The fridge is 12 volt and is only 10 cubic feet. I big step down from our LG stainless steel French door fridge. The stove top has 3 propane burners and we even have a little oven that we have used to bake cookies, chicken, lasagna and more. We also pay for Starlink internet so we can always stay connected.
Hitting The Road
Though our time with the kids was a lot of fun, eventually we were going to have to get on the road. This past October, when things started getting cold, dreary, rainy and snowy in Vancouver, my wife and I headed out for the winter to warmer regions. After 14 months in Vancouver, the hardest part of leaving was saying goodbye to our 2 year old granddaughter.
We spent almost two months in central and southern California, visiting places where we’d camped in the past, and finding new places. Every few months we’ll return to my sons property in Vancouver to spend time with the family and to ‘spoil’ our granddaughter. And I’ll help my son with his never ending list of repairs and remodeling. It’ll also be the time we do regular repairs and maintenance on our truck and trailer since we can use my sons guest room when our ‘home’ is in the shop. In the coming years we’ll run a sewer hook up out to the trailer pad which will give us a little more longevity when we’re in town.
People have asked how long we will do this, and my short answer is that I don’t know. This is a new plan and still being worked out. I’m sure it will be a minimum of 5 years. So long as our money, health and sanity hold out, likely longer. At some point I will get tired of having to move my house every few weeks but right now the adventure is just starting!
Life Is What You Make It
Every morning when I wake up, I open the shade next to my bed. Partly to see the morning light, and partly to remember where I am. It changes all the time. We travel from place to place, one campground to the next. We hike in new places, try local cuisine, go museums and exhibits, national monuments and parks, and special events like the Hot Air Balloon Festival in Lake Havasu. We also manage to pick up a gift or book for our granddaughter and mail them to her.
In December we hung around Southern California visiting with family and friends. And then we had one of the most magical times ever. The kids came down from Vancouver and we met them at the Disneyland Resort and Hotel. We had a family friend come out to our trailer to sit with our dog while we had a fantastic three day Disneyland Christmas. I’d forgotten how much fun it was to take children to Disneyland.
No matter where we are, what city or state, no matter what we are doing, there is one thing that is the highlight of every week, our weekly video call with our granddaughter. She is always excited to see Gigi and Papa, and always has something to show us or to tell us about something special that happened that week.
But my wife has had a tough time being away, she’s been going through baby withdrawals. So this morning I put her on a plane from Phoenix to Vancouver as her Valentines gift. Tonight I got a video call. I clicked the green button and a little round face with blue eyes and tousled blonde hair filled my screen. “Papa! It’s Papa.” She shouted. “Papa, papa, come home, come home.” “Sorry Jena”, I said, “I have to stay here to take care of Sasha, they don’t let doggies on the plane.” She was very sad that I wasn’t there, Jena showed me a goodie basket she made for me just in case I was on the plane. I reached up and wiped away a tear. After 17 minutes Jena has to go finish her dinner. She blows me a kiss and says “Bye bye, love U Papa”, kisses the phone, then presses the red button to hang up. My screen goes black, and I wipe away another tear.
As I finish writing this I get a text from my son, it’s a picture of Jena wearing her hooded onesie cheetah pajamas sitting on my wife’s lap as they read a book. Her little hand covering a yawn. The kids have been texting me all day, my wife and Jena have been having a great time. The kids are going to go out on a couple of date-nights since they have a baby sitter for the week. And then the tears will start again when my wife has to leave. Can’t wait for Spring and our journey home. There is life in retirement, and it’s pretty good!