Since I quit my last job in September of 2018 and Alison quit her last job a few months before that, we always feel introspective when October rolls around. The other day we each re-read this post about life after FI and 4 years of retirement, and we were fascinated by how much things have changed for us since then. As we got into musing about everything I decided to write a new post for our blog. So here it is, yay!

As the fall season began to settle in around us I asked Alison how she was feeling about life these days. She gazed out the window for a moment to collect her thoughts, then reminisced about how completely unpredictable things were when we were at the whims of our employers. Then her eyes widened as she said she was still feeling a bit shocked by all of the changes we made this year. I feel the same! This year has been a whirlwind and things are just settling down for us now as October is wrapping up.

Life on the Compound – Take 2!

One of the more important sections we added to our personal money statement for this part of our lives is about co-living. Two years after quitting our jobs and traveling full time, Alison and I decided to create a queer household with a close friend we love like a brother. This arrangement gives all of us community at home and it also makes us feel a bit safer in the world. And our little think tank is pretty interesting because of our different ages, genders, and life experiences. I was born in the 1970s, Alison in the 1960s, and our housemate was born in the 1950s. We’re all queer, but we bring very different perspectives to the table for family dinner conversations. Co-living with friends isn’t a super common lifestyle choice in the USA, but it works for us. And it comes with a million benefits for all of us, regardless of whether we’re celebrating successes or going through challenges, or all of the above.

The original idea was that Alison and I would buy property back in Washington State where we all met, then we’d add a few individual tiny house pods for our living spaces, and our friend would become our housemate. Our housemate would retire to our compound, contribute a fixed and affordable rent amount to help us cover monthly expenses on the property, and we’d keep the compound going for the rest of his life. Our housemate would have his own tiny home next to our tiny home, and we’d all have a central outdoor space we could enjoy together. Sounds idilic, right?

In 2020 we dropped the idea of returning to the Pacific North West, where we used to dread Juneuary and too many gray skies. We also dropped the idea of living in a more remote area, where supplies and services wouldn’t be as accessible close to home. We bought a 1/3 acre residential lot in Flagstaff AZ with an existing small house for me and Alison, and enough space to add an even smaller home for our housemate. Our goal was to create a more affordable housing situation for all of us, without compromising anyone’s independence. Our challenge was being able to identify and articulate what we really needed as individuals in order to make our co-living situation work for all three of us.

I could hear Vicki Robin’s voice in my head as I wrote that! Vicki coached Alison and I to make sure the three of us discussed all of our needs for this living situation as a group very openly and honestly, along with all of our fears and concerns for what might go wrong. We thought we covered it before starting our co-living adventures, but we were all so focused on compromise that we all forgot how to advocate for ourselves in a few areas.

The three of us are good at talking about things like kayaking, eating good food, weddings, traveling internationally, and camping trips. And the three of us know how to talk about important and hard things, including complicated family relationships, illnesses, death, and money. But we didn’t have enough practice between the three of us at deeply open communication regarding our living spaces, so we missed a few important details when we made our plans.

First, the snow

In February of this year as snow was falling yet again in Flagstaff, Alison and I realized things on the compound were not working out the way we had all intended. There was nothing cute about it when snow levels on our property reached seven feet in some areas, compared to the three feet we had at that point during our first two winters on the compound.

Even with three adults shoveling and trying to clear our doorways, gates, driveways, and roofs, we just couldn’t keep up with it. And we fell behind because the snow wasn’t melting and we ran out of places to move snow to on the ground. We also really struggled to keep ice from building up on our roofs and ended up with relatively small leaks in both of our homes, with paint bubbling down one wall in our housemate’s place and entire icicles forming inside a doorway in our place. Worst of all, we left all of that snow maintenance for our housemate to cope with alone whenever Alison and I left home for a few nights between November and April.

Back in early February of 2023, Alison and I did take off on a camping trip for a few days while the snow kept falling at home. We were out of state with no access to cell service or internet at our campsite for three days, so we spent our time worrying. During the day we imagined our housemate in his snow shoes up on top of the snow trying valiantly to clear our two roofs, and during the nights we worried he had gotten seriously hurt without us there to help. That was the opposite of what we had intended to create together.

When we got home the snow looked like a looming wall of danger and it gave us a sense of urgency. Alison and I decided that third long winter in Flagstaff was strike three for us, and we were suddenly determined to upend everything we had just created.

As a jolly side note, since our winter snow hung around from November to April for three winters in a row, there were lots of days when the snow was fun for us and it was especially fun for our housemate’s puppy. The snow was pretty and all that, blah blah blah. But by this February no one was making snow angels or building adorable snow people. Our focus was on the reality we needed to deal with — that amount of snow and that duration of snow maintenance was incompatible with our plan for an easy retirement lifestyle on the compound. And Alison was terrified we were going to kill our housemate.

Check out these photos from February and March of this year…

Second, the homes

We also had to admit that our two small homes were not as comfy as we had all expected they would be. Alison and I weren’t feeling settled in the various nooks and crannies of our house and we were not at all motivated to put money into it to improve things. It really never felt like home so we just acted like we were camping there. We moved boxes of kitchen things from storage in Seattle to Flagstaff when we moved in, and after a few months we unpacked some things into our little kitchen. Then we made space for our pots and pans along with our microwave and coffee maker in our little dining room. And then we stopped trying to figure out how to settle more comfortably into that space and distracted ourselves with other things.

We told ourselves we weren’t feeling settled because our focus was on our housemate and the new 600 sq ft apartment we built for him. And maybe we also forgot how to settle into a home of our own because we lived as nomads for our first two retirement years. We kept saying we’d figure out our situation after our housemate was settled, but I don’t think we meant it.

One day when Alison’s mom was staying with us she pointed out that we still had a kitchen towel over the window in our front door, and very gently offered to sew a little curtain to replace it. That conversation had all of us in hysterics for a few minutes, and an hour later we were in slightly better shape with our new curtain. There were so many little things that we could have fixed easily and affordably in our house, so why didn’t we keep doing those little things?

After the new apartment was done and our housemate moved in we all became hyper aware that the new studio wasn’t a good fit for him. He had downsized very dramatically to live small with us on the compound, but there was no way to make his things fit in the new space. We knew the 600 sq ft studio wouldn’t provide much wall space for furniture so we built a free standing cupboard for his clothes, but he didn’t have a closet or pantry. So he kept some of his things in our shed and we watched him going back and forth a lot. That seemed silly so we got a new 8×8 sq ft shed for him and put it right in front of his home, and then he put too many of his favorite things back into boxes and filled up his shed. That bandaid didn’t really make sense either though. We needed a solution, and Alison and I agreed immediately the solution would NOT include telling our housemate to just get rid of more of his things.

Third, the elevation

The other part of life in Flagstaff that wasn’t working for us was the 7,000 ft elevation. Back in 2019 as new nomads, we learned a lot about Alison’s familial blood pressure issues. Alison’s blood pressure had become moderately high at low elevations and could become hypertensive at high elevations, so she started taking blood pressure meds after an emergency when Alison had a hypertensive blood pressure event triggered by our stay in Ecuador where we were mostly at 9,300 ft elevation, but our excursions got us up as high as 11,089 ft. 

After we moved to Flagstaff, Alison started having trouble regulating her blood pressure again. The stress we were experiencing around trying to make the first compound work was a factor, but the elevation was a problem. Alison often got lightheaded followed by severe headaches if she climbed up on a ladder at the house, which scared us both and our housemate too. He didn’t seem to mind the elevation, but it was also a challenge for me because I have a relatively wimpy respiratory system and I was not happy about the shortness of breath and fatigue I experienced at that elevation.

Time for a do-over!

Planning to live on a compound helped open our minds to the idea, but we needed to practice actually living together on the compound in order to make this fabulous co-living arrangement a true success. After two years on our first compound we all had a better understanding of what we each really needed and wanted in terms of indoor and outdoor space. We also knew more about what we were able (or unable) to compromise on. So Alison and I went back to the drawing board as a couple to discuss our finances and the do-over we all needed, and we kept deep discussions going with our housemate as well. We are so grateful for his trust in us.

Picking a new place for our compound was tricky because we had a very long list of requirements the second time around. We picked Flagstaff for our first compound because we had family members there and because we fell in love with the area after spending four months hunkered down there during the summer of 2020. We liked the vibe of the town and our neighborhood, we loved living three blocks from one of our sisters, and we thought a 2.5 hour drive each way to reach Alison’s mom’s life care community wasn’t that bad. Our do-over required us to be much more intentional about our needs.

We all agreed that the “All Options Considered Compound 2.0” had to provide a forever home for our housemate that was very low maintenance for him. We also needed to make sure we had enough indoor space for the things he cherished and some outdoor space for his adorable puppy to run around in. The next compound also had to give me and Alison a home of our own where we could feel settled and grounded. Our home had to provide different types of spaces inside and outside so that Alison and I could find our happy spots together, and also wander off to find others spots for our individual interests and hobbies. We needed a much lower elevation where we wouldn’t be dealing with extreme snow for half of the year, or year round elevation-related health issues. And we had to have enough space to park two small RV trailers along with two trucks, since Alison and I have one of each and our housemate has one of each as well. And last but not least, we wanted to shorten the drive to reach Alison’s mom so we could zip back and forth more easily. And we managed to find all of that within our budget, woot!

This year’s home buying and selling projects were complicated and uncomfortable at times, both emotionally and financially. Our timing for this change wasn’t great in terms of the real estate market or the stock market, but it’s what we needed for our personal goals. As Morgan Housel says, “But our goal isn’t to be coldly rational; just psychologically reasonable.” Sometimes it’s better for us to make the emotionally reasonable choice rather than the financially rational one, and that is exactly what we did this year. This home purchase was more reasonable for our emotional needs rather than rational for our portfolio, and we’re very glad we made the move.

This Year’s Money Lesson – Pledged Asset Loans

How did we make this home buying and selling project a reality? Not with a lottery win! Though we did buy our first lottery ticket as a couple within the last year, and we wanted to be ready to act responsibly if we won so we put a plan together that outlined all of the giving we’d do with our winnings. Unfortunately we only won $3 with that lottery ticket, so we set up a pledged asset line (PAL) of credit at Schwab to buy our new house.

Our PAL account allowed us to buy the new house as cash buyers, without selling our existing house or any equities to make the purchase. The PAL made it easy to organize our finances so we could find the perfect house and make an offer very quickly, and close the deal by the end of March. We used our emergency cash to pay the monthly PAL payments, to build a kitchen for our housemate in place of the existing wet bar, to fence the yard so his puppy would be safe, and to hire movers to get all of our bigger and heavier things into the new house. It was hard to watch our emergency fund shrink every month so we just kept reminding ourselves ever day as time ticked by, that our money was doing exactly what we needed it to do. It’s still very important for us to have a healthy emergency fund so we’ll feel much better after we’ve built that safety net back up again.

Since we love options, we also looked at a more standard adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) and compared that option to the PAL. If we had gone with an ARM we could have purchased points to lower our interest rate on a fixed-rate mortgage. That sounded good initially since we’re more used to the idea of using a mortgage to buy a house and we planned to complete all of this house swapping within the year anyway. But our post-retirement income stream didn’t fit the traditional ARM qualifying formula, and we didn’t like the idea of buying points.

What About Rentals?

As a side note because I know people will ask… Yes we did consider turning our Flagstaff compound into a rental property. Initially, I liked the idea of renting out our main house while simultaneously renting out the little studio apartment as well. I started talking about strategies for getting our two small homes furnished on a budget, which stressed Alison out. And I looked into all of the rental options I could find including short stays like Airbnb rentals, medium stays like hosting traveling health care professionals for a few months, and unfurnished long term stays with a 12 month lease.

But the math didn’t work for us. Right away it became clear that we’d be repeating the lesson we’ve already learned twice before, about turning a personal home with high property maintenance costs into a rental that will not be able to cover its own expenses. Rental properties can be great passive income generators, but they can also be money pits if the math doesn’t work. Keeping that Flagstaff property would have meant holding the PAL longterm, and continuing to be responsible for snow maintenance and high utility costs there. The one day we hired help with snow shoveling, the cost was $600. Just imagining what it would feel like to continue owning that property made us both cringe, so we stopped debating and agreed to sell before winter started again.

The best way for us to use our Flagstaff property as an income generator was to sell it and close the PAL line of credit as quickly as possible, which would release the lien on our pledged investments.

2023 Travel

One of the consequences of our decision to buy a new house this year came when we had to decline a friend’s wedding invitation in Australia, after we had already said yes and started planning our trip. We would have left home for this wedding just last month in early September, but that turned out to be more than we could cope with this year so we’ve promised to make time for a visit to see our Australian newlywed friends at some point in the next few years. Life is all about balance so we had to make the financially rational choice this time, even though the emotionally reasonable choice to be there for the wedding was what we really wanted.

The other reason that trip to Australia would have been too much for us this year is because we had other travel plans we could not cancel. We had booked a big family trip to Ireland and Scotland this summer as an important do-over for Alison’s mom since we had planned and canceled a trip together in the summer of 2020. Since mom is in her mid 80s now and not feeling as comfortable with the challenges of travel these days, we redesigned her make-up-trip to have a much slower pace and promised not to run her around too much. We booked a sweet little house in Ireland for three weeks where the three of us could hang out together, with views of the busy working farm next door and gorgeous Liscannor Bay as well. We invited all of mom’s grandkids and daughters to drop in on us during their summer adventures so we could share this experience with them, and we got one of our nieces, one of our nephews, and one of Alison’s sisters to join us there.

Alison and I were super excited because this was our first trip to Ireland. I really enjoyed having a Guinness in Ireland and declared it tasted even yummier over there, while Alison bravely finished her first and last Guinness as she’s not a fan. We walked along the Cliffs of Moher a few times, we learned about the fabulous sport of Hurling from our new Irish friends, we took a cooking class and made yummy scones and brown bread, and we enjoyed some live music at one of the little pubs we could walk to from the house. As usual, Alison’s mom spent lots of time drawing and painting.

Here are some photos from our trip to Ireland this year…

Then we flew to Scotland and stayed there for another three weeks. This was our second trip to Scotland with Alison’s mom and we stayed in the lowlands on the old Harburn Estate this time. We were joined there by six other family members so it was truly a family affair!

The estate property stretched across 1,000 acres so there was a lot to enjoy right out our front door. We were surrounded by gardens, herds of sheep, horses, a funny peacock nicknamed “Nuisance,” and swallows that zoomed through every nook and cranny of the old stable buildings. As our extended family members came and went on their own adventures the three of us walked among the gardens, through the woods, and around the ponds. We picked flowers and watched for birds all over the estate, and there were lots of drawing and painting projects to enjoy. We made friends with the woman caretaker who lived next door and looked forward to chatting with her every day, and when it was time to go home we gave her a couple of our drawings along with a very big hug.

Here are some photos from our trip to Scotland this year…

Maybe More Blogging?

When I wrote our last post for this blog more than six months ago I assumed we’d both be back to writing money stories again by now. I’m not surprised that we still get messages every week offering monetizing opportunities and other writers who want to use our blog, because that stuff is pretty generic. But I am a bit surprised that people still email us offering interview opportunities, asking if we’ll get back into money coaching, or asking if we’ll share more spreadsheet tools. We’re not very tempted by any of that right now, but we love hearing from people just looking to chat.

About once a month I look at the old money posts we’ve already started, and wonder when we’ll pick up the third post in our series about the Retirement Planning Guidebook again. That’s still important for us to finish because our elder years are at the very top of our list of important phases to plan for. How will our budget change when we’re elderly? And how might our budget change if one of us needs a higher level of support than the other for a few years? We want to keep making thoughtful decisions together and we know we have a lot to think about, learn, and get comfortable with, and that’s what our posts are really about. So who knows, maybe we’ll finish “Part 3, Building a Later in Life No-Go Budget” soonish.

But now that we’re in our new place, Alison and I both have lots of other priorities. I started a bunch of creative writing projects that keep me focused on other things when it comes to writing. And we’ve both made a big effort to get into different types of hobbies that include writing, drawing, painting, and also working with wood, metal, and glass. We’ve got a whole new area to explore, a new outdoor space to play with at home, and a new house that needs lots of updating. And at this point we’re trying to prioritize any creative project that gets us away from our laptops! I swear Alison can build or fix anything if we give her the space to work in…

Angel Investing – with Other People’s Money

Speaking of hobbies and spending too much time on my laptop, we have a friend who got into angel investing a couple of years ago as part of a group that collaborates to provide seed money for startup businesses. Last year I sat in on a video conference with her and listened to entrepreneurs pitching their startups, and I was fascinated by all of the personalities and big ideas.

The buy-in for this particular angel investing program is $5k per investor per conference, with the goal of creating a portfolio of at least 20 startups and closer to 40 startups for a truly diversified portfolio that can better manage all that risk. This program is a great fit for our friend financially, but responsible angel investing is a time consuming process that doesn’t fit in her busy life right now. On the flip side, this type of investing does not work for me and Alison, because the numbers don’t jive with our investing strategy or our comfort level. We’re happy to stick with ETF investing because the risk is low and our favorite ETF’s are all reasonably priced at less than $50 per share. This program may not fit our investing strategy but it does fit our giving strategy for supporting people and organizations with no expectation of a return.

So I struck a deal with our friend that lets her keep adding new startups to her angel investing portfolio this year with me as her proxy, and I got to connect with a couple dozen investors in the group along with the founders of the 63 startups in this program. I love that the investor group I’m working with is more than 40% women and global, and the startups cover every industry I can think of and they’re located all over the world. Any hobby that allows me to be a passionate champion for other people works great for me!

But it’s harder to sit through these weekly meetings than I was expecting it to be, and I get overstimulated on every call. My brain always turns to mush by the third hour, which means I’m not very present for Alison afterwards. But the research nerd in me is having a blast because I get distracted by every squirrel that runs by, and there are some seriously impressive squirrels in this program!

Since I committed to weekly meetings until January of next year, and I’ve been spending three days per week working on this project, I asked Alison to build a new standing desk for me out of an old kitchen rack. This new desk makes it much more fun for me to stare at a monitor for hours, and I love that I can move my rolling desk cart from room to room depending on meeting agendas and what we have going on at home on any given day. Now I can focus on championing the startups I believe in, until we select one that will hopefully turn into a healthy investment for our friend and the other investors in the group. Easy right?

We Got This!

In each year of retirement we’ve gotten a little better at taking care of ourselves, and I think we’ve hit our sweet spot this year. We definitely spiked our stress levels with that big housing project, but that also motivated us to pay more attention to ourselves. After we settled into our new house we started eating and sleeping better, Alison got back into swimming, we’re taking walks together every day, and we even set up a little home gym that we are actually using. We’re thankful for the privilege of being able to manage our time every day, and we’re truly prioritizing our health and wellbeing now.

At this point we’re fully and gratefully embracing the complex bucket of inspiration we got from Vicki Robin back at our Ecuador Chautauqua in 2019, to focus on our community and to be present for the people in our lives instead of just being money rats. We’ll always be grateful to Vicki for those conversations.

This year we proved to ourselves and our housemate, that the idea of co-living as a chosen family was and still is a good one for us. We’re all feeling much more grounded and energized by our new surroundings so we know we made the right decision. Family dinners each week have resumed and all of our monthly utility costs are much lower at the new compound, especially electricity because the new house came with solar panels!

We definitely learned a lot in our fifth year of retirement, about ourselves and each other, about our housemate, and a million other things. We feel energized now as we start our 6th year in retirement together and approach the end of 2023. And this time we won’t just camp in our house, we’ve promised to start fixing things up in manageable ways next year. And speaking of next year, we’re making no predictions about what will happen next!