Lifestyle

Curating a Retirement Lifestyle

Posted on by The Retired Alchemist

The majority of people look forward to retirement. Who wouldn’t? Endless days of sleeping in and doing whatever we want, whenever we want. Most people have a vague idea of how they want to live their retirement years but have not carefully crafted the days and hours that are the building blocks of those years. And that is where the nitty-gritty is. It is very easy to fall into the trap of letting the days melt into each other and never really building a lifestyle that makes us excited to get out of bed in the morning. We don’t want to drift from day to day, we want to curate a retirement that makes us feel alive.

How do we do that? It takes introspection. It takes knowing yourself. All of us, whether single or with a partner, need to determine our absolutes and curate a life that focuses on those. If you have a significant other that you are sharing your retirement years with, it takes A LOT of conversations. Conversations over coffee in the morning or a glass of wine in the evening. But before you engage in those conversations, know yourself first. Know what your absolutes are for a wonderful retirement lifestyle. Be sure of the things that you do not want to live without and bring those to the table. Then be ready to be flexible with everything else.

Take time by yourself to think about your absolutes. The things that, within reason, you would be very sad or disappointed if you did not have in your life.

Retirement absolutes

My absolutes:

  • Be near family and friends.
  • Have a comfortable home that I love to be in. Preferably surrounded by nature, but close to restaurants, shopping, theatres, etc.
  • Time to feed my spirit and soul; creating, reading, writing, reflecting and prayer.
  • Good food! Not just sustaining food, but real, yummy, good food.
  • I need water close by.
  • Time for self-care. This is something I neglected during the busy work years.
  • A place where walking, riding bike and kayaking are within easy access.
  • Contributing to the greater good. While someday that may mean volunteering, right now it is being there for family when needed, and helping my dad so that he can remain independent as long as he wishes. I want his last years on this earth to be full of love and joy.

Mr. U’s absolute list was smaller. He is much less high maintenance than I am. His included:

  • Have enough money to support our retirement comfortably. (He is also much more practical than I am.)
  • Get away from the cold winters. He has had his share of gray days shoveling snow and plowing the driveway.
  • Space for a garden and woodworking.
  • Time with family and friends. At least we agreed on one thing.
  • Have something engaging to do. This is where it gets a little tricky because that may interfere with your partner’s time or plans.

Blending retirement absolutes with your spouse

We need to start Living Our Best Lives right now. Today. None of us know how many more years we will be blessed with. Every new brown spot on our skin or stomach cramp makes us wonder if it is something more serious than a liver spot or what we ate for dinner the night before. While we have been thoroughly enjoying our retirement, it was time to take some next steps towards some of our retirement absolutes. It has taken a lot of conversations to determine what that would look like. I am sharing how we blended our absolutes to curate a retirement lifestyle that fits us, in hopes that it will inspire you to make any changes necessary to be living your best retirement life. Change is hard, but if not now, when?

Blending the common absolutes

We started with the easy stuff. The common absolutes. We love where we live but as we get older, we both know that we need to downsize and move closer to town. While this big of move wasn’t something either of us really wanted to do, we knew that eventually we would need to, and it was much easier now than later. So, when the opportunity came up to rebuild a home on the beautiful property where I grew up and have so many good memories, we decided it was the open door that we needed to make the jump.

We will be downsizing to 1,700 square feet less than what we currently live in. This change of location is just a five-minute drive to town and will save us about an hour of driving/day when we want to see family and friends or just go to dinner. It will be closer to healthcare services, which is something else to consider as we age.

Blending the individual absolutes

Fortunately, this move also meets my absolutes of being by the water and nature. It feeds my soul. Kayaking will be outside my back door, and I can hop on my bike right from the house instead of having to haul it in my car down our steep gravel driveway to get to a place to ride. Our bodies will rust if we don’t use them and so we need to make it as easy and delightful as possible to do that.

It meets Mr. U’s absolutes in that it already has space for a garden there, albeit much smaller than what he currently has. It will be an honor for him to revive the garden that my dad spent so many years cultivating. Same with the garage for woodworking.

Some of our individual absolutes were a little harder to blend. This is where it gets tricky. It takes conversations and compromise. Mr. U is thoroughly enjoying his part-time job. It keeps him engaged and he enjoys all of the people he meets through it. But it also means our schedule is dependent on working around it. This compromise came through him choosing something that is very part-time and has a flexible schedule with time off whenever requested.

The other challenging absolute was getting away from the cold weather. Mr. U has wanted to snowbird for a long time. While I get tired of the cold, gray days, I tend to be more of a homebody. We finally decided on a small place in Arizona, as I explained in the previous post, Should I Take Flight and be a Snowbird? However, by the time you add the square feet of the condo to the square feet of the smaller house we are building, I am not so sure we are downsizing all that much. Hum. I have to remind myself that it is more about rightsizing.

We have spent so many hours sharing our hopes, dreams and absolutes.

And in the end…

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and realize that I did not live the life I loved. And I want to make sure that I make space for the people I love too. None of us want to have major regrets. Change is not easy. It takes planning and a ton of effort. If you have a partner, it also takes heartfelt, honest conversations and some compromising. But if you design it around your absolutes, it will be worth it in the long run. This is true of any age or stage of life we are in. I wish you the best as you curate a lifestyle that makes your heart sing.

Should I Take Flight and be a Snowbird?

Posted on by The Retired Alchemist

If you are retired and live in an area that gets really cold, harsh winters, you may have considered the option of being a snowbird. A snowbird is defined as a northerner who migrates to a warmer southern state in the winter. And why not? The birds are smart enough to do it. I know that we have pondered it for many years. To take flight and be a snowbird or not to be a snowbird – that is the question.

I am writing this post sitting outside on a patio in Arizona enjoying the sunshine and palm trees while it is snowing several inches at home. We are, once again, pondering the question of whether or not to be snowbirds.

Our weather forecast at home this week is on the left. The forecast for Arizona the same week is on the right.

Last year at this time we were in southwest Florida trying out the snowbird lifestyle for a month, which I wrote about in the post, Travel: Living Like the Locals. We loved the area with the Gulf (of what?) adjacent to it. The water, beaches and sunshine lifted my spirits. I can certainly see why so many people snowbird there, but there were a couple big drawbacks for us.

First, it was a full day of travel with at least one layover. Florida is about as far across the U.S. as you can get from our home in the PNW. It was just too far away from family and friends. The other consideration was the possibility of hurricanes. Several people told us that the cost of insurance on their condos was outrageous, if they could even get it covered. Sadly, about nine months after we left, Hurricanes Helene and Milton swept through the area. So, while we really enjoyed our month there, we ruled it out as a snowbird option for us.

To snowbird or not to snowbird, that is the question

The advantages

As with any major life decision, there are advantages and disadvantages, and you have to weigh those based on your lifestyle. It is about rightsizing your retirement life. The most obvious reason to snowbird is to get away from lousy winter weather. I get tired of being cold all the time, shoveling snow and navigating icy sidewalks and roads. Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing better than snow at Christmas. I love curling up by a cozy fire with a good book while the snow falls gently outside in a silent blanket of white. Bonus if I made a pot of soup to simmer all afternoon. It is beautiful and cozy… until about January. Then it becomes claustrophobic, dark and dreary.

Another advantage of fleeing to warmer temperatures are the health benefits – both physical and mental. We are much more likely to get out for a walk or hike in a warmer climate. And yes, we have gyms, but I prefer the outdoor gym. Of course, bike riding is totally out of the question in the snow. Sunshine also elevates your mood. Too many gray days can get depressing. Research shows that sunshine boosts your serotonin levels as well as vitamin D. During the winter months at home, we can go for days and days without sunshine, as you can see from the above photo.

A third advantage is the fun of exploring a new environment and meeting new people. We can get a little stale over time, and it helps to explore new places. It triggers our curiosity and opens up our creative thinking. Not to mention all of the different restaurant options! 😊 (I wonder if that defeats the health benefits?) It is wise to choose a place that has lots of things to do that you enjoy.

The disadvantages

Being a snowbird also comes with some disadvantages. The most obvious one is the cost. Renting a place for a few months adds up. You can buy something, but then there is the initial cost, as well as the upkeep and/or HOAs. However, if you buy something, you can rent it out part of the year to defray some of the costs and you should get a long-term return on your investment.

The other big disadvantage is being away from your life at home that long. This is particularly difficult if you sit on a board, volunteer or work part-time. Mr. U has a part-time job at home, but they are very flexible and willing to work with retired employee schedules. (That was a requirement for us.) For me, it is hard being away from family and friends for extended periods of time. I miss my peeps. This week we met a couple that snowbird in Arizona from Wisconsin. They were also torn because all of their family was back in Milwaukee. Their solution was to plan several trips back home for family events or just some grandparent time.

If we were to snowbird, it needed to be a quick flight back and forth to our home in the north. Arizona is only about a 2 1/2-hour direct flight for us. That meant that we could travel back and forth much easier and cheaper than Florida. Son #4 has a condo in Arizona that he rents out when he isn’t visiting there, so we knew we would get to see him there some. Also, it is close enough that family and friends can visit. Matter of fact, my granddaughter was just there last weekend for a gymnastics meet and we were able to go watch her while there. That being said, we would still not do the traditional snowbird life of being gone for a full 4-6 months at a time.

Never say never

After our month in Florida last year, we decided not to snowbird. One year ago, I wrote a post about that decision, explaining Why I Won’t be a Snowbird Any Time Soon. And then winter showed up… again. And we are not getting any younger. The timing seemed right, and Arizona checked most of the boxes for us. So, we finally got off the fence and purchased a condo in Scottsdale. Common sense be damned. It is past time to live our best retirement life.

We took the snowbird plunge. Note the cute little turtle at the bottom of the picture. There is a walking path right by our condo that goes along this pond. It will keep me more physically active in the winter just to go see the wildlife.

15 Ways to Invite Serendipity into Your Life

Posted on by The Retired Alchemist

Surprising little adventures are waiting to be discovered every day.  Serendipity is a happy, lucky coincidence that is not sought after.  And the wonderful thing is that life is full of serendipity.   However, we miss most of it because we are so busy pushing and pulling through our days, trying to morph and shape our schedules so they resemble the perfect life.  In the meantime, we are missing out on the sweet life.  For it is only in the open, quiet space that you can hear clearly.  You can’t force serendipity.  It happens by a chance discovery.  Even though you cannot plan, organize or schedule serendipity, you can curate a life that invites it in when it quietly knocks on your soul’s door. 

15 ways to invite serendipity into your life

  1. Leave White Space in your day.  Instead of scheduling your calendar until you cannot breathe, leave blank spaces that are openings to adventure and surprise.  
  2. Say “yes.”  Quite thinking of all the reasons that you cannot do something and say “yes” when opportunity presents itself.  You will miss lots of little adventures if you wait until it is convenient.
  3. Be ready.  It reduces your chance of creating excuses.  If you stay up on your routine maintenance, you will be more open and ready when the opportunity knocks. 
  4. Unpack your brain of all the commitments and responsibilities that take up so much valuable real estate there. 
  5. Release your fears: fear of failure, fear of looking like a fool, fear of being wrong, and fear of the unknown.  Let it all go.  
  6. Follow your nose and see where it takes you.  Let the wind lead you instead of your calendar for a change. 
  7. Let your imagination soar.  Imagination allows you to look at things from a unique and colorful perspective.
  8. Say hello.  You never know where a conversation with a stranger will take you.  It could be a friend in waiting or just an interesting conversation that opens up your thinking. 
  9. Take the back roads.  The freeway seldom leads to serendipity.   Ah, but the bumpy backroads lead to the unexpected. 
  10. Leave judgement in the dust of your footsteps – the judgement of others if you do not follow the expected pathway, but also our own judgement.
  11. Be brave and willing to make mistakes.   Perfection is not the path to adventure and surprise.
  12. Curate a creative life.  A creative life fosters serendipity and serendipity ignites your creativity.
  13. Take the less worn path. The one that does not have a safe, predictable outcome.
  14. Stop long enough to feel what is tugging on your soul.  Follow where it leads you, even I it doesn’t seem practical.
  15. Eliminate the word “should” from your vocabulary.  One seldom meets serendipity while wrestling with what they should be doing.   
Happy Valentine’s Day! Remember to be your own best valentine and treat yourself to something special today.

Now that we are retired, we have more open hours in a day. More time to let serendipity in. Yet, I forget. I get so focused on the task at hand, and the task after that one, that I get tunnel vision. With spring just around the corner (O.K. – I might be overly optimistic) I am trying to be more available to the present moment and whatever gift that it provides. Allow myself to be caught up in the moment and where it leads. It is time to invite more serendipity into my life. Be more aware of the simple joy of the unexpected. And what better time than Valentine’s Day to start living the sweet life.

Portal to the Imagination

Posted on by The Retired Alchemist

Step away with me into another world. One where you are free to explore and let your imagination soar. A world where you are totally caught up in the moment and experience that carefree feeling of flow. The world is your oyster, and you control it. Walk with me through the portal to imagination.

Growing up in the 60’s was a gift that we baby boomers probably do not appreciate enough. It was a time when we lived without fear. Think the movie “Sandlot.” It was a time when moms would shoo kids out of the house, not to return until there was food on the table. I grew up in the country and my siblings and I were feral children roaming the woods behind our house. By anyone else’s standards, it was just an ordinary woods with a creek running through it. But in our eyes, it was magical. Mostly because of the portal to it.

We were not allowed to cross the road to get to the woods behind our house. That was a hard and fast rule, “or else.” And we all knew what “or else” meant. Well, we never actually tested the “or else” threat, so I guess we weren’t exactly sure what it meant, but we knew it wasn’t good. So, instead of risking our lives crossing the road, we were required to go through an old, abandoned cattle chute that traversed underneath the road. Personally, I felt like I was risking my life more every time I entered the dark, damp, cobweb infested, cattle chute than I ever would have by crossing the road. But, as it was intended, “or else” pushed me to obey the rule.

The cattle chute was our gateway to a world of imagination. I am not sure how it ended up being called the cattle chute, other than it was a tunnel that was built under the road years ago so ranchers could herd their cattle through it instead of going over the road. To us, it was a portal to the imagination.

The portal

The cattle chute was a mysterious, dark foreboding tunnel with a small creek running through it. After braving the entrance, we had to jump across to dry patches of ground to prevent getting our feet wet in the creek, while simultaneously avoiding cobwebs draping down from the low ceiling and watching for trolls. I kept my eyes on the light at the end of the tunnel where magic awaited. It was our portal to a fantasy world that only children inhabited.

Once you were transported through the cattle chute you entered a world of freedom. Freedom from adult judgement or restrictions. Freedom from warnings such as “wash your hands after you touch that mushroom,” “stay out of the creek,” and “don’t get mud on your clothes.” While those words of wisdom were shared for our safety and wrapped in a blanket of love, they also made us more cautious. They would curb our curiosity and sense of reckless abandon.

Once through the portal, we were the kings and queens of the woods. We worked out our differences without adults to referee. We imagined, we created, and we experienced life through play. Play is necessary for healthy brain development. It teaches children to problem solve, develop social skills, build emotional resilience, release stress, and expand creativity. We were left to our own devices in our magical world for several hours a day. And while we felt isolated from adult interference, we were really only a holler away from the reminder that it was time to come home and wash up for dinner.

This is a picture of the cattle chute just before it was filled in. Scary huh?

Safety first

Sadly, the cattle chute was filled in years ago when they widened the road above it. Cattle had not tromped through it for many years, and it was just one more thing that was not considered safe anymore. The fact is that our world is not as safe as it was in the 50’s and 60’s. As a result, children lead much more insulated lives now. And a less safe world necessitates more parental involvement. Parents supervise their children at their friend’s birthday parties for fear that the older sibling or neighbor is a bully or creep. Organized sports have taken the place of the sandlot. And while there are many benefits to more parental involvement, I can’t help but feel a little sad that children of today will not know the experience of entering the portal to roam freely for hours in the woods or play out in the neighborhood until the streetlights come on.

Speaking of unsafe. Is it any wonder that we lived through our childhoods? Aside from all of the unsupervised time, how did we keep from cutting ourselves and bleeding to death from a rusty steel Tonka truck? Or burn ourselves up from the Easy Bake Oven? Even more dangerous was the Creepy Crawler machine. I remember going over to a friend’s house and playing with mercury, dumping it from hand to hand. Interesting stuff that is. We lived through it. Now toys are so safe that they fail to spark the imagination.

Portal to an adult’s imagination

As adults, we need to find our own portal to the imagination. We need to find ways to continue to ignite our curiosity and fuel our creativity. Retirement is the perfect time to do this. Just as play is an important part of childhood, it is also important to our emotional balance as adults. It keeps our minds sharp, decreases stress and fosters a sense of happiness and wellbeing. And playing with others helps us build and maintain social connections that will carry us through life. It helps prevent the dreaded social isolation of aging.

No matter what your age, people that do not engage in play are less interesting and fun to be around. They are typically not as happy either. So, let’s find the portal that leads to the imagination and bravely go through it to enjoy the abundance of a playful life on the other side. Just stay away from the mercury.

Find your portal and take it. See where it leads…

My 2025 Word of the Year

Posted on by The Retired Alchemist

I don’t make new year’s resolutions. Probably because I hate failure. However, I have chosen a word of the year (WOTY) the last couple years to help guide my intentions for the year. The problem is that I get busy and forget to lean into my WOTY. For 2023 My WOTY was “awe.” I wanted to take notice of every single little wonder that was in front of me. It helped, but I still missed a lot of details because I was pushing and pulling through life instead of just being… and noticing.

Living out my 2024 WOTY

Last year I chose the word Upcycled to be my WOTY. I liked the traditional use of the word, but more importantly, upcycling is defined as creating something that is of higher quality and a better version than the original one. I figured that should be true of our lives as well. I wanted to find unique and creative ways of Living Our Best Lives. We started off strong by spending the month of February in Florida experiencing The Salt Life. It was a sunny month full of exploring and Living Like the Locals while we stayed at a weathered salty marina. We got to eat delicious fresh seafood under palm trees as we Ate Our Way Through Sarasota. Back at home it is very difficult to get really good, fresh seafood in the middle of February when you are buried under layers of snow.

We were back home and settled into our own lives again long before the crocuses and daffodils pushed up through the soil. I started thinking about the traditional sense of upcycling and how I could buy less and start Living More Organically. The ultimate in traditional upcycling was when I went Thrifting on Steroids. That was a little too hard core for me. By far, my favorite experience in 2024 was booking a house at Rockaway Beach and having our immediate family gather together for a full week. It was not upcycled or inexpensive, but it did take some creativity to pull off. And it definitely contributed to living my best life in 2024. Sometimes you have to decide what is worth your time and money and go for it. If not now, when?

Sitting around the campfire at Rockaway Beach, Oregon.

2025 word of the year

This year is the mark of a quarter century. It will also be a big year of change for us. It seems that this year’s WOTY should encompass that. I considered using the word change or even downsizing, but it is more than that. So, I am borrowing a term from the writer, Kathy Gottberg at SMART Living 365.com. My WOTY for 2025 will be, drumroll please… rightsizing. I give Kathy credit for using this term in the context of making your retirement life fit with your priorities and lifestyle choices. She wrote an excellent book on the topic, titled Rightsizing: A SMART Living 365 Guide to Reinventing Retirement. I highly recommend this book as you shape and mold your retirement to fit you.

Our retirement lifestyle will change dramatically in 2025. This spring we are selling our large home that we have lived in for the past 24 years. The bulk of raising our family happened within these walls and two of our sons got married here. It has served us well, but now Mr. U and I rattle around in this large home trying to hear each other from three rooms away. (Our new mantra is, “can’t see you, can’t hear you.”) We will be downsizing from a 3,600 square foot home on 40 acres to a 1,900 square foot home on .3 acres.

It will be really hard leaving this home of 24 years. So many memories here.

Downsizing will be a big part of this move, but we will also be upsizing in quality to create a retirement lifestyle that fits us. So really, it is all about rightsizing for our own unique situation, desires and interests at this point in our lives. It is living with intention and not mindlessly walking through these precious retirement years. In the coming months I will be going through every single item we own and determining what will be making the move and what we need to let go of. Tough decisions.

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”

William Morris

Moving forward in 2025

We will be moving to this lovely location. My BIL, Craig, took this photo years ago when the place was in its heyday.

We have started rebuilding the home where I grew up next to a small lake in the Pacific Northwest. A place that holds so many good memories. It is only 30 minutes from where we live now, but instead of being 25 minutes from town, it will be a quick 5-minute drive to town, or a 15-minute bike ride. We will be closer to family, restaurants and activities in our small city, and I will be able to drop my kayak into the lake right from our yard. It will be “right” for us at this point in life.

So, I guess you could say that I am coming full circle in my life. We will be living our best retirement life right where I started out in this world. I will write posts about the process as we move through it. I hope that you will join me on the journey of “rightsizing” our retirement lives for 2025.