2022 Lessons Learned

Well, it was quite a year. When 2022 began, Paul and I knew we would be selling our house in Charlotte and embarking on this big adventure, but we didn't expect it to start as soon as it did, nor did we think it would take so long to find our special spot. Yes - Bluffton, SC it is! We have signed a contract and put money down on a home that's in the process of being built. We hope to move in by the end of February give or take two weeks. Needless to say, we are thrilled and relieved. Nevertheless, we still have a couple months to go so I'll continue to write this blog until I run out of interesting things to share.

Presently, we are staying in a lovely, brand new beach cottage in Oak Island, NC. This area had been recommended to us by several people and we booked our stay before we found the home in Bluffton. It's all good though - after all, we have to live somewhere until the house is complete, and it gives me another area to comment about. But I'll reserve my impressions about the area for my next blog. We only arrived two days ago, and I want to give it some time before I start forming opinions. Plus, Paul rung in the new year with Covid, so we haven't done much exploring yet to say the least.

I thought I'd share some of the lessons we have learned about this process - that being our quest to find the very best maybe forever spot for us and being "homeless" while staying in Airbnbs a month at a time in various locations.

• First, it's been really fun. However, it's not for the faint of heart. If you are not adventurous, organized, on great terms with your spouse or willing to live in places that are not 100% up to your standards, you might hate it.

• Second, when you don't own a home, you can actually save a lot of money - even when you have to spend some of it on Airbnbs with their sometimes high additional fees. From a financial standpoint, this year has been truly advantageous for us as we've managed to stash money away which we'll need come move-in time for things like new furniture, window treatments, etc.

• Returning to places we previously seriously considered (or dismissed) has been invaluable. We returned to Western North Carolina and confirmed that part of the country is not for us. We returned to Florida and realized it is a far better place for us to visit than to live. We returned to Milwaukee and decided it would be smarter to plan return visits via Airbnb stays during the summer months. And we returned to Hilton Head to see if our initial lackluster impressions of it 20 years ago would be reaffirmed - and they surprisingly were not. So, our advice is, if you have thought well or poorly of potential retirement locales in the past, do yourself a favor and visit them again - to either confirm your long-held suspicions or blow them up.

• Sampling all sorts of communities is important. We worked with realtors in just about every area we've stayed and looked at condo complexes, patio homes, single family homes in active 55+ communities with many amenities, single family homes in multi-generational communities with and without amenities, well-established neighborhoods and brand-new ones that are just breaking ground. There are pros and cons to all of them. For us, we learned that condo living is not appealing (some of our Airbnb stays taught us that), we want to live in a single-family home and prefer multi-generational communities - but really like having access to amenities like a pool, tennis, pickleball, etc. We also prefer well-established neighborhoods to new communities with lots of construction and young shrubs/trees that will take years to fill in.

• Like it or not, we are not handy. Fixer-uppers and older homes are for people with certain skills and the right temperament - neither of which we have. So, homes on the newer side in need of less maintenance are a better fit for us. Don't get me wrong - old homes can be very charming...it's the upkeep that we're not good at.

In the end, we were fortunate to find a home being built on one of the few wooded lots left in a well-established, multi-generational neighborhood in Bluffton that features lots of live oak, Palmetto palm and Carolina pine trees. It includes a variety of amenities too - pools, tennis, golf, pickleball - even a put-in for our kayaks. We really think we got this right - but wouldn't be near as confident if we hadn't dedicated the year to road testing all these different locations and communities.

We're in Oak Island, NC until the end of January. I'll circle back next time with some tips about navigating Airbnb, and in a few weeks I'll share our thoughts about this area and how it compares to Hilton Head/Bluffton. Until then, have a happy and healthy new year -

and safe travels!