Planning

When I though of how nice it was going to be go sell our City House, I thought it would be such a relief, that would carry us through the 3 months at the extended stay.  It carried me through one month.  And as of tomorrow, we have exactly 8 weeks left.  But, we have made it through 5 and a half weeks at the hotel.  At least we have had no more  fire alarms!  At least, that I know of.  I almost hate leaving my dogs there while we are gone to work.  They seem to be doing fine though.  At least once a day, we take a pretty leisurely walk with them and they love all the sniffing.

Yesterday after work, we met with a retirement advisor.  DH wanted to go to him, because he has experience working with people with government pensions.  In my opinion, he is nice but a little rough around the edges and made a couple of errors that bothered me.  He did spend time talking directly to me, which I appreciated.  Some sales people just glance at me, like I am just the sweet little wife and then focus on talking to DH, which I don't appreciate.  But, this guy is, after all - a salesman.  And he is trying to sell us his service.  I also appreciate that, I am not naïve.  But he spent at least part of his presentation knocking the investment vehicle I was already in.  I went home and reviewed my investments, and feel like he was partly correct and partly oversimplified.  But, mainly when I am considering whether to use someone else, I just want to know what you offer, not bash where I am now.  I think DH and I are on the same page.  So, we are meeting with my guy next week. 

The thing that I think most beneficial of all to DH, was having this 3rd party tell DH that we have done a good job (saving, no debts and paying off our house) and that we are in a fine position to retire.  DH deferred all the praise to me - but I really am proud of DH.  His diligent hard work, his income, his generosity with me, his trust in me and our work we have done together.  More on this later, but we have only been together for 13 years.  When I met DH, he was not in great shape financially.  When we talked about marriage 11 year ago, I told him I had a few deal breakers.  I told him what they were, and he readily agreed to use my approach to finances.  And here we are 13 years later - in a position to retire.  Not near the income we have now - but we can have a modest retirement and spend some time with each other and if we continue to hone our lifestyle, we can make this work.  I will go into this more later, in another post.  I gotta get to work today. 

But, before I go...back to the hotel.  It is really getting old, but I like the way DH and I can laugh about it and prop each other up, when we need it.  This weekend, we are going to the lake (where I grew up) to see some friends of mine.  They were here back in May when he buried his mother.  He has been working on her lake house, painting and cleaning it out.  I can't wait to see it.  They admired my painting skills from Retirement Home.  We are going to take the dogs and spend Sat evening.  It will be fun.  It will be great to get out of the hotel.  It will be a 3 hour drive, instead of 4.  haha

The weather is finally starting to be lower that the high 90's.  I have been walking still and I did hot yoga last night without my friend, T.  She pulled a muscle.  We are going to walk tonight.  That will be fun to catch up.

Have a wonderful Thursday!