decisions Archives - Make Smarter Decisions

We’re Still Here

March 31, 2020 by Make Smarter Decisions 5 Comments

I haven’t updated this blog in over a year. But I’ve haven’t given up on blogging and websites. After combining forces with Amy Blacklock (from LifeZemplified), we’ve been really busy with our main brand – Women Who Money.

Women Who Money posts informative financial articles for our readers twice a week (300+ articles now!) with the help of a wonderful team of women. (Check out their sites too – Amanda from Why We Money, Penny from She Picks Up Pennies, Laurie from The Three Year Experiment, and Laura from Everyday By the Lake.)

We also started another site two years ago called Women’s Money Talk. This site was designed to create conversations about money through the experiences and stories of women. We’re considering making some changes with this site and focusing on women “GenX and up”- but we’ve been busy! We’ve also started work on a site that isn’t money focused too.

Family, travel, some part-time work, and maintaining our health (which feels like a full-time job some days) makes time fly by too.

Deciding to Stick It Out

Up until last week, I had considered shutting down the blog and moving some content to one of our other sites. This site has always been about helping people, not making money. But I’ve enjoyed working with Amy more than the solo work I was doing here.

But as I started watching this COVID-19 pandemic play out, I realized that more than ever – people may need help making important decisions going forward.

Even though I haven’t updated the blog in over a year, I still get a few thousand views each month – so people are still finding this site when they look for information and advice on decision-making.

I even got an email from a person I’ve known for over 25 years a few weeks back – who didn’t know I had a blog until she was trying to make some big decisions. That was another sign that I shouldn’t shut things down just yet.

I also still have people reaching out for coaching. Many of their dilemmas are related to moving, taking new jobs, or changing careers – all big decisions with major financial implications. I’m excited to continue to coach people through their decision-making process.

A Year Gone By

When I last wrote, we had lived in our snowbird condo in Florida for 7 weeks in the winter of 2019. We ended up staying in Florida for more than 4 months and really had a terrific time. Many of our neighbors have become great friends and it really felt like our second home.

We headed north in May and reached West Virginia in time for my daughter’s college graduation. She earned her M.S. in Forensic and Investigative Sciences from WVU. We didn’t move her home because she decided to stay for her Ph.D. She’s publishing articles, being invited to conferences, and she’ll soon be an expert in her area of trace evidence.

In late May, we went to Cleveland and enjoyed a weekend of camping with Amy and her husband John, Jim from Route to Retire and his family, and Steve and Courtney Adcock of A Streamin Life before Jim’s family made their big move to Panama.

A Beautiful Summer

We settled in at home for most of the summer. Our days were spent kayaking in the lake and doing some projects in around our house. My husband took a job working at a local boat repair shop to keep busy. I worked on our websites and went to the YMCA every day for spinning class. Our son was also home from college for the summer which was a nice bonus!

In early August, we did some work for Prudential through Women Who Money at the Rolling Stones concert at MetLife Stadium. We were amazed at the quality of the show the Stones put on and we’d definitely go again! (Their 2020 tour is postponed at this point due to the pandemic.)

We also helped our local economy by visiting local restaurants and craft breweries throughout the summer with our best friends.

A Fall Full of Travel

Washington, DC

The first week in September brought FinCon 2019 and Amy and I headed to Washington, DC! We enjoyed the conference, meeting with our blogging friends, and walking through DC with our excellent tour guide – John from ESI Money.

We made some great connections and came away as a Plutus Award winner for Best GenX/Baby Boomer Blog for Women Who Money.

Our plan is to head to FinCon 2020 this fall in Long Beach, California. But COVID-19 may wreak havoc on all of our travel plans.

Europe

My son left to study abroad in Milan, Italy for the fall semester and we worked on travel plans to visit him in mid-October.

We flew first class (travel hacked the miles) to Frankfurt, Germany on October 15th. After spending a few days driving through and touring the Netherlands and Belgium, we went to stay with my cousins near Manheim, Germany for 5 days. We had a wonderful time and saw some amazing sights. After leaving them, we went headed to south Germany. We took a gondola up the tallest mountain in Germany on a warm and beautiful day. Out last day with a car was spent driving to Munich and seeing the Olympic venue there.

Train travel was next on our itinerary! We took a train from Munich to Milan to visit my son and he traveled with us by train to Venice. It was 75 and sunny in Venice the two days we were there – just a few weeks before all of the devastating floods.

Florida

We spent a few weeks at home after our European adventure and then headed back to Florida to open up our condo and visit my family. My father was quite ill and we were happy to see both of my parents before heading home for holidays.

Wisconsin

Right after Thanksgiving, we made a quick trip to Wisconsin to buy “Steve” – a used Subaru Forrester and prize possession of blogger JL Collins. It was great to finally meet Jim and Jane after reading Jim’s blog for years. Steve was a gift to my son who is graduating from college in May.

Transitioning to a New Year

Our December was quiet. At 89, my father passed away after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s. I had eye surgery and a 4+ week recovery and my son had his wisdom teeth out.

The start of 2020 brought us back to a more normal routine. We sold our 8-unit apartment complex in early January! (We’re not out of the landlord business yet though. We still have one rental property we plan to sell in 2021.)

We took my son back to college in Vermont the second week in January and got on a plane to head to our snowbird condo in Sarasota the next day.

We had a terrific time enjoying the sunshine, bike rides, time at the beach, and hanging out with our friends until mid-March – when life changed for everyone.

We’re Still Here

The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly changed our lives. Social distancing is our focus when we do have to go out to a store. But we’re mostly staying home.

We are able to get out to walk (alone), and ride bikes and kayak (away from others). The time spent outside is really important to us. We’re going to keep monitoring the situation but we don’t plan to head home for at least another month (if we are allowed to travel at that time).

Since we aren’t going out with friends or spending time at the pool or beach, it’s time to get some writing done and keep focusing on our wellness. I’m also still teaching part-time online as I work to earn 30 years of service credit before I can officially retire in 2022.

If you haven’t dropped by yet, our Facebook group on the New York Times best seller – Younger Next Year – has grown to over 1100 people! We’re all “swimming against the tide of aging” together! It’s a really supportive and wonderful group of people.

My goal is to update the site at least once a month now with new articles related to decision-making, travel, fitness, and fun. The site may look different as I make some changes to the landing page, but I wanted to let you know that we’re still here.

Stay safe, stay well, and stay home.

Rounding Out My Resume and Leaving Nothing to Chance

September 6, 2018 by Make Smarter Decisions 21 Comments

If you happened to be on Twitter today, you may have noticed my tweet that it was my 46^th first day of school. It was also day one of my 30^th year of being an educator. I’ve spent a lot of time in schools in my 51 years and even though I’ve left full-time (tenure track) public school employment, I still went to school today.

In the first 29 years of my career, I had a lot of jobs! I was a high school science teacher, elementary school science lead teacher, assistant principal, college professor, student teaching supervisor, long-term high school substitute teacher, and doctoral candidate committee member – in that order.

But there has been one big gap on my resume. If you’re a teacher or parent of kids in this age group, maybe you noticed it. I’ve never taught at a junior high or its contemporary replacement – a middle school.

And that changed today.

I took a position as a 7^th grade science teacher for a few months to replace a teacher who is on maternity leave. I’m rounding out my resume this fall because I’m not sure when the last time I’m going to teach will be.

As someone who has reached “FI” but is only partially “RE” (financially independent – retired early), this was my chance to say I’ve taught and worked with students at every level – pre-kindergarten through doctoral candidates.

And I’m not sure how many people there are who’ve been lucky enough to do that. Maybe someday, I’ll write about all that I’ve learned through the years and how it helped me grow and become a better person, educator, and leader.

But back to the reason I’m teaching again now. I’ve shared in the past that my New York State Retirement System tier requires me to have 30 years of service credit or I will have significant pension penalties. If I retire with 29+ years of service but not 30, my pension will be $14K less per year for the rest of my life.

Right now, I have just over 27.3 years of credit – even though it’s my 30^th year of work. I took two years off from public education and taught at a private college after earning my doctorate. It was a great job but if I worked at a public university (which I switched to after two years), I’d be in my 30^th year of service right now – even though I can’t collect my pension until I’m 55.

This is where “leaving nothing to chance” comes in.

It’s been suggested to me that $14K a year isn’t really all that much and that I might be able to earn that other ways. Our Women Who Money and Women’s Money Talk websites are growing and I could put even more energy into those. I could do more decision (life) coaching or write a book. I could create products, we could consider buying more rental properties, or we could start websites with two other great domain names we own.

All of those are great ideas and maybe I could make more than $14K a year. But remember, that $14K a year in my pension is for the rest of my life.

I’m close enough now that I’m not willing to gamble on losing that money for what could be 30 or 40 years of retirement (or close to $500K.) After all, I’m “swimming against the tide of aging” as I work each day to get Younger Next Year! I hope to have one long, healthy, and active retirement.

So what’s the easiest way to keep earning service credit and still be able to enjoy a partial “ER” lifestyle?

Work a few months a year in a school to earn credit and earn a few months credit teaching online. It’s the best of both worlds!

I’ve been teaching online through a public high school “cooperative” for the last five years and it takes 3-4 hours per week. If I only did that to earn credit, it would take me until I was 59 or 60 years old to reach 30 years of service – if nothing changes.

If I couldn’t stand teaching anymore or couldn’t find a short-term job, I might consider it. I’d lose 4 or 5 years of my pension (I wouldn’t want to collect until I hit the 30-year milestone) and about $150K – $200K.

By teaching in a school a few months each year for the next two or three years, I should be able to reach 30 years of service as I turn 55. I did a “fill-in” teaching test run this spring and had a great time! It met my needs, the students’ needs, and the needs of the district and teacher who was on maternity leave. A win for everyone!

I also worked in a school that was very different than any other school I’ve ever been in. I firmly believe that more experiences you have, the more you can grow. And I’m hoping to do a little more growing in my new middle school placement.

It’s an adventure too because the school is 3.5 hours from our home – so we have a great little furnished apartment! It’s also in a beautiful “resort” area near the Adirondack mountains. It’s a part of the state we’ve spent little time in, so we’re looking forward to being tourists while we’re here too!

And when the job is over in December, our plan is to head to Sarasota for the winter! We don’t plan to come back until there’s little chance we’ll see snow! We’re putting our snowbird housing plan to work and we plan to spend four months in Florida. We shifted from feeling like vacationers to residents last year and we were only there (on and off) for three months. This year we should feel even more at home!

For those of you who are bigger risk-takers, I’d love to have your courage. But for now – I’m taking the safer route. Could I change my mind? Definitely. We’re taking it one month – one school – and one job at a time and we’ll see how it goes.

What would you do? Would you tie yourself down for a few months a year (for the next few years) and to earn the credit? Or would you leave it to your entrepreneurial self to make up that money? Do you think age plays a big factor here?

Deciding to Take Different Jobs Has Made Me a Better Person

July 6, 2018 by Make Smarter Decisions 32 Comments

It might not seem like a big deal to change jobs throughout your career now, but it used to be more the norm for people to work for the same company for 30 or 35 years before retiring. And in teaching, it is still the norm for many.

I earned my Bachelor’s degree in three years and stayed a fourth year to get my M.S. degree. A few days after graduation, I was hired as a high school science teacher – just a month after my 22^nd birthday. It was the fall of 1989 and my plan was to teach until I was 55 and then retire. That’s just what teachers did unless they moved out of state or changed careers.

In my retirement system tier, I’d have more than 30 years of service by then and I could collect my pension. The “golden handcuffs” keep many teachers tied to the same state and losing seniority, tenure rights, and your step on the pay scale often keeps teachers in the same district.

There are advantages to staying in one job for 30+ years. A few of them include building deep ties to your school and community, developing strong programs, and each new school year becomes “business as usual” – just with new faces.

But some of those same advantages can be disadvantages too. I taught in a school district that was similar to the one I attended. It was also similar to the college I attended, in terms of diversity of the population. You build deep ties to a familiar community which can limit your understanding and respect for those that are different.

You complain about the same things at work year after year too – because you don’t know what it’s like to work anywhere else. You might have more than most teachers in a similar position and not realize it or you might not have things others schools and students have. And this can be true even if you network with people in other areas. Business as usual might reduce stress, but it might limit your growth and potential too.

A Change of Plans

After 11 years of teaching, I moved buildings to become the lead science teacher at our elementary school. This was my first step in viewing my profession and our community in a very different light. As a high school chemistry teacher, I saw motivated students with few learning challenges. At the elementary school, I taught every student and I certainly found out I had a lot to learn from my elementary school colleagues.

When I started as an administrator at the primary school level, I learned even more. This time I learned to work with families that were very different than mine and those I had worked with in the past. I also spent four years in a doctoral program with inner city and rural school colleagues. This helped fill in some gaps in my understanding of the challenges and rewards of working in different settings.

If I stayed a high school teacher, I might be a very different person today. Less empathetic, less understanding, less educated, and less caring – not because I wanted to be those things, but because I didn’t even know how different it was to work anywhere else or be with people who were different than me.

Making a Bigger Leap

I left the school district I worked in for 22 years to become an Assistant Professor of Education at a private college. The shift from K-12 education to higher education taught me some important lessons too. I was still teaching – just older students. And there were still faculty meetings that could mostly have been handled in a memo.

What I learned was that I definitely couldn’t stand the private college “show” and how they spent money. I looked for jobs in public universities and felt much more at home in the two colleges I taught at over the next few years. I taught my first transgender students (that I knew of) there and had more diverse students and colleagues than I had ever had before. It didn’t make teaching any different – but it made me happy to be around people that didn’t all look and think like me.

More and More Learning

Now that I get to choose if I work and the places I work, I am excited to keep learning new things around new people. I just finished a 10-week short-term teaching job in a very small school district. With less than 200 kids in the high school, I got to know a lot of them in my short-time there.

Kids in this school seemed to look out for one another more than in the other schools I’ve worked in. I think that when you are with the same 40 kids for 13 years, getting along matters more.

I also do some work with high school students online. One of my students this year lived in a half-way house and had two babies. She was determined to pass her class and graduate to go on to nursing school. I loved her determination and late-night emails. Many of my other students are in alternative education placements (they don’t handle regular high school settings well or have discipline problems.) Online learning gives these students more options to take a variety of courses in a setting that meets their needs. Without this job, I would have missed working with older students in challenging situations.

Taking Something from Each Experience

If you haven’t had the chance to work in a different setting or with a different group of people, I hope you see how it can help you reflect and think differently – from both good and not so good experiences. It would have been fine to stay in my very first classroom and teach for 30+ years but I think I’m a better person for the job changes I’ve made and the experiences I’ve had.

*Update! I’m starting a new job tomorrow! 9/4/18 – new city, new grade level. Post coming soon! Rounding out my career Pre-K through working with doctoral students. I’ll be teaching MIDDLE SCHOOL until Christmas! Covering for a woman on maternity leave!

What have you learned from changing jobs or careers? How did you grow?

Two Years of Blogging, Not Making Much Money But Richer Than Ever

June 3, 2018 by Make Smarter Decisions 42 Comments

Things have been quiet on the blog the last month or so because I have had to prioritize my time. When I chose to take a teaching job for a few months, this was in addition to working with some student teachers. These jobs both give me service credit in the New York State Teachers Retirement System.

Since I have four years until I can start taking my pension, I am trying to maximize my service credit and hit a milestone of 30 years of service. Without hitting that milestone, I will earn about $14K less per year in retirement. But I’m also trying to earn credit while being able to travel, enjoy winters in Florida, and work only “seasonally” when we are in New York when school is in session.

And if you add in working with Amy from Life Zemplified to start two new websites since early March and you can probably see why I had to make choices about what I could get done and still get some sleep each night 😉

What are the websites? Women Who Money answers money questions in informational posts. We also post reviews of books, podcasts, apps, and various products we believe our readers will benefit from. We “level” our content to try to help readers no matter where they are on their money journey! We also have pages that include over 550 women’s personal finance blogs, podcasts, and personal finance businesses on the site. We control the content on Women Who Money and we strive to write evidence-based posts that readers can trust.

Our other site is Women’s Money Talk. We bought the two domains at the same time thinking that one site would be informational and the other site would be story-based. Amy and I curate women’s personal finance articles to be featured on Women’s Money Talk. We also have a great collaboration and share posts with Ty from Camp FIRE Finance! Check out our blog and podcast feed and scroll through the latest blog posts and podcasts by awesome ladies writing or talking in the personal finance space.

My Takeaways from Two Years of Blogging

Since I just realized last week was the two-year anniversary of my blog, I thought I’d take time to talk about what I’ve learned. I started my blog as a way to share what I learned about decision-making in my doctoral program. I wrote a number of posts that included a decision-making framework people could use as a model and I talked about how we used it numerous times to help make smarter decisions.

I also offered free coaching services to readers to help them make tough decisions when they were struggling with what to do. In two years, I volunteered time to help eight people. Some of the decisions I coached people on were making decisions about relocating, changing jobs or careers, and returning to school to further their careers.

It was awesome working with each person and I hope I brought value to their decision-making process. I’ve now decided to charge for my services after a free consultation. It’s nice to volunteer time when I have it but time is at a premium right now.

I’ve made a few hundred dollars on the blog from affiliate links from products I have used and recommend. This has covered my Siteground hosting costs and the fees from Sucuri to keep my website from being hacked again. And yes, those are affiliate links. You don’t pay more when you use a link but I get a small percentage of any purchase you might make or a small set affiliate fee.

Transparency is an important part of blogging. And with the new GDPR regulations (from Europe), I have also updated my privacy policy. My guess is you’ve received emails about this from other businesses you subscribe to recently too. I won’t spam you or sign you up for anything you don’t want. Honestly, I don’t even know how to find email addresses you entered to get this post. Clearly, the technical part is not my thing!

There are some bloggers who are wildly successful and make thousands or tens of thousands of dollars each month. But if you are thinking that you can make money easily on your blog, you really need to think again. Is there a chance you could make it big in blogging? Sure. But I could have made thousands of dollars working a part-time job or put more effort into starting a business. But that’s not why I started it in the first place, so I’m pleased that it has paid for itself.

So how am I richer if I’m not really making any money?

My life is richer because of the people I’ve met and the places we’ve gone since I started the blog.

The first year I mainly wrote content, coached people, and tried to make sense of blogging. And I did that as I worked full-time – which didn’t leave much energy to do other things.

What’s really amazing is what has happened in the last nine months.

We traveled to Longmont, CO and attended the PopUp Business School at Mr. Money Mustache’s headquarters. We have 80 new PopUp friends from all over the country and a few other countries too! And I regularly talk to four women I met their as we work to define our businesses and futures. We’ve also met up with other PopUp attendees in Florida and in New York this winter and one of the cofounders of PopUp and his wife stayed with us for a few nights in Florida too.

Our Younger Next Year Facebook group was created because of Twitter discussion I was having with a PopUp attendee. Somehow I got into a conversation the PopUp friend and Jonathan Cheveraux – one of Canada’s leading financial gurus. He runs the Financial Independence Hub and has authored two books – Findependece Day and the Victory Lap. The second one he wrote with Michael Drak who is also in the YNY group. We went and met them both as we celebrated Jonathan’s 65^th birthday last week – an OAS (Old Age Security) check party in Toronto! (A 3-hour drive for us.) Really terrific people with similar goals for the future – living as healthy as we can, for as long as we can. We also had another YNY FB member meetup in Florida this winter too! If you want to join a fun group, come and hang out online with us! We’re 465 members strong now too!

And we can’t forget the four days in Dallas at FinCon last October. I won’t name who we met and hung out with those days (because there is NO way to include everyone!) But they were one fine group of people! And after hanging out with them in person, I can tell you they were as great as they are online. We’ll be heading back to FinCon this year too. More fun times ahead!

One couple we missed at FinCon were the bloggers behind the awesome blog, Freeom is Groovy. They couldn’t make it so we dressed up to be them at the FinCon Halloween party! But we did catch up with them in person this spring on our drive back from Florida. And as you might have guessed, they’re pretty groovy people. I’m glad our path to Florida will take us right by their soon to be Groovy Ranch. I’m thinking we’ll be dropping by for some visits!

In addition to chatting with Amy a number of times most days about our two new websites, another blogger I message with often is “Penny” from She Picks Up Pennies. Penny is a teacher, so we certainly have a lot to talk about! And if you don’t follow her, you should. She is bright, articulate, caring, witty and she’s making a difference. You’d all be lucky to have a Penny in your circle of friends.

I’ll probably need to add a Part 2 to this when I realize I’ve missed some key people! That’s one of the problems with naming names. But it’s also the beauty of having SO many amazing experiences this last year.

If all of that happened in 9 months, what does the future hold? We can’t wait to find out!

So if I missed you – I apologize! And I hope you’ll forgive me because I’ve been writing this post for a week and I need to hit publish tonight. And I have to get up to teach at 5 am…. Six more school days and I’ll hopefully get back to posting here more frequently. But the kids come first right now. Priorities you know. They get the best me everyday because they deserve it.

More soon and I hope you are all well!

Photo Credit: dlritter@freeimages .com

Our First Year Snowbirding – Feeling Like Residents Not Vacationers

April 9, 2018 by Make Smarter Decisions 25 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. See the full disclosure here.

We just returned to New York after spending part of the winter as snowbirds in Sarasota, Florida. With both kids off to college, this was the first year we were able to spend more than 5 or 6 days in a row at our condo near Siesta Key!

After our lake house remodel was finished in January, we moved into the house and then headed south! We spent most of Feb, March, and the first week in April enjoying the Sunshine State. We did fly home a few times so that I could work with student teachers; a job that is helping me accrue more credit in the retirement system.

I explained a little bit more about my $14K/year retirement system issue in my last post, I Just Took a Teaching Job – No Fooling. And I started the maternity leave teaching job today. It was the first time I’ve been in a high school classroom teaching in 17 years! But it’s not a tenure-track position and I’ll be done June 22nd. There are no more full year jobs in my plans at this point!

But today I’ll focus on the time we spent in Florida and explain some of the positives and negatives of feeling like residents not vacationers!

What was great?

The weather. No surprise on this one! We endured below zero, nasty winter conditions in New York in December and January (while living in a not very insulated cottage!) So sunshine and warm temperatures felt better than we could have imagined. We saw a light rain twice and the temperatures ranged from the mid-60’s to the upper 80’s! But most days were 75-80 and sunny. EXACTLY what we like.

The pace. After being stuck inside and working in New York most of the winter in past years, vacations meant getting outside! We always felt like we needed to be out enjoying every minute our of our vacation. If it was sunny, we felt pressured to be at the beach or pool, out on a bike ride or taking in some local attraction.

This year, we did a lot of the same things but without the stress of maximizing every minute of the day. We walked for miles (in our quest to be Younger Next Year) and came home enjoyed coffee and breakfast (oatmeal for you YNY friends!) We’d do some work and then ride bikes. And then we’d just do whatever we felt like doing. The stress of getting in every last minute of “vacation” was gone.

More visitors. We always felt like visitors, so having people come and visit us only happened a few times over the 5+ years we’ve owned the condo. This year, we had company every couple of weeks! It was SO much fun to show people the area where we live. These weren’t long visits, but it still allowed us to connect and see family and friends, including those we met last fall in Longmont at the PopUp Business School!

Meeting people. In Disconnecting to Make Connections, I shared that I was really trying to meet more people in our condo association. My goal was to be able to say hello to people by name, rather than becoming good friends at this point. We also had a wonderful Easter dinner with 50 people from the association in the club room of the condo property. And I did get to meet one of our Younger Next Year group members for a great hike too!

What were the problems?

The mail. We ran into a few issues with the getting our mail forwarded to the condo, but we kind of expected that. It took almost two weeks for the mail to get to us and now that we’re home, it’s still going to take that long to get it re-routed. It wouldn’t be a problem, but a few of our small local municipalities still do everything by snail mail. And they don’t have long periods between sending the bill and the due date. We also have some rents being paid and a few side gig checks that come in the mail. The waiting game is on. I have notes all through my calendar to make sure the bills and checks actually show up.

We may look into an alternative like the Traveling Mailbox this fall. That way, no matter where we are – we can get our mail (as long as we have data or an internet connection.) If you have other ideas, let me know!

Healthcare worries. We are working very hard at staying healthy, but things happen. There is an option through our health care called the “Home Away” program, but we weren’t gone long enough to use it. It would assign us a primary care doctor in Sarasota and we would have coverage. But we still wouldn’t have coverage (other than ER care) if we were traveling anywhere else. We’ll probably try that next year, but we still have worries about traveling and health coverage. Again, any ideas? It’s on the summer list of things to look into!

Homeowner issues. We used to own 16 toilets, but after selling our house – we only own 14! And even though none of those leaked, one of our showers in the condo started leaking on our neighbor downstairs. We caught it early, but we had to quit using it and rip it out. We knew we’d have to do it eventually, but when you own property – there’s always something to fix!

Lack of time. Even though we were there for a couple of months this year, there were still SO many things we didn’t get to see or do. So even though I was happy with our pace, I still had hoped to do a few more things in Sarasota. We never went to the Farmer’s Market or the beautiful library a few miles away. And we’d like to get more involved and volunteer in the community. We’re looking forward to seeing and doing a lot more next year!

And we even have one “neutral” point to share! TRAFFIC!

The only reason we are neutral on this is that we chose a condo within walking or biking distance to anything we needed and most of the things we’d ever want to do during peak season. Siesta Key Beach has been named the #1 beach in the country on and off for the last decade. And people have found it!

If you want to get to the turquoise waters and white sugar sand from mid-February through mid-April, you have to go first thing in the morning or you won’t find a parking spot. We walk or ride our bikes, so it doesn’t bother us at all. It’s all about location, location, location!

We hope that spring will come to the northeast soon! We hit snow starting in Virginia on our way back from Florida on April 7^th! And it was 22 degrees when I went to school today. Trying to be patient but we’re ready for nicer weather here too!

Thanks for reading about our first-year snowbird adventures! If you have any questions, just let me know in the comments. I think it was a lot like “slow travel” and I’m going to read more from people who post about that to see if our experiences were at all similar.

Are you facing a major life decision? Maybe “analysis paralysis” is preventing you from moving forward? Or are you just plain stuck and need advice?

We’re Still Here

Deciding to Stick It Out