Hi everyone. I know it’s been awhile, but I wanted to wait until some things happened before giving you an update. We are staying in Columbus in a really nice city park but unfortunately, we are only booked in a site until June 7th. At that point we can go to one of the much less nice first come first serve sites or move to another campground. We have checked out two others though and I wasn’t crazy about either of them so for now we are staying put and seeing what happens.

Our time has been taken up by family visits, Lee’s working pretty steadily, and my taking a work trip to Dallas. Around those things though we are really trying to find our way through the next big transition. Talking about coming off the road brings out big feelings in both of us and we have been talking about it in little spurts over several weeks. This left me feeling very overwhelmed and while I was in Dallas, I decided to put together a power point presentation with pros and cons of the different options. It worked for me and was a great jumping point for more conversation when I go back so I thought I would share it here.

Based upon the above we decided to eliminate renting a house or an apartment. One of the appealing parts of stopping traveling is having space of our own and we both felt we needed to own to get the most from that. That leaves full-timing and while I was in Dallas I had a serious conversation with my boss about the necessity of being on camera and whether that was a job requirement. The short answer is no although it is definitely preferred, but I walked away from the conversation feeling like if we wanted to we could start traveling again.

Simultaneously though we have enjoyed being back home for a variety of reasons and Lee has been in high demand for work here. So, I thought it was time to at least see what was out there, so we started with a looking for place 30 minutes from downtown Columbus. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in our price range that we really liked and after a couple of serious conversations we expanded the map to what you see below. This is an hour range and really opens up rural Ohio which is cheaper and frankly I prefer anyways. Then we started to see more choices and decided to take the next step.

A cousin of mine is a real estate agent, and she has been super helpful in getting us started. I also reached out to my brother-in-law who works in mortgages, and he hooked me up with someone to work through getting a mortgage. It’s been 25 years since I went through the headache of buying a house and frankly things have not improved. Working with family does make it easier though because at least you are talking to people you trust.

Buying rural property has extra concerns that you won’t find in a city and the last thing I want to do at this age is make a mistake. I am looking at this as our last home purchase and would like something I really like and Lee and I both agree if we can’t find it we will walk away and start traveling again. My other challenge is I want a loan that I can pay off before retiring in 9 years so a 10- or 15-year loan is all I am willing to do. Although the interest rates are lower the costs are considerably higher especially since we are not putting a lot down. I can at this point use my savings, but I would prefer to buy the house and pay it off and then save the retirement money for later. That way we can start traveling again when I turn 67 and retire and be in a debt free position.

At this point we are finding that the land matters more than the house, although there are limits of course. I also care very much about the small town that is nearby and we will spend the next several weekends exploring all of them and seeing what has a nice feel. We are fully aware that this might all be an exercise in futility, but I think it’s important to really see what the value proposition is on settling down. We know what we are giving up (good and bad) now we have to get a solid feel for what we will actually be getting. Since houses are selling fast here, I expect when something happens it will be quick and I promise to keep you in the loop best I can as we go along. Thanks for reading!

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