Spiky Bugger
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2014
- Messages
- 6,314
A year ago, we moved about 300 miles from our then-long (for us) -term home to a town where we had lived almost 30 years earlier.
Small town, few big city problems, you figure out right away which tradespeople show up as promised and which are just confused all the time.
HOWEVER...
The population is older and it's easier to get to the big city than it was 30 years ago, so most of the little Mom & Pop stores closed and were replaced by junkier places. I don't foresee any growth here in the near future.
And...it didn't occur to me until we moved that EVERY time we need an ENT or GI doc or a Uro, it's a 20-60 minute drive each way, each time, for every doctor's visit...and those only increase in frequency as we age. And driving while on pain meds or being a passenger after a fecal transplant is not a great idea. (I'm nagging my BFF who is 76 years old and lives in the woods of Wisconsin and needs a 90 min. drive each way to the doctor, often on icy roads, on this very topic. By insisting we "age in place" we put ourselves at risk. Her situation is worse than mine.)
To make THIS place, the bathrooms especially, handicap accessible--we just spent 10 years watching my mom age and die and accessible bathrooms are a HUGE issue in being able to stay at home, and we already know that some day Mr. Sue will need back surgery and I'm always limping around here for one reason or another--we will need to spend MANY thousands of dollars and a month in a hotel. We may not have thought this through very well.
If we move to the next town over, we will be MUCH closer to the resources we seem to need...and, we can generally get MUCH more house for the same money. (That town is still recovering from the housing meltdown, our smaller town didn't suffer as much.) The Senior Center there is the Ritz Carlton compared to what we have here, which is a lot like an Army mess hall. We can eat at the nice place...we have different dietary restrictions...probably half the days in the month, for $1.50 each. It's like a restaurant...enter, be seated, choose your dining option, get served, they clear the plates. (Why eat there? It's easier to get variety. I don't like making a pork roast or roast turkey or rib roast for two. And in case HE'S jonesin' for lasagna and we go on lasagna day, they have an adjacent cafe where I can buy hardboiled eggs and cheese slices and such.). And they have lots of fun classes and activities. Yes, we can drive there, but that would cost us about $5-7 per day, which is why we go now only when we have appointments nearby. Otherwise, it's just silly to spend $7 to go to the $1.50 lunch.
But, of course, three percent of our cost of THIS house was commissions...and we'd pay that again to sell and again to buy in the next town. Or we could buy there and rent this one out for ALMOST enough to cover our expenses. The other town is not a quaint little village...crime rate is higher...but it is also NOT the dump it was 30 years ago.
And here...Himself has what I call his playhouse, which is a 17 x 20 "workshop," where he can hide from me.
We JUST moved. We don't want to move. But we don't want to spend, say, $40k (I'm making this number up) on a *house that will never be worth that much more.
What to do, what to do....
*This should say that I don't want to spend $40k on an improvement that will not increase the property value more than, say, $15-20k.
Small town, few big city problems, you figure out right away which tradespeople show up as promised and which are just confused all the time.
HOWEVER...
The population is older and it's easier to get to the big city than it was 30 years ago, so most of the little Mom & Pop stores closed and were replaced by junkier places. I don't foresee any growth here in the near future.
And...it didn't occur to me until we moved that EVERY time we need an ENT or GI doc or a Uro, it's a 20-60 minute drive each way, each time, for every doctor's visit...and those only increase in frequency as we age. And driving while on pain meds or being a passenger after a fecal transplant is not a great idea. (I'm nagging my BFF who is 76 years old and lives in the woods of Wisconsin and needs a 90 min. drive each way to the doctor, often on icy roads, on this very topic. By insisting we "age in place" we put ourselves at risk. Her situation is worse than mine.)
To make THIS place, the bathrooms especially, handicap accessible--we just spent 10 years watching my mom age and die and accessible bathrooms are a HUGE issue in being able to stay at home, and we already know that some day Mr. Sue will need back surgery and I'm always limping around here for one reason or another--we will need to spend MANY thousands of dollars and a month in a hotel. We may not have thought this through very well.
If we move to the next town over, we will be MUCH closer to the resources we seem to need...and, we can generally get MUCH more house for the same money. (That town is still recovering from the housing meltdown, our smaller town didn't suffer as much.) The Senior Center there is the Ritz Carlton compared to what we have here, which is a lot like an Army mess hall. We can eat at the nice place...we have different dietary restrictions...probably half the days in the month, for $1.50 each. It's like a restaurant...enter, be seated, choose your dining option, get served, they clear the plates. (Why eat there? It's easier to get variety. I don't like making a pork roast or roast turkey or rib roast for two. And in case HE'S jonesin' for lasagna and we go on lasagna day, they have an adjacent cafe where I can buy hardboiled eggs and cheese slices and such.). And they have lots of fun classes and activities. Yes, we can drive there, but that would cost us about $5-7 per day, which is why we go now only when we have appointments nearby. Otherwise, it's just silly to spend $7 to go to the $1.50 lunch.
But, of course, three percent of our cost of THIS house was commissions...and we'd pay that again to sell and again to buy in the next town. Or we could buy there and rent this one out for ALMOST enough to cover our expenses. The other town is not a quaint little village...crime rate is higher...but it is also NOT the dump it was 30 years ago.
And here...Himself has what I call his playhouse, which is a 17 x 20 "workshop," where he can hide from me.
We JUST moved. We don't want to move. But we don't want to spend, say, $40k (I'm making this number up) on a *house that will never be worth that much more.
What to do, what to do....
*This should say that I don't want to spend $40k on an improvement that will not increase the property value more than, say, $15-20k.
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