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By Stan Hinden | August 2008
The road to my retirement had its potholes and its detours but it also had some moments worth remembering. There was the day I joined the 401(k) plan at work, the day I became eligible for my company's pension plan and the day I phoned Social Security to apply for my retirement benefits. My wife, Sara, during her career, took similar actions.
All of those decisions were significant because they helped provide us with the income we needed when we retired.
Before we retired, however, Sara and I made one other far-reaching decision: We downsized our life style. We did it by moving from our large, five-bedroom house on a suburban street to a two-bedroom condo in a high-rise building in a retirement community.
Sara and I soon discovered we were not alone; many of our new neighbors had made the same decision. Indeed, it became apparent that downsizing — even when you are enthusiastic about the idea — can be full of personal challenges.
The key fact about downsizing is that it uproots you — taking you from your familiar, even comfortable, surroundings to a new place, one which may seem quite strange at first. Once there, you have to adjust to your new community and find new friends-not always an easy thing to do.
Also, because people generally downsize when they are nearing or entering retirement, the move can add another layer of uncertainty to the lifestyle changes they may already be facing.
Sara and I debated the question of downsizing for several years before we moved. To be truthful, she was ready to go long before I was. I was fond of the house, where we had lived for more than 20 years. The area was pleasant, as were most of our neighbors.
I particularly loved the amount of space in the house, especially our full basement. It gave me lots of room to store dozens of old scrapbooks, which contained almost every newspaper story I had written since I was in the 7th grade.
Sara, on the other hand, found the house to be an increasing burden. She was working long hours at a demanding job at General Electric, leaving her little time or energy for housekeeping. I was also working long hours at The Washington Post, leaving me with even less enthusiasm for housekeeping or the frequent maintenance chores the house required.
"This house is just too much work," Sara told me time and again.
By this time, our three children had grown up and left the house to start their careers and find homes of their own. So the bedrooms that were once full of youthful activity were now empty and silent. Even our faithful beagle was gone, having died at the age of 14.
Although I didn't talk much about it, I could tell that the house was becoming more and more of a physical challenge. As the years rolled by, I found it harder to mow our big lawn, rake the tons of leaves that fell in the backyard and shovel the snow that piled up on our long driveway.
During our early years in the house, I could hire neighborhood teenagers to help us with those chores. But, in time, those kids grew up and left home. Then, their parents sold their houses and moved out. When our new neighbors moved in, they came with infants and toddlers.
Finally, there was the question of my health. When I was in my late fifties, my doctors discovered several heart blockages, which led to angioplasty. And although I recovered quickly and resumed my activities, the possibility of heart trouble in the future became a concern.
In the end, Sara won the day. Her argument went like this: "You're now 64, I'm 62. If anything were to happen to you, I'd have to sell and empty this house by myself. And if anything were to happen to me, the same thing would be true for you.
"Selling and moving," she added, "is going to take a huge effort. So, let's do it while we're still together and while we still have our health."
Finally, she said: "In an apartment, we'll have a lot less work; life will be simpler and less costly. And the apartment will be a place where I can survive if something happens to you and you can survive if something happens to me."
Sara's logic was so persuasive that I agreed to move. We began the process of selling our house and buying an apartment in a nearby retirement community, one designed for people age 55 and above.
We located an apartment quickly but we needed to sell our home to get the money to buy the apartment. That became a problem because we had put the house up for sale during a downturn in the real estate market. Homes were not selling quickly and we had to delay our move for almost a year.
As a result, we got less money for the house than we anticipated and we did not get the apartment we originally wanted. Despite that, we booked enough of a profit on the house so that we could buy the apartment (with a small mortgage) and pay the real estate commissions and fees due on both the sale and the purchase. We also paid for our moving costs and were able to buy some new furnishings.
But at the end of it all, what originally looked like a sizeable profit on the sale of the house was largely absorbed by the costs of downsizing and relocating.
Our retirement community, I should note, came with many attractive features, including a golf course, swimming pools, restaurants, an auditorium, exercise room and game rooms. In time, we came to use and appreciate many of these facilities.
Despite my original reluctance to move, I discovered there was one feature of condo living that I truly enjoyed: There was no outdoor work!
Sara is fond of telling friends that shortly after we moved to the apartment, it snowed heavily. The next morning, she says, she saw me looking out of the window at a group of workmen below shoveling the driveway. And, as she tells it, she heard me say, rather gleefully, "Well, I guess I don't have to shovel snow anymore!"
Copyright 2008, Stan Hinden. All rights reserved. Reprint permission required.
The author was compensated for writing this article by AARP Financial.
