Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 22:32     Subject: Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
We did this. Moved out of a VHCOL city to be closer to grandparents. I left my high stress/high paying job. We have a bigger home but it’s a fraction of the cost of our city home.

Life is much simpler for all of us, but I miss certain things about my prior life. On balance it’s much better now.
Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 19:59     Subject: Re:Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
Anonymous wrote:We always lived comfortably but well below our means so that when we retired our expenses have actually risen with a second home, a lot of travel and an army of grandchildren. We had saved and invested very well over 35 years so our retirement savings are very high.


Well…congrats to you.
Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 19:23     Subject: Re:Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
We always lived comfortably but well below our means so that when we retired our expenses have actually risen with a second home, a lot of travel and an army of grandchildren. We had saved and invested very well over 35 years so our retirement savings are very high.
Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 17:48     Subject: Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I think it’s a lot easier to do it gradually over time than to do it cold turkey all at once. We are in the camp who did not upgrade the house and cars as the income rose. The kids activities are expensive (but will end eventually) and we do like nice vacations. But we are pretty frugal on the day to day.

If you’ve been living high on the hog for 30+ years, I can’t imagine stopping will be easy.


This is how I feel. We earn a lot and live pretty large; I think it would be totally depressing to downgrade lifestyle in any way. Thus, I'll keep grinding and probably work until late 60s so we can maintain the lifestyle we love.


That you refer to it as "keep grinding" suggests that you don't love the "lifestyle" as much as you think you do. You work is part of your lifestyle - likely the most significant part.
Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 17:29     Subject: Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
Anonymous wrote:Stay aware of fixed expenses. Many retirees want fixed expenses low so there is plenty of discretionary money in the financial plan for spurges (usually travel), maybe helping adult children w/a house purchase, and generally any unanticipated expense. For us this discretionary financial category represents 10% of our net worth. Our home that we own in full, is worth more than we would ever wish to pay for future housing. We will not upgrade our housing, not in retirement. Will not consider a second home. It is our hope that our adult children will soon enjoy a more affluent lifestyle re: housing (a fixed expense) compared to us. Going forward we don't want to consider being in the fancier house, compared to them. It wouldn't feel right. Travel, we will continue to spurge on, but that's a discretionary expense
. Why wouldn't it feel right to have a fancier house at age 55/60 than your kids who are 20-30?

That seems very backwards
Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 15:58     Subject: Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
Anonymous wrote:Before we retired we sold our single family home in the city and bought 2 condos, one at the beach and one in the city. Makes it very easy to close the door and walk away. HOA takes care of everything, packages, gardens, pool, security, maintenance.

Our life is so streamlined now, we don't really need a car as we can walk everywhere. One of our kids returned after college and we have plenty of room. We may just lend them $ to purchase something, we made plenty of money sending our house and downsizing.


DP. We are considering this setup as retirement is 3-5 years away. How many bedrooms and baths are the condos?
Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 15:53     Subject: Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
We kind of did this when we had kids: downsized our lifestyle to a much more simple one we could pay for with one full time income. It took some effort but it was completely worth it.

The challenge we've had are the head scratches we see when people hear only one of us works full time. Especially in this area, people have no idea what to talk to you about when you don't work at a job. I own a small business that brings in some money, so i have an occupation but not a job.

We never upsized our house so I suppose we'll never have to downsize? I plan on buying a second home for the family when I inherit. I love gardening and am thinking it might be nice to have more land, though I don't want to be too isolated. So, we'll see.

There's a tremendous amount of freedom in spending less. Try it now and see how it feels for you.
Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 13:58     Subject: Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
Stay aware of fixed expenses. Many retirees want fixed expenses low so there is plenty of discretionary money in the financial plan for spurges (usually travel), maybe helping adult children w/a house purchase, and generally any unanticipated expense. For us this discretionary financial category represents 10% of our net worth. Our home that we own in full, is worth more than we would ever wish to pay for future housing. We will not upgrade our housing, not in retirement. Will not consider a second home. It is our hope that our adult children will soon enjoy a more affluent lifestyle re: housing (a fixed expense) compared to us. Going forward we don't want to consider being in the fancier house, compared to them. It wouldn't feel right. Travel, we will continue to spurge on, but that's a discretionary expense
Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 13:24     Subject: Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
Anonymous wrote:Before we retired we sold our single family home in the city and bought 2 condos, one at the beach and one in the city. Makes it very easy to close the door and walk away. HOA takes care of everything, packages, gardens, pool, security, maintenance.

Our life is so streamlined now, we don't really need a car as we can walk everywhere. One of our kids returned after college and we have plenty of room. We may just lend them $ to purchase something, we made plenty of money sending our house and downsizing.


This is our dream. We have a condo in the city almost paid for and plan to use that as "home base" and rent in other cities we like as we feel inspired to do so. Walking distance and less responsibility for house maintenance are two of things to which we most look forward. Congrats!
Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 12:58     Subject: Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Before we retired we sold our single family home in the city and bought 2 condos, one at the beach and one in the city. Makes it very easy to close the door and walk away. HOA takes care of everything, packages, gardens, pool, security, maintenance.

Our life is so streamlined now, we don't really need a car as we can walk everywhere. One of our kids returned after college and we have plenty of room. We may just lend them $ to purchase something, we made plenty of money sending our house and downsizing.


Condos are not a good investment. Waste of money.


The right ones are not.

We are in a large city (not scum) and to live downtown it's condo living. We love it. The HOA fees are not that bad when you consider it includes 95% of our home insurance (we only insure our belongings the rest is under the HOA), no exterior maintenance, our gas and hot water are included, wifi also, 24 hour concierge, several public spaces to use or reserve for use for free, never have to shovel snow again, now a lawn, trim shrubs, etc

Ours holds its value and has gone up considerably, because it's in one of the top 3 luxury bldgs in the city. Walking distance to most everything .

When we moved I calculated what I used to pay for all of that and it's not that much more for the HOA fees. And a 24 hour concierge and maintenance on staff are amazing. Our maintenance guy often fixes things for us at no charge so I don't have to call a plumber/etc
Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 12:54     Subject: Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
No, we kept our small house.
Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 12:53     Subject: Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Before we retired we sold our single family home in the city and bought 2 condos, one at the beach and one in the city. Makes it very easy to close the door and walk away. HOA takes care of everything, packages, gardens, pool, security, maintenance.

Our life is so streamlined now, we don't really need a car as we can walk everywhere. One of our kids returned after college and we have plenty of room. We may just lend them $ to purchase something, we made plenty of money sending our house and downsizing.


if you don’t need a car how do you get between your two homes?


The pp obviously means they don't need a car once at either of their condos.

It's nice. We lived to city condo once kids were out of house. It's nice. I only drive to doctor appt and grocery store. And grocery store is only because I don't want to walk back 6-8 blocks with groceries--I'd walk there no problem.

Otherwise I rarely drive anymore. We only need one vehicle now
Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 12:51     Subject: Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I'm in the thick of the rat race at the moment: high stress / high paying job, expensive house, expensive kids, etc.

One day the kids will hopefully successfully fly from the nest and around that time, I'll be thinking about retirement.

The kid-related expenses would go away, as would, maybe the need for the big house?

I'm looking for tales of downsizing and simplifying the lifestyle in retirement. What has it looked like for you?


I have one kid in college and one in high school so this is becoming a reality. Also the reality is we have such a low interest rate in our home that it does not make sense to move. Also our college kid has expressed multiple times that he wants to find a job in nova and the most economical way for him to start his adult career is living back at home until he gets his feet under him. It’s just so crazy expensive for young people to get ahead that giving them the gift of a free roof over their heads until they are ready to fully handle the sky high housing prices is something we want to do for them.

Personally our house is the perfect size for a family of 4 (2400 sq feet) that if i were in your shoes i’d be downsizing locally with enough space so my kids still have a home as long as needed. But i can’t imagine living in a bigger house than I'm in now. We are in Ashburn and see so many people with these humongous homes it just seems so pointless. Do they like heating and cooling and paying taxes these gigantic caverns? in many cases over 1000sq feet go unused. seems dumb even when your kids are little.


Sounds like you are in the perfect sized home. I wouldn't sell even if a kid wasn't coming back.


Obviously you don't need bigger even when kids were smaller but it was nice and not a burden to us. We've had a 3300sq ft plus 1500 sq ft finished basement for much of kids life, then a 4400 sq ft place . It was nice for each kid to have their own bathroom and to have a 2nd family room for the teens to hang out

But as soon as last kid went to college we were out of there and I to a 2bed/2 bath place. We rent a place if needed when they come to visit
Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 09:50     Subject: Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
Anonymous wrote:I think it’s a lot easier to do it gradually over time than to do it cold turkey all at once. We are in the camp who did not upgrade the house and cars as the income rose. The kids activities are expensive (but will end eventually) and we do like nice vacations. But we are pretty frugal on the day to day.

If you’ve been living high on the hog for 30+ years, I can’t imagine stopping will be easy.


This is how I feel. We earn a lot and live pretty large; I think it would be totally depressing to downgrade lifestyle in any way. Thus, I'll keep grinding and probably work until late 60s so we can maintain the lifestyle we love.
Anonymous
Post 01/02/2025 09:16     Subject: Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?
on the other hand my in-laws just bought a huge house with one of their adult children, and it's big enough that we could spend the whole weekend there with our kid and dog.

currently we just drive out and have lunch and dinner but basically the goal is to be more of a weekend country house. the kids are talking about just keeping it even when the parents pass (hopefully many decades in the future). in the mean time it's nice that our kiddo can grow up with close-knit family nearby.

i suppose when they are done with school we might assess if we want to downsize the city house, though we designed it to be age-in-place too. hard to see that far in the future, and everyone has their own relations with Things and Space that they need to work through. My silent generation parents bordered on hoarding, and their stuff only took up more and more space as they got older. I like the ability to have things with History, but am slowly getting better about letting things go. I *could* live out of a suitcase... but why would I want to?