It’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog! Last fall, I explained how I ditched the idea of work-life balance. On top of working really hard with my business partner Amy on Women Who Money and Women’s Money Talk, I took a temporary teaching job covering a maternity leave for a science teacher.
It was a wonderful experience! But as sad as I was to leave my students, I was also excited for the “change of seasons” ahead. We left our house in New York the day after Christmas to spend our first full winter as snowbirds near Siesta Key in Sarasota, Florida.
We’re Living Here, Not Just Staying Here
Last winter, we spent a few weeks at a time at our Florida condo. But my “semi-retirement” brought us back to New York every few weeks to do some work to earn retirement system credit.
We’ve owned the condo for six years and even though we felt more like residents than vacationers last year – this year is the real snowbird deal. (You can read more about our snowbird housing plan here.) Our plan is to stay in Florida until the last week in April, so we’ll have spent four months living in Sarasota this year!
It’s hard to believe we’ve been here for 7 weeks already. We enjoyed the first few weeks here with our kids who were on break from college. And our best friends from New York vacationed just up the street from us for part of January too! It was a great kick-off to our extended stay down south.
What’s Been Easy About The Transition
To be honest, everything has been pretty easy! We drove here but we hardly use our car at all. We live next door to a shopping plaza and we can walk or ride bikes most places.
We’ll be heading up to Tallahassee to see my family a few times, but other than that – the car is usually parked. We definitely won’t need two cars if we decide to move here full-time.
I don’t have to tell you that the weather has been pretty easy to take! It was super cold in New York in January and even though we had some chilly weather here a few days, we’ve only had rain TWICE. I almost missed the rain one day and the other time it rained all day. We’ve had a few cloudy days too – but most days are bright and sunny. Just the way we like it. Temperatures have ranged from 60-80 during the day and 40-60 at night.
This week we’ve had some perfect weather – 80 and sunny. We don’t use heat or A/C either, so our utility bills are really low.
We’ve been walking an average of 5-6 miles a day, riding bikes, playing tennis, and swimming in the pool at our condo. The ocean was in the 70’s when we got here but it’s a little colder now. But not for long…
We certainly find “swimming against the tide of aging” (the main theme of the book Younger Next Year) to be a lot easier to do here in Sarasota. And since I’m leading a Facebook group of over 730 people now on the book – I need to stay in shape!
One thing we were really worried about was having health insurance coverage. Luckily our NY plan has a “away from home” option, so we filled out the paperwork and we have a primary care doctor two miles from our condo now.
I transitioned away face-to-face teaching, but I’m still teaching about 50 students in NY online. I have more students than I’ve ever had which will help build more retirement system credit. In June, I’m hoping to only need 15 months of credit to get my full pension and I’ll have 3 years to earn it. The “location-partially independent” plan is working so far!
What’s Been a Challenge With the Transition
I can honestly say that nothing has really been a challenge. We miss our friends and family in New York, but we’ll be back home in a few months. We don’t like the idea of our new house (the one we remodeled) sitting empty but we don’t owe much on it and with the kids college/work plans up in the air – we aren’t considering moving for awhile.
We’ve had to be patient about starting our condo renovations. We bought it as an estate sale and it needs plenty of work. Spending a few months here has given us a lot of ideas about what we want to do and I’m glad we didn’t rush into anything. It’s a project for another year.
We’ve disciplined ourselves to only go out once every week or two. It would be easy to spend a lot of money (and gain a lot of weight) enjoying the bars and restaurants near us. We’ll save the fun for when we have visitors – so let us know if you’re in the area!
Hiring a property manager has taken away a lot of the challenges we would have had leaving our rental properties for four months. We’ve answered one maintenance call from them and it may be one of the last calls we’ll get… (more on that soon!) We have another property in a different city in New York but the tenants have lived there for 6 years and they know what to do if there is a problem. My husband also did some preventive maintenance there before we left, so our fingers are crossed that we won’t have any problems.
We Think We Made a Smart Decision
When we thought about buying a second home, we knew it would be overwhelming to start looking at all the different cities we might like in Florida. We knew we wanted Florida because of family – otherwise, we would have had even more areas to choose from.
We think that making a ranked list of the things we wanted from our second home was the biggest reason we are happy with our decision. Our condo in Sarasota meets all of our most important goals. And that’s enough for us.
I have a ton of things I’d like to share about our properties and my semi-retirement, but I’m prioritizing my work and fun right now! If you have any questions or if you are going to be along the gulf coast, let us know!
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