Haahahahaa! Karen this is SO funny. I'm bursting into laughter reading these posts again, and remembering writing and reading them at the time. Well done! And my favourite part about Martha Stewart dropping in with her dish towel parachute!!! WAY too funny!

Thanks for all your hard work Karen! Can't wait to read it in its entirety. Jodi-

It seems that some of us are retired but many are not quite there yet. A couple of tips from my own experience: - DO a budget. Even if you're terrible at that kind of thing (I am and we are). You need a good idea of what your real outgo is and what you are spending month to month on your personal 'splurges', which we all have. Accept that housing is an expense you will always have, whether you rent or own a home. Property taxes go up, water heaters go out, roofs leak, cars die of old age. Always assume you're going to live long enough to encounter major expenses of some sort. - ALLOW for inflation. Never mind the CPI, you know how prices increase and new taxes are passed that hit your pocketbook even if they never get included in the official statistics. - PRACTICE living on your retirement income. Don't assume your expenses will go down in retirement. That isn't automatic. Our expenses went up drastically in the first year, when we traveled extensively around the West. There were new casual clothes and shoes to buy, travel accessories we hadn't needed before, and a lot of very happy poor people got our expensive work clothes from free donations. We didn't even get a write-off: the standard deduction was bigger than our charitable totals. - ANALYZE the biggest risks to you NOT achieving your retirement goals. Is your health impaired? Does your family medical history send up red flag warnings? Have you budgeted for long term care costs? Is your home suitable for universal access, or would a broken leg make it impossible for you to manage by yourself for three months? Do you have sufficient retirement savings? Pensions or annuities? Social Security and Medicare eligibility assured? Did you work for any company long enough to be fully vested - because if you did, they should have sent you a letter at age 50 telling you how much you'll receive in a monthly annuity they purchased on your behalf, for which you are eligible at age 65....but they have to be able to FIND you to send you the letter. - MAKE new friends. Boomers are really the first generation to have defined themselves by their work, and to have made most of their friends in the workplace, not from community or church affiliations. It has been shown the happiest elderly are the ones who not only retain good social ties, but who develop new ones to replace old friends that move away or die. - IMAGINE worst-case scenarios. The Boomers I know who retired (or meant to) and got into financial troubles, didn't stress-test their assumptions. Playing ostrich with your retirement planning almost guarantees life will slap you in the face with a wake-up call at some point! Everyone has risks in their daily lives. It's your retirement, and therefore your responsibility, to figure out how to mitigate some of those risks. You can't eliminate all risk, but you CAN, and should, research how to lessen the bigger risks. For example, our biggest risk was the death/disability of a spouse. Being in our late 50's at retirement meant a sizable financial hit if one of us died or was disabled by serious illness/injury. Therefore, we mitigated that risk as best we could, in several different ways. Anticipating things going wrong means you will feel better prepared and more able to cope, if something does go wrong. Like being aware of the "Exit" signs in a theatre or on a plane, having a mental plan is very reassuring.

I have enjoyed this thread so much! I love seeing everyone's homes and where they spend there time when not in the garden. I enjoy renovating and decorating almost as much as gardening. We have an old farmhouse (first a strawberry farm, then a Christmas tree farm) we have been renovating over the last 15 or so years. It has been a labor of love! Also, I plan my garden from the windows of the house...house and garden go hand in hand for me. I couldn't have one without the other. During gardening season, my house is usually more cluttery....but my mom came for a visit and I snapped these pics yesterday before she arrived (and I had tidied up!) This is our living room, which we haven't renovated yet. This music room used to be an old porch, which was enclosed by the previous owner. The view from these french doors is of an arch set in the middle of a boxwood hedge...the future home of my Florence Bowers Pink Tea rose! The dining room is one of the rooms that is almost finished. I just had this Laura Ashley wallpaper hung which I love! Here is the little dining nook in our newly renovated kitchen. Those are Pearly Gates roses on the table :) Here is the kitchen, which we renovated in 2013. I love to bake, so I have the marble on the island. I also do a lot of dishes...hence the huge sink! The wood counters on the sink wall were made from old Douglas Fir trees on our property. The french doors look out onto the back garden. There is another set on the other side of the stove. Everyone, and I mean everyone, tried to talk me out of these doors in my kitchen. But I wanted the garden to almost be an extension of the kitchen, and when the doors are open on a summer day it is! I don't miss the cabinet space at all! This kitchen is a Gardenweb kitchen....that's how I discovered this site: during the renovation (or actually, just before). I designed it with the help of all the amazing people on the kitchen forums. Without that forum it never would have turned out so well! I would love to post more pics, but something is wrong with my computer this morning...so I will have to do it later when my husband is home :)