I know this comment is very much after the fact but I would just like to offer Seattle and the greater Puget Sound area as a wonderful place to retire. I have lived here my entire life and while I have traveled extensively across the country, there is nowhere else I would consider living. First, the area is extremely scenic.......make that drop-dead gorgeous!! Anywhere you might choose to settle will provide views to mountains and natural areas and you are never more than a few miles away from water.........lots of water!! The Sound, many lakes and rivers and streams. Because of the geography (nothing here is really flat), view properties are plentiful. Any outdoor activity you are interested in - skiing and other winter sports, hiking, camping, hunting, boating, etc. - can be easily addressed without any extensive car travel. Second is the weather. Most who have never lived here have huge misconceptions about the weather. IMO, it is excellent. Never too hot, never too cold and contrary to common opinion, it does NOT rain here constantly!! In fact, total average annual rainfall in Seattle is much lower than many other places in the US. Summers are sunny and very dry........winters damp and cool and snow infrequent. Seldom a need for any A/C and no summer humidity. There are 4 distinct seasons and each offers its own attractions. And no strange weather issues that generate ferocious storms.......no hurricanes, no tornadoes and while we do exist on a major fault line, earthquakes are extremely rare. Seattle is a vibrant, active and very cosmopolitan city. Lots of cultural activities, a major sports center and a foodie paradise. Yes, it is expense to live in town but there are scores of smaller communities within easy access of the city that are far less expensive. I live across the Sound, just a quick ferry ride away from downtown Seattle but a world away in terms of a rural feel and reduced cost of living. Puget Sounders for the most part are extremely well educated, entrepreneurial, friendly, and polite and many have a very artistic bent with many smaller communities known for their support of the arts. In short, living in the Puget Sound/greater Seattle area will provide all the advantages of a big city (colleges, employment, superb medical care, museums, theatres, restaurants and shopping) combined with a very strong community feel of the smaller, more rural and very scenically located surrounding towns. What's not to like ??

A month and a half later ... I'm feeling more complacent about the driving situation. And find that I drive less than earlier (apart from the gas-cost issue!). I've been working on my substantial garden, recently ... but have pretty well run out of space, with quite a few seeds let over - but the corn's sort of spotty, so unless some of the laggards come up pretty soon, I'll be putting more corn seeds into those blank spots. And no potatoes planted, either: no room. Planning on some major travelling this summer - to Mom's family's reunion at my retired brother's farm near Regina, capital of Saskatchewan, north of ND-Montana border, with possibly visiting with some KT people en route. Plus travel to a reunion of former Korea missionaries at Methodist Conference centre at Lake Junaluska, NC, at the end of July, with a visit with my niece and family in nw GA ... and possibly a visit with a KT person or two (visited Pooh Bear, near Chattanooga, three years ago). Plus ... daughter, who recently bought home near Phoenix, tells me that I'm to visit her for 80th birthday, next Jan. Who knows ... maybe I'll stay on till spring?? I've been looking for someone who'd share two houses with me - here in Ontario in winter ... and in FL or AZ in summer ... but it seems that folks willing to agree to such an arrangement are about as scarce as ... hen's teeth (as Dad used to say). Just some more musings as I make my way through the interesting experience called "retirement" (or something). ple joyful

Hi cheery one, I'm pleased that you're happy with the "pro"s of your retirement. And somewhat sad that you're feeling that you're not keeping up to the mark of what you'd hoped/planned to do. If you feel the need to beat yourself over the back about that - make sure it's with a wet noodle ... and only five strokes, O.K? As for the "average" retiree, I don't feel that I have too much of a handle on that ... and wonder what level of expertise you may claim in that department? I think that it's important to do things that we can be pleased with ourselves for having done, at the end of the day ... week ... month ... year. Something that I note to have been scarcely mentioned in this thread so far is the need that all of us retirees have to concern ourselves about (as well as people in the workforce) is the erosion of the value of our income (and, for us retirees, our assets) due to inflation, every year for about the last 80. There hasn't been much increase in incomes in recent years, except for the wealthy few ... but the prices keep going up ... and for most of us, those prices of much of the goods and services that we buy have been and are going up faster than the official rate of inflation. When we put money in the bank, or buy bonds, etc. which pay us the same number of dollars after several years that we gave them in the first place, apart from the "rent" on the money, it isn't only taxes and living expenses that much come out of the earnings ("rent on the money"), but an allowance for inflation, as well, in order to keep the purchasing power of those assets equal in ten years to what it is now. Good wishes to you for dealing well with the days ahead: may they be as many as please you, with good health, friends, enough bucks to meet your needs, things to do and a few challenges, here and there. ole joyfuelled

No, duluth, you're not the odd one out, but you're one of the sensible ones, LOL! DH and I were sloppy about a lot of things and didn't catch on until our mid to late 40s. We're fortunate things worked out but like you, there was a pension for DH that we could rely upon. Sadly, fewer and fewer have that option any longer. Anyway, it occurred to me I hadn't actually answered some of the OP's questions, so my bad. Here's my answers: 1) At what age do you hope to retire? I retired in 2006 at age 55. DH retired at the end of 2009 at age 56. I retired because I couldn't find a job within reasonable commute distance that was worth being away from home 10 hrs/daily, 5 days/wk. Salaries had dropped precipitiously (and remain low even now). I had job offers, but they would have involved a killer commute - using my car in SF Bay Area traffic for a 3-hr roundtrip would have essentially negated any extra salary above what was being offered around my home town. Had the money been really needed, I could have continued working for another 10 yrs, just with lower $$ expectations. I enjoyed what I did and met a lot of great people, many of whom I'm still in regular contact with. A large factor in my retiring was when my MIL moved in with us. We discovered our weekly visits had not shown us the real issue - a very gradual dementia. She is functional day to day, but there's no way she should live alone any longer. Because she shares household expenses with us, it makes up for what I would have netted from a full-time job. 2) Will you stay in your current home or move? We are staying put for now. We like where we live; we love our neighbors and they love us; it's convenient in location to our friends, family, and a wide range of attractions/activities. However, this is not a home for the disabled or elderly. It cannot be retrofitted at a reasonable cost. The area is all rolling hills and our property has a double slope, making gardening a real work-out! We have no sentimental attachment to a structure of wood, stucco and glass. It is a roof over our heads, it has served us well, it is extremely comfortable having been extensively remodeled. When the time comes that it's too much trouble to take care of, which I foresee coming in the next 5-10 yrs, we will gladly pack up and leave. We would like to live in a specific CCRC we've visited, but time will tell if it will work out financially. If not, we have sufficient assets to have other options for the next phases of our lives, whether together or singly. 3) What kind of investments or income sources will you have? DH has a defined benefit pension with 2% annual COLA and full medical at low cost (no vision or dental, though). His mid-range six-figure retirement account is our backup, we don't need to take distributions. We live a very comfortable lifestyle in an extremely expensive area, entirely on his pension. The last two years DH worked were a 'trial run' for budget purposes. He was contributing extra to his retirement account so we were living on the equivalent of what his estimated pension would be. So when he did retire, there were no surprises or shortfalls. I have three small pension/annuities from former employers that will start at age 65. I'm eligible for full SocSec at 66. These income sources will mitigate any inflationary pressures in future years. Because I have almost no retirement savings, I carry term life in the amount of $750K to ensure DH would have additional financial assets through my age 70, at which point the policy expires and we won't worry about how much more $$$ he needs should I predecease him. BTW, this is what I mean about properly assessing your own morbidity and mortality risks. DH suffered a stroke at age 50 and if he lives past 75 it will be a wonderful gift. But genetics are totally against him, so his odds are at best 50-50 to reach age 85 or order. My odds are about the same or slightly better. Both of us have family histories of diabetes and heart trouble. These are no longer the killers they were, but they are disablers. We have no children and relatively few family, even locally. Therefore, we each carry very good unlimited benefit LTC policies to cover facility care and home healthcare as we age. We have had these policies since our late 40's, and buying them was the smartest thing we ever did. Once DH had his stroke, he would never have qualified for anything affordable, even if I'd been able to find a carrier, for the next five years afterward. The total premiums we've paid for both policies over ten years, don't even equal six months in a good facility for only one of us. 4) Do you plan to work part time, or what kind of activities will you do? Retirement has been great. We sleep when we want, we eat when we're hungry, we don't have to dance to anyone else's tune, and we get to do errands mid-week/mid-day, when the check-out lines are shorter and sales clerks more relaxed. I garden and like to read (Amazon knows me SO WELL). I spend a lot of time on the PC as it's my lifeline: I shop, read, research, and communicate almost totally by computer. Every day I read three newspapers on-line: the local, the NY Times, and the WSJournal. Recently we went on a 5-week driving trip through the Pacific NW and I spent hundreds of hours on the PC researching every travel segment, hotel, restaurants, and attractions. Exhausting, but the trip was a huge success and it was worth the work. I set up a restaurant review blogsite last year. We dine out regularly and my reviews are fairly long, so this helps me keep them organized. This year I've set up a travel blogsite after our five 2010 trips. I'm not in love with blogging, but did this after being asked by friends to set up something on the web so they could access everything more easily. For 2011 I plan to revamp our garden website and that will be a huge undertaking. I have thousands of photos to winnow down and organize. DH is a media junkie. It isn't uncommon for him to have two TVs on and his three computers running simultaneously. All this while he does his hobby stuff (wargaming). Talk about multi-tasking, LOL! He's a sweetie, he'll do anything I want to do. A good partnership: I like to organize and he'll accompany me anywhere. We also like to walk, but he can walk further than I can so he sometimes takes himself off to hike alone in state parks. I'm an urban walker, I like to know there's people around if I need help. We both do yoga, but different types. His former boss occasionally gives him contract work, which is easy money but doesn't happen often.