Retirement in The Villages, FL
Cost & Experience of Moving into Our Final Nesting Place when We Retired
How we saved $11,400 doing some tasks ourselves and using points during the move and remodel, once we decided where to live. Retired in The Villages.
We lived in Houston for work, but we knew it was too large and costly to retire there. We sold the house, gave our furniture to Good Will, lived in a one bedroom suite at Residence Inn during the last 9 weeks of our jobs, and then took off.
The monthly expenses at Residence Inn were exactly the same as living in the house! After traveling around through Georgia, Virginia, Washington, DC, and Florida.
We sold our cars and went to Lima, Peru.
Health care was $300 per year in Lima, but it was no different than living in Houston, Chicago or any other large city. Everything was spread out and housing costs ate up any health care savings.
Five months later, we wound up in The Villages, FL which is like being in a resort but living in your own house.
The Budget Home prices vary from about $100,000 to 1.1 million depending on size and location. The last one was a bit out of our price range. We chose a 22-year-old home well below the average price posted on the Villages web site. It is about a mile from the Spanish Springs town square.
It was the only house that met all of our requirements, such as in indoor laundry, two bathrooms and less than 1500 square feet, while staying within budget. Many laundries in Florida are in the garage since it never freezes.
For a retired person, the budget is critical.
One great fear is running out of money. If you spend it now, there is no way to make it up. You can’t replace your savings with a higher salary or second job.
We had a total budget for the house, car(s), golf cart, furniture, TV, other incidentals, and remodeling. We already had our clothes and whatever would fit into the two cars and nothing else.
It was a balancing act, like every budget. We would have come within a few hundred dollars if the Fridge that came with the house had not died.
Moving In The house price dropped $15,000 the day before we saw it. That gave us enough so that we could do everything we wanted during the remodel.
After buying everything else, we had barely enough for the remodel on the house itself. The amount seemed awfully small if you watch a TV show like Love It or List It. For normal people, though, it was plenty of money if managed right. However, there was no room to go overboard or make a big financial mistake.
We remodeled every room, every closet, the garage and the lanai (it’s like an enclosed porch). We did not remodel the yard.
Structurally, the house was fine. However, everything was 22 years old, except the washer and dryer. Every room had faded wallpaper, either as trim or in the case of the bathroom and one other room, all four walls. We saved about $1,500 by removing what seemed like hundreds of square yards ourselves.
The requirements for everything else were: === > Easy to clean === > Practical, served a purpose === > Within budget
Working together, we could clean our Houston house in two hours. Most people call it “spring cleaning,” which we do weekly. It is easy if you don’t let things accumulate. This house has an additional room and we are getting older, so it takes three hours now.
The Remodel We replaced the carpets and all other flooring with ceramic tile and 4 inch tile baseboards, including the closets and the lanai. Tile is easy to steam clean. Due to allergies, we lived in the local hotel for about 2 weeks until the tile was installed, wallpaper removed and the interior was painted. The hotel counted as part of the remodel budget.
The cabinets were ok, but the counter top was scratched up vinyl. We decided on light quartz because the dark brown granite counter top in our last house hid bread crumbs! We could not see them when looking down, but from across the room, they looked like mountain peaks.
We replaced the stove with a cooktop and bought a countertop oven. We are not going to bake any turkeys and it will hold a standard sized pie. However, none of the local stores sold 30 inch cooktop cabinets with drawers. IKEA in Orlando does. One thing to remember about IKEA: You put it together. However long you think it should take, double it and you might be right.
You would think that it would have been cheaper to move the furniture from Houston. * First, we thought that we might move to Peru and did not want to move the furniture there * Second, we would have paid for storage while we were moving around * Third, we found a moving slip from the prior residents. It cost more to move than buying all new furniture and replacing everything else.
We bought most the furniture locally, along with a few things from IKEA. The new furniture fit the house better than the old stuff would have.
Do it yourself? It’s important to know what you can and cannot do yourself. The living room has a high ceiling. My wife pointed out that it is cheaper to hire professional painters than for me to fall off of a ladder and pay medical bills.
Also, most rooms have a base color on three walls and a distinct highlight color on the other wall. The painters did a better job where they came together in the corners than I would have.
We had professionals put down the tile. Later, they wanted a $450 trip charge to put 4 tiles beneath the new dish washer. A new tile wet saw cost $80 and I had watched them lay the tile. We had leftover tile, adhesive and grout. It was not quite as perfect as a professional, but it is under the dishwasher.
I then put tile baseboards on the kick plates under the cabinets (see photo), a tile back splash behind the cooktop, and tile base boards in the garage — at different times. We saved $1,720 from the $1,800 trip charges after deducting the price of the saw.
Tile baseboards prevent water from running under the baseboard and getting the sheetrock wet if we ever have a water leak. They also do not get damaged by the vacuum cleaner hitting them. The Code for restaurants in some places require tile baseboards.
We measured our clothes and redesigned the master closet to fit them using hanging shelves from the local hardware store. The store will cut the shelves for you.
My wife’s side has upper and lower bars for her tops and skorts. Her long dresses hang at the end and the corners each have four shelves for storage. My shirts are much longer and I don’t have that many shorts. I have a shelf under the shorts, but not the shirts.
I was able to double the hanging space and quadruple the shelf space. I even saved money by moving the existing wire shelf to the top.
Most reach-in closets are just deep enough for shirts to hang from one pole. They usually have two feet at each end behind a wall. Clothes get crammed in the ends never to be seen again and stuff is piled on the floor.
We put hanging shelves at each end (see photo). Nothing is on the floors, so they are easy to clean. We redesigned every closet, even the small ones in the bathroom and hallway, with about a $3,000 saving.
My wife wanted the countertop in her bathroom raised 3 or 4 inches when we replaced the countertop. The estimate was $500 and the countertop people would not do it. We needed a handyman.
I had never used a power mitre saw, but spent $120 and did the job myself. I used much better wood and steel braces. A handyman would have used pine and maybe wood bracing. The countertop installers said that it was much better than they expected.
Finally, we had the garage floor refinished and coated for easy cleaning. I painted the walls and low ceiling with a semi-gloss paint that could be washed. That was the only place where we removed the low popcorn ceiling.
We thought that we were done. Ha! A year and a half later, we decided that the stone chase that we bought to hold the microwave and convection oven just was not working. The top was not wide enough and we could not store much on the bottom shelf.
After seeing cabinets in a similar space at an open house, we decided to replace the chase with two kitchen base cabinets. None of the local stores had any pre-made cabinets with drawers that matched our design. So, we bought two kitchen cabinets from IKEA.
I forgot how long it takes to put them together. I am not used to that type of twisting and lifting! My main form of exercise is dancing on the square. Also, I forgot the primary rule of estimating time: determine how long something should take, then double it.
I thought that I would finish both in one day. I finished one the first day and the second one in half the time on the third day. On the second day, I read a romance novel and used a bunch of BENGAY. I barely recovered enough to go dancing on the square that night.
It took two more days to install them. Still, we probably saved at least $3,500, based on a Google search, by doing it ourselves instead of getting custom cabinets and having them installed.
Credit card points Our BBVA credit card lets us choose one category for 3 points per dollar, two categories for 2 points and everything else is one point per dollar. We get to change categories every three months. Points can be converted to cash at any time and applied to the credit card, except for the minimum payment.
Restaurants, hotels and airlines also have their own point programs on top of the credit card points.
We spend $60 per month in cash. Everything else goes on the credit card. We received about $500 back for the remodel and golf cart purchase. Using it for everyday purchases more than tripled that amount over the last two years.
The rebate system works best if you do not carry a balance. If you do, it becomes counterproductive. You must have the self-discipline to stay within your budget. It‘s still better than writing checks.
They would not let us buy the car on the credit card. It would have put us over the limit anyway.
Finally, everything is done with the house… we think. Of course, there is the usual maintenance, but our new lemon tree produced 3 lemons and the new grapefruit tree produced 2 grapefruits. We planted the orange tree too late to have oranges this year.
We are all settled in.