Weighing risks of giving up current situation and moving to Maine (insurance, home)

[Spanky25]

[quote=citychik;58852010]I just moved to Maine from NYC, after dreaming and fantasizing about it for nearly 20 years. I am not made of money, and I am no spring chicken. But I had a choice between stagnation and change. I was unhappy with my living situation for a long, long time. Since change is the only absolute in life and the best chance for creating happiness, I chose to finally do it and move to Maine. I was tired of stagnating and wishing for something better. You know this old saying: "Put a wish in one hand and a pile of manure in the other, and what have you got?" (this is the polite version!)

All I can say to you is this:

JUST DO IT!

Citychik,

You got out of NYC in the perfect time! LI here, can’t wait to move!
Congratulations!

[Spanky25]

Originally Posted by LarryLogger

My condo charges $750 per month HOA. That's $9,000 per year PLUS special assessments when the exterior had to be repainted or the association decided to put in new carpets in common areas.

So, your entire list is being paid for by the condo owner, as direct out-of-pocket charges.

Nothing is free, whether picking weeds yourself or paying the hired landscaper to come in and do it.

I just looked up my HOA expenses: $9,000 per year plus a $7000 special assessment in 2017 and a $3200 assessment in 2018. That's $37,200 over three years.

Granted the condos are nice but it doesn't just happen - I'm paying CASH to the association to make it so. I don't have option to defer a repair or update next year; and my only choice is to move.

You think you’d have $9,000 in annual expenses if you owned your home?

[mainebrokerman]

The real estate market is on fire
Driving prices up - not all areas
But ..
Many houses and land on the market are getting
More than asking price

Look everywhere on Craigslist ... on realtor.com
Set up a search

Get a list together of questions
For raw land. And for houses and condos.
Call town offices ask questions ..

Because thousands and thousands can now work remotely
And sooooo many want to get out of the concrete jungle


Do your research and if the property checks your boxes
Go after it ...

[kevinwindwalker]

get a sailboat and liveaboard. I have been thinking to buy a piece a land and build something on it in the future.

[YorktownGal]

What I have found funny about moving to a new area is . . . so much of the country is similar.

We moved to Austin, Texas from NYC. There were differences in scenery and climate. However, the malls had the same stores. The Barnes and Noble in Austin looked exactly like the one on the Upper Westside of Manhattan. In 1995, the big difference was HEB Central Market and Whole Foods. Back then, Whole Foods was a local Texas store. Now Whole Foods is everywhere and look exactly like HEB Central Market.

The Boston suburbs was a bigger change in terms of culture. Still the same stores, cars, style of houses as every other suburban area. Just a different baseball team!

New Hampshire is probably closer to Maine's culture. At least, closer than NYC is to Boston's culture. Even if it's not, there are the same stores and other things that will be familiar to you.

You aren't moving to another country with a different language where nothing is similar. It's more like moving around the block for a change of scenery.

You are close enough for a visit. A friend is very involved with her church. Before leaving Boston for New York, she visited New York churches to find a community. Then she brought a house close to her new church. It worked for her. You might want to look for a group - Elks, book club, meetup group, church, etc and go to a meeting before moving. You may not be best friends for life with these people, but at least, you will not be moving to a new state without knowing a single person.

[OldNewEnglish]

Thanks for starting this thread, Last1Standing....
My wife is about nine months older than I am but she's probably nine years ahead of the curve as far as my concept of planning for the future.
She'll be 60 next March; I'll be 59 this November.
We're currently domiciled in Providence, Rhode Island in a 4-bedroom, two-story 120 year old house that we bought five years ago when the market was still kinda soft.
The market value has at least doubled and since this is our only "retirement" savings plan she has started making sounds like "We need to not have a mortgage" and "This is it for us other than Social Security and if we wait too long we're gonna be stuck with a mortgage and no jobs"...
Those are the sort of sounds that get my attention.
She immediately started looking at abandoned camp grounds on the New Brunswick border and things that sounded like "Me" hacking out an existence in the wilderness as I lurch into my sixties.
Lurching back INTO the sixties and hacking out an existence in the wilderness I wouldn't mind, but somehow that's not gonna happen.
When I realized that she's absolutely serious about this and, most frightening of all, absolutely right (!) I decided it was time to start doing what I do for this relationship....inject some realism and perhaps even a vague sort of strategy.
That's probably to do with our backgrounds.
She inherited a small fortune at the age of 18 after her mother and then, her investment-banker father died within a year of each other and she was in Boston going to Emerson but was from Los Angeles but St. Louis born.
I, on the other hand, grew up south of Boston, left home at the age of 16 because I didn't want to play the French Horn for a career and apparently didn't understand how privileged I was. I managed to survive and moved to San Francisco at 19 to join my girlfriend who was at USF and ended up going to college myself and working for Xerox for ten years among other things.
I moved back to New England in 2003, a completely different person than I would be if I had stayed in my hometown like most of the people I grew up with did.
She was living in a house on the beach, when we met that she bought 20 years earlier but other than that, she had a lot of help incinerating her trust-fund just in time to turn 45 and, of course, that's when we met.
We've been married for ten years now so this apparently works but this last act has to be a real scene-stealer, as in, if we blow it,....
Her cafe business has not exactly flourished through this coronavirus scenario and if that tanks, who's hiring 60 year old managers...at the top of the pay scale expectations?
I, however, am working remote from home doing data engineering work and I can work from anywhere I can get the old VPN fired up.
If I need to pop into the office once a month when we started working in offices again which might be in a FEW YEARS...well, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.
So, other than moving even further away from my 85 yr old mom (she lives with my younger bro, so lucky her and lucky him), I guess I don't have a problem not living in the middle of a city.
My social days seem to be over.
My rock band days are long over.
Since she runs a restaurant, basically, she doesn't even hardly ever want to go out to eat, so that's not gonna be missed.
And actually, I wouldn't mind having a little land or a barn or two car garage and , of course, no mortgage.
We're thinking that a college-town sort of place would suit us best.
Normally, I tend to live in the state capitol or close to it.
Sacramento is the state capitol but no one knows why. It's exactly the sort of place you don't want to be in my humble, yet flawless opinion.
I've never been to Augusta but I've been to Portland and I've been to Machias when I was a lobster-buyer.
Selling a place and then trying to buy a similar place in Portland would just leave us with a larger mortgage so there's no advantage.
She's taken a liking to Waterville which looks fine to me.
I'm on here, obviously, and I'm checking online for houses in Belfast, Unity, etc...
Places that aren't too far from "civilization" which means, to me, a hospital, a pharmacy, 99% reliable highspeed internet, actual roads that get plowed, electricity, water, sewer perhaps, ....the normal stuff.
I don't even mind a little crime as long as it entertaining and victimless...
I do know what you mean as far as being intimidated by all this and not being as young as you once we're.
I don't need a quartermile driveway to shovel.
I don't want to need a large 4wheel drive truck, and a snow machine, and a gun...just to get through a winter.
I'm starting to have trouble with stairs, to be honest, and I'm not planning on getting stronger and more vigorous as I age where as she isn't concerned with those things because they aren't things she would ever deal with to begin with.
Anyway, it will be interesting, the next few months.
She wants to do this.
I don't want to do it in the winter.
I don't think the real-estate markets are gonna crash before next year but after that, these days, who knows what's gonna happen.
I'm starting to get a real serious "Nixons' second term after a landslide victory" kinda feeling about things. Remember that?
In November '72 he wins re-election in a landslide; Six months later...not so much. One year later, holy crap!
If we're in for a 21st Century version of that, then I definitely get a little concerned.
I wasn't exactly expecting the final chapters of my life to resemble the final chapters of a dystopian "future-shock" type novel about the end-times or whatever's next.
Thanks again for the thread and let's wish us all some good luck.

[phoebesmom]

OldNewEnglish, Waterville sounds like a good destination for you both. The real estate will be more affordable than Belfast and there will be nice houses with what you want, without the ruggedness that you don't want. I would avoid Unity as I don't think there is enough there for your liking, and the future of the college is in question, from what I have heard.

[Zymer]

Originally Posted by OldNewEnglish

I don't need a quartermile driveway to shovel.
I don't want to need a large 4wheel drive truck, and a snow machine, and a gun...just to get through a winter.

I tried to shovel my not-quite 1/4 mile drive, after a 2' snow dump when my plow guy didn't show up (again). Forget it, ain't happenin'. Early morning to well after dark, still only managed to get 2/3 of the way to the road. Bought a 4x4 and a plow, much better.


Less time and effort, and more fun, to plow my .2 miles than to shovel the 50' drive I had before.


Don't 'need' a gun, not much crime to speak of, but it's handy to have.


Spectrum coming next month, to run a 100Mbit line to the fiber out at the road.


Much more peaceful and quiet here, than WTVL.


But, you won't have to go far outside the city to find peace and quiet, if you want it.

[Submariner]

I have a small deisel tractor with a front-mounted snowblower on it. That I use once the snow has built up a bit, and if I have a solid base layer of ice underneath the snow.

Typically the first couple of snow storms will be 3 to 4 inches and the ground is still warm. For that snow, I will drive a car up and down the length of our driveway 3 dozen times to pack it all down. If it does not just melt and soak in, then it will freeze in place and begin to form a base layer. Sometimes after the first couple of snows, we will see another warm spell, and it all melts away. But other times, if it stays cold then that base will last.

If the ground is thawed when I run my snow-blower it will attempt to lift the gravel on my driveway. But if there is a solid base under the snow, then I will only lift the snow.

It is common to see a mid-winter warm spell that melts all our snow & ice. So I must go back to packing it down with a car, in the hope of forming another base layer.

[OutdoorLover]

OldNewEnglish - some people prefer to live well back in the woods, it sounds like that's not what you're after. Never fear. There are *plenty* of houses in Maine sited on smaller in-town lots. It is a big plus to have a garage, ideally attached, for the car(s) and a snowblower,. And you can do your own modest-sized driveway and sidewalk with a snowblower in half an hour or less, and the machine does most of the work. If you want to, you can normally even contract with someone in town (who normally own a pickup or a tractor with a plow blade) for the whole winter, to come by after every significant snowfall and clear at least the driveway for you. That's 5 minutes with one of those machines.