Retired, Moved to Florida & Keeping Busy!

by Sally Ann
(S. Florida)

We have kept ourselves very busy in retirement- maybe too busy! I retired about eight years ago from my work with the government, and my husband has just joined me in retirement in the last year.

We have taken on two major projects so far in our retirement. We sold our home back up North and bought a condo in Florida. Both needed a lot of renovation, so a lot of our time has been spent researching renovation options, learning how to do a lot of the work ourselves, or supervising the people we have hired to take on big projects like the kitchen.

We aren't big volunteers so far in our retirement, but we do enjoy a lot of different social activities. For instance, I frequently go to garage sales with other residents of our condo, and we have a potluck dinner afterwards. Since we also own a motor home, we are planning to travel to Southern Florida later this month to join a motor home rally.

Since we are now living in a warmer climate, our home is also a great destination for our friends and family to come visit. We have visitors come stay with us every two week or so, usually for about a week at a time.

They like having a break from the cold weather, and we like the social aspect of it. Our children and grandchildren come down once or twice a year, and we occasionally travel back up north to see them.

Despite our lower incomes now that we're retired, we actually find we tend to eat out more. Here in Florida, lots of restaurants will set up great Early Bird discounts, so we can eat out very inexpensively.

Eating at 4:30 pm doesn't annoy us as much as it once did, especially since we now try to get to bed a bit earlier than we used to.

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