Planning the Next Stage

Before we get into all the knitty and gritty - we best do the knitty, which hasn't been much - just a couple of beanies for birthdays ..... one orange one for young Layla  and an order for a minion beanie from my nephew in New Zealand finished off the 5 birthday beanies for the NZ crew (unfortunately I actually forgot to take a finished photo of it, so now I'm waiting for it to arrive so my sister can get a photo of it for me!

My brain feels exhausted at present with so much stuff that's been going on, especially this past week ...... but that's just how it is sometimes when you have

The Garden Dad did outside his Unit in Yarrawonga

several things in the planning stages that are beginning to move forward.  Dad's unit finally went unconditional on Friday afternoon at 1 minute past 5pm!!! So settlement for the sale on his Unit in Yarrawonga will be on 30th November  (yes, the one he moved into in April this year)
........ and the purchase of the Serviced apartment at Janoah Gardens in Brisbane will be happening at the same time.  With settlement so close, we have had to book the removalist who will collect his furniture on 29th Nov with delivery to Brisbane on 1st December.  I will be accompanying Dad up - we plan to fly out of Albury and get a direct flight to Brisbane on the 30th with me staying for just a couple of days to help get him unpacked before I fly back home on the 2nd ready for work after that weekend.

  So with Dad pretty much set, our planning for retirement has continued.  

Native Blue Banded Bee on our lavender

 Unless you already are mortgage free, or have a very healthy superannuation or other funds available - planning for retirement is a tricky business that takes time.  We began thinking about mortgages in serious terms a couple of years ago, and even with paying close to twice the amount we really need to each week, its still going to take another 6 and a bit years to pay off the mortgage here at this current rate. When we moved here 6 3/4yrs ago, we had thought the sale of the house in Townsville would have happened straight away and the price the agents had given us, meant that this house here would have been left with just a very small mortgage.  Unfortunately the Townsville place took 5 years to sell, had renters in that wrecked so much we had to replace carpets, fix gates and tiles etc, the housing market in Townsville crashed and then it finally sold for $50,000 less than what we paid for it - leaving us in quite a financial predicament, that has taken a lot of hard work to climb out of!   So now,  as one does, we get up, dust ourselves off and  get on with  planning out the next chapter ...........    

As you might remember from the previous post, we completed our secret squirrel business ....... and continued with negotiations when we got back.  We are now close to settlement on our investment house in Maryborough.......... very close, in fact settlement occurs on the 17th November (can you believe it's actually getting settlement before Dads unit - mostly because of all the mucking around initially and change of contract with Dad's unit which has drawn things out a bit)...........
And now with all of those 2 main pieces pretty much taken care of we have had to make another big decision.  Between now and April is the best time for selling houses in Bundalong as many people come up regularly from Melbourne during that time and it's become quite the place for them to have holiday houses ........ so yes, we've decided to put our house here up on the market and just see what happens, see where the market really is and get some feed back.  It would be lovely for Pete to be able to retire sooner rather than later, but that will all depend on when we sell here ......... so it's a wait and see here in Bundalong.   At least the garden is looking nice and the house and yard have changed quite a bit since we bought it on 26th March, 2010

And here it is now ............. with Solar, water tanks, gardens etc etc