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We agonized about the mail situation for months before we discovered mail receiving services. You can google them - we use one in Miami. They charge you a nominal amount per month to receive anything you have forwarded to them, or you can use the personal address they will give you to change your address to that, and all the mail you get will come there just as if that were your home. You can see online every time a piece of mail arrives there - they take a picture of the envelope which is usually enough to identify it - and you can decide when to have it sent. They charge per pound, one ounce is the same as one pound to mail, so it is economical to let it pile up until you have a pound's worth. It has saved our sanity because we trundle back and forth between 3 places during the year. We forward things when we are going away; but some things we have actually changed the address to that Miami address. You can have the mail sent to you anywhere in the world.
Good advice here. What do people do about clothes and other items needed for everyday life? Do you buy for each place or do you transport it all? Do you fly and have auto/s transported? I would not want to drive from NY to Fl and back each year.
I have summer wear at my Arizona house and winter wear at my Alaska house. What I use in both places fits in one suitcase. Everything else is pretty much duplicated. We also have a vehicle for each house and a third vehicle that goes back and forth.
One of the complications is the decision to own or rent, of course. From the responses here it is clear why many own. How do folks who rent manage clothing and transportation and all of the other daily necessities of a household? We want to rent because of the freedom to travel to different locales, but it seems logistically prohibitive.
Renting gets too much like throwing money away, we feel. You are getting no interest on your money now, so if you have money to spare, putting it into the purchase of a place at least means you will get SOME return on your investment ultimately (and the enjoyment of it rather than just looking at bank statements), rather than throwing it all away on rentals. In a time of higher interest rates, this would not be as good a solution. Other people may present other rationales, but this one works for us.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Originally Posted by ndcairngorm
Renting gets too much like throwing money away, we feel. ...get SOME return on your investment ... Other people may present other rationales, but this one works for us.
If I have $300k tied up in a 'house' / personal residence. That same Capital Expenditure represents $3,000 / month income if invested correctly. Can I rent the equivalent place to live for less than $3k / month? (likely)... If so, I am better off investing the capital and use the extra income to rent wherever I happen to desire to live.
That's my rationale.
But... it is never that simple.
Sometimes there is 'appreciation' on your primary residence
Some people prefer the 'security' of owning
Diversifying investments is VASTLY more important than saving a few bucks a month renting / vs owning.
Home is HOME and owning it means you can likely STAY forever. (+/-)
Some like to travel / try different cultures and locations,
renting is certainly not bad, just a different way than 'the usual' (in USA)
Some options are owning equivalent Real Estate investments in strong performing and desirable regions, and in the future you can decide whether to buy a personal residence. One of my 94 yr old friends is quite happy with a Commercial property that he bought with proceeds from his primary residence when he was age 76. It now spins off $7,000 / month free cash flow, which provides him with many options for living / primary residence.
Snowbirding and be easily addressed with lots of flexibility by divesting your RE capital into a secure cash flowing investment (Real estate or other)
That same Capital Expenditure represents $3,000 / month income if invested correctly.
$36,000/$300,000 = 12%/year, if I correctly understand your comment. How do you achieve 12% per year income on a $300,000 without speculative investments?
Last edited by Westcoasters; 08-22-2017 at 04:27 PM..
Renting gets too much like throwing money away, we feel. You are getting no interest on your money now, so if you have money to spare, putting it into the purchase of a place at least means you will get SOME return on your investment ultimately (and the enjoyment of it rather than just looking at bank statements), rather than throwing it all away on rentals. In a time of higher interest rates, this would not be as good a solution. Other people may present other rationales, but this one works for us.
I would never buy in my country of expatriation -( I own a small property home to fall back over though if for different reasons I had to head back home) for the following reasons :
- I you buy real estate, you have to put upfront big lumps of money , for me it is inconvenient because these are my savings and I will need them to complement my modest SS retirement
- I'm unfamiliar with the local law in say Mexico or Thailand and don't want to endure a stressful ordeal studying the fine print in local law and paying solicitors not get eventually scammed
- I ike to change places, with a real estate property one is stuck in a definite location for a long time
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Renting gets too much like throwing money away, we feel. You are getting no interest on your money now, so if you have money to spare, putting it into the purchase of a place at least means you will get SOME return on your investment ultimately (and the enjoyment of it rather than just looking at bank statements), rather than throwing it all away on rentals. In a time of higher interest rates, this would not be as good a solution. Other people may present other rationales, but this one works for us.
Renting is NOT "throwing money away" -- it's paying for a place to live. What is really "throwing money away" to me is paying interest on a mortgage. People always seem to forget that if you get a mortgage to buy your house, you're throwing buckets of money away in interest payments to the bank.
I have Samsung smartcams in each of my houses. My high tech solution for monitoring temperature is to put a big patio thermometer in view of one of the cameras. I check the unoccupied house once or twice a day.
Can I ask approximately how much the camera's cost each?
Renting is NOT "throwing money away" -- it's paying for a place to live. What is really "throwing money away" to me is paying interest on a mortgage. People always seem to forget that if you get a mortgage to buy your house, you're throwing buckets of money away in interest payments to the bank.
My thought is you should not get a mortgage for a winter home if you are retired. If you cannot
afford to pay cash for it find a home you can.
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I beg to disagree
