Vera was one of my dearest clients who late in life married a good old country boy that we’ll call Curtis. Curtis had a classic car that he’d restored over a period of time & he dearly loved that thing. Unfortunately, their house only had a 2 car garage so one of their 3 vehicles had to stay parked out in the driveway.
Usually, that meant his nice pickup truck. He longed for a house with a 3 car garage & Vera longed to retire early (she’d only just turned 50 yrs old). Circumstances happened that allowed them to sell several acres of family land & this enabled Vera to finally quit her job. She had a blast going out to lunches with the girls several times a week & giving generously to anyone in need.
Their home was gorgeous, with a great 1 level floor plan & it was more than adequate for the 2 of them. But in order to get that 3rd car garage Curtis wanted so badly, they’d have to sell their house & buy a different one. At least that was the advice they were given by a contractor or other such person in the building/real estate world whose opinion they sought when investigating building a 3rd garage bay onto their brick house.
So they wound up buying an even bigger, grander house just a few streets away from their first home. This one had a 3 car garage, a 2nd floor with many steps & cost well over $100k more than their first home. The Master Bathroom had a glass shower large enough to fit 10 people, plus the bathroom even had a gas fireplace, too! When I saw how large the house was, I wondered to myself why in the world they weren’t downsizing? Not that they were very old, but it seemed odd to go up in size & price of a house when it was just the 2 of them heading into their retirement years.
They were only in their new house maybe 2-3 months when their financial advisor came to them with hat in hand & said: “Y’all can’t afford this house & Vera has to go back to work”. I’d literally have fired him on the spot if I were in her shoes because this is the sort of information he needed to give them BEFORE she retired & BEFORE they went house hunting for a bigger 3 car garage!
So, the house went up for sale again & it sold fairly quickly. Curtis & Vera had lost moving expenses & realtors fees, which amounted to several thousand dollars, but at least they got the full amount that they’d just paid for the big house. They tried to buy back their old house, but the new owners were extremely happy with it & were unwilling to sell. In fact, they’d just started building another 2 car garage situated on the other side of their driveway across from the existing attached 2 car garage!
Then things really started spiraling downward because the housing market was dropping. Vera & Curtis could only afford to buy an even smaller house than the previous 2 they’d owned & this one only had a 2 car garage again. That meant Curtis had to sell his classic car because they could no longer afford the luxury of having money tied up in it, plus it was at risk being parked on the busy street in front of their new smaller house.
He thought it would sell for a pretty penny, but because of the downturn in the economy, that did not happen. The car finally got sold for less than he had in it, the money went into the bank, they had to curb their spending & Vera went back into the workforce. They lived in house number 3 for another year or so after that. Then they decided to move off of the busy street & buy an even cheaper house with a 2 car garage out in the country where it was quieter.
In the end, they wound up getting a cute little house with a further drive into town & they stayed there for several years until Curtis passed away. Vera sold the house because she could no longer afford to keep up with the maintenance & she wisely invested the money into a retirement account that pays her a monthly amount to live on in addition to her small social security check.
By this time the housing market was on the upswing, so prices were much higher. Instead of buying another house in town that she could not really afford anyway, she’s renting an apartment with a 1 car garage where all maintenance is handled by the landlord. She still worries to this day that she’ll outlive her investment money, which is a legit concern since she often (or routinely, I don’t know) dips into the principal instead of just living off the interest.
Their experience taught me a lot of lessons that I hope I never forget.
50shadesofnails 