May 17 2016

Greetings My Friend Junior and I are grappling with "when is enough, enough." We have been renting our house in Michigan for 7 years now. When we decided to move to Virginia the market was upside down so our realtor suggested we rent the house. He handles the renting process for us and insures the tenant is up to date on their payments. For 10% of the rent this has been well worth renting our house. At this point we are running into inspections, cost of repairing the house to bring it back up to standard for renting, we have had one tenant who stole our light fixtures, area rugs, window air conditioner and even our shower head. At this point we are not up to much more so when this lease is up we are thinking about selling the house and if we have a loss so be it. We were waiting for a break even moment which does not seem to be coming along soon. The good part is we have broke even because the rent we are getting is covering the house payment and we receive a small profit. At first we paid a small difference. For a while we went up north when a renter left to spruce up the house, see if there were any repairs that needed to be done and did them. Today that trip is getting to be too much. Each time we go up north which we are doing less on this house as well. It is hard to divide ourselves like this. At this point it would be nice to not have a wash with the payment but to pay only one mortgage and keep the mortgage payment to use as we need. Junior and I know for sure too that we do not want to move back to Michigan's cold winters. We have snow and cold here in Southwest Virginia but it does not last as long. I no longer want to go somewhere warm each winter. I also am surprised at how much I love country living. It is quiet out here and the woods are plentiful. The mountain views are pleasing to the eye too. Slowly we are starting a vegetable garden much which we are growing in containers so I am able to get at them. Junior has a few growing in the side yard as well. For some reason we no longer need to be active in the things we were in Michigan and are content to stay home and work. We move at our own pace on our own time schedule these days as well. The quiet country life has been what we both needed and did not know until we moved here. When I retired we had no plans of moving out of state. One thought was to move into a retirement community. We talked about moving out of the suburbs and into the country but these were not set in stone. Around fall we felt strongly we were to move out of state and we settled on Virginia. My sister had moved here and we loved the area. The pace was slower, the people friendly and the mountainside scenes were breathtaking. We settled on Southwest Virginia and moved. The last few years have been stressful for us. For me the chaos of renovating, trying to work up the energy to do little tasks has been tremendous. As my doctor and I worked on what was going on with me I began to have some energy. I learned about what is going on inside of me to an extent. I have a few diagnosis' that puts a name to my problems and a few are cleared up but a couple still are plaguing me. Next month I have an appointment with a specialist and hopefully he will be able to guide me, help me keep my symptoms from progressing so quickly. I also am learning to live with my limitations and am thankful. Today I know more how to conserve my energy, work around my limitations and for the first time in years I am able to be active again. I am not active like I was 10 years ago but I am able to get things accomplished. I feel like I am settling finally into retirement, into our home and into the community in which we live. I am in awe of God because He knew what we needed before we knew what we even wanted. The other day I heard a story that I relate to. God provides the food for the mother bird but she has to go get it. God provided us this home and a new lifestyle but Junior and I have had to put the plan into action. I am so glad we listened. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Jane