Back in the summer of 2016, we were on vacation in Puerto Rico.  We were relaxing on the beach when a new Zillow listing came up.  I am a bit of a real estate junkie so it wasn’t unusual for me to stop and look at the listing.  It was a house on the golf course in a community where my husband golfed and we were thinking of moving.  It was a one story that had been redone and was on a 1/2 acre lot, which was a commodity for this area.  Well, I fell in love with the house.  It was listed by owner so I was hoping that it would still be available when we got back to Texas.  The thing was, we had lived in our home for 16 years, we had an acre and a half of land and 4 highly active dogs.  We would need to get our house in shape to sell as quickly as possible to have any kind of a chance at buying this new house.  We got home and started rushing around to get this 20+ year old house whipped into shape.  We finally got the house on the market and had kind of a loose agreement with the homeowner.  We really didn’t make an official offer as we knew we would need the money from our current house for the down payment on the new house but they were offering us a right of first refusal so to speak.

I wish I had a happy ending to the story, that we got the house and lived happily after, but it didn’t quite work out that way.  Instead we got a call that they got a full price, all cash offer on the house and if we couldn’t meet it, they would move forward.  Well, we couldn’t match it and now we had our home on the market and no house in mind to move too.  We decided to let it ride until the Thanksgiving holidays and if we sold it, great, if not we would be okay with that too.  Thanksgiving came and our realtor reluctantly removed it from MLS and that was that.

Just as it was becoming a distant memory, on December 23rd we got a call that one of the prospective homebuyers from when we had our house listed had sold their house and wanted to know if we were still willing to sell.  The offer was kind of too good to be true.  We decided to think it over a bit and were working out the details over the holidays.    Christmas Eve was my Dad and Step-Mom’s 40th wedding anniversary and we were all at their home celebrating.  I took some time to sit down and talk to my dad about whether or not we were rushing into things and what should we do.  He said to me, “Take the offer and let Paul live on the golf course, it’s his turn”.

Only 5 days later my father had a fatal stroke and only lived another week and never regained consciousness.  He was 87 years old and had a wonderful life, he was dancing the days before and we had had a wonderful celebration with the family.  While you never want to lose your parents, we were happy that he never had to stop living, driving and dancing!

Well my dad’s words kept repeating themselves in my head, about finding a golf course house. One home we had visited in the late summer was a new house, that the owners financing fell through.  It was much larger than we wanted, brand new, a little more than we wanted to pay, but it was on the golf course.  We finally decided it was meant to be.

That is how we arrived where we are today, living in a golf course community, with all it’s pros and cons.  The steps of letting go of the home where we raised our children, 9 dogs, 1 cat, and a few horses was not easy.  The change to a small yard, new house, and grown children started me to thinking about the next steps to retirement.

While I am still working my “day job”, I am ready to start that next chapter and hope to share with you that journey.  Letting go of stuff sure felt good, it feels like freedom.

Places downsizing golf Retirement