What’s your plan? I once thought I wanted to sell everything and hit the open road, the problem was I couldn’t get my spouse on board. I would talk about all the wonderful travels and adventures we would experience, the places we would see and how we would never have to see snow again! Living in Ohio, that’s a big deal. I would further try to entice him by saying things like, if we don’t like the weather, we can just get in the RV and head to another state. He never seemed very excited about that prospect of becoming gypsies. I was ready, just say the word and let’s go. Then…he became very interested in the idea and suggested we talk about in a much deeper way, so we did. We discussed putting the money back from the sale of our house and having it available for the “just in case” situations and we talked about working part-time because we actually wanted to retire before we could collect Social Security and we talked about our children and grandchildren, our friends, other family members, our church family and lots of deep and important things. My husband said his greatest concern was that we would not feel like we were ever really “home” when we were on the road, and that in selling our house, we wouldn’t have a “home” to come home to. I told him I never worried about that, I explained how life on the road would make us free spirits and that our RV would become our home. We took several walks and had lots of talks about it and then…it happened, he started looking for RVs and I started worrying about missing home and missing our family and what if I missed my house and it was sold and what would we do then. I turned into him! So…we took another walk and I told him that now I was thinking differently about everything. I expressed my concerns and he looked at me and said, “yep, I knew you would start to change your mind if you gave it a little thought”, so now retirement looks differently to me. I guess I won’t become a gypsy with a free spirit, I guess I’ll just be a normal retiree. What does your retirement dream look like? Have you given it any thought? Are you financially prepared to do it the way you want? I hope so, I hope you do something fun and exciting and I hope you don’t let practicality clip your free spirit wings and I hope you never lose your gypsy soul!

This blog borrowed from a fellow blogger.