MASS Exodus: November 2010 Update or "The good news is we haven’t had any more bad news lately!"

It has been a while since the last timeline for retirement was reviewed, and several major things have happened, none good, so I thought I might take a couple of minutes to put it all down on paper.

As readers would know, we had two major setbacks in the late summer and early fall. The first was when our septic system failed its Title V test, which was pretty much expected. It was 30 years old and even though it had never given us any problems, it was probably not going to meet current standards. We got a guesstimate to repair at about 12K, again which was expected. We spent several weeks trying to figure out how we would pay for this until we were told about this escrow account allowed to be built into the house sale where money from the sale was put aside to pay for the repair. Until we discovered this, we were unsure what was to happen but this seems like a good solution.

Our second major setback is the fact our well failed. We had a shallow well, it had been a very dry last year here and the well was also 30 years old and it failed. We had a new well drilled and this has set us back tremendously because of the cost. It tipped the scale at $6500. There was no magic escrow account to fall back on, we needed water, we got it drilled; 360 feet. We spent all of the money we had saved to make repairs to the house and still owe $1500 to the pump company. The money that was going to go to house repairs, exterior painting, deck clean and stain, engineer hire and septic repair design and the last of the rubbish removal from the basement is now gone. This has set us back around 4-6 months at best guess.

We were going to try to put the house on the market in the fall but obviously have missed that date. I am optimistic that we can get what we need done by late spring and get house for sale by April. Over the winter we can do the painting of the inside trim and living room as well continue to weed out the junk and downside.

So, what does this do to our timeline? I figure it has gotten moved back about 5 or 6months. Originally it was - house on market, October 2010, up to 9 months to sell (area market average), July 2011, move to Las Cruces by October 2011. New timeline is probably more along the lines of house on market, April 2011, up to 9 months to sell, January 2012, move to Las Cruces, March 2012.

On a good news front, Mrsfabp has noticed that there has been an increase in the area house sales as published in the newspaper. We are hopeful that this means that the average time on market will begin to fall. There are two houses on our block that have put up for sale signs in the last 6 weeks so we will be watching them to see what the attitude of the market will be.

As for our plans in moving, I have to admit that these setbacks have really affected what I want to do. Originally we wanted to build a new home in NM but the shrinking valuation of our home really put a crimp into this plan. We then were thinking about maybe just wanting to purchase a condo because it would require less money down and no maintenance worries. This latest setback has just about killed that particular part of the dream. After paying for the septic repair, and then paying back our other house loan and the loan to make our house handicapped accessible, there will be little left for a down payment. So, Mrsfabp and I have grown into the idea of apartment living. It is not how I wanted our retirement to go but it is the necessary steps to keep the dream of Las Cruses, NM alive.

We shall endure! The dream lives on…