A new dog

Our dog passed away of cancer in January. It was very sad and I tried to convince myself that it was OK because it was paving the way for a move to Florida. It would be very difficult to move to Florida with a dog. I thought we would wait until we got to Florida before deciding to get another dog.

However... we missed having a dog terribly. Nine months after our dog died, we looked into adopting another Labrador. Our new dog is being adopted this week! We are very happy.

No Florida This Year

We have spent summers in Florida for the past several years. We decided not to go to Florida this year so we could, instead, put money toward our move. This was a very difficult decision, but, we have planned various activities every week so we can remain as active as if we were in Florida.

Relocated Tourist

It is back! After missing from the Internet for years, you can find the adventures here:

https://therelocatedtourist.wordpress.com/

End of February Update

It is the end of February and the countdown clock says we have 847 days, 18 hours, 26 minutes and 10 seconds left before the big move.

Not much got done in February because the house was hit by some kind of flu bug.

How much money does it cost to make a move to Florida? I have heard everything from $10 to several tens of thousands of dollars. Obviously, the more cash on-hand, the easier a move would be. To that end, we have established some budget goals. We have cut some unnecessary spending and are pouring that money into a moving budget. We haven't cut the budget to the bone - we are still doing many of the things we enjoy. Just less of it. I also re-prioritized our retirement savings to provide more for the moving budget.

Our goal is to move to Florida debt free (except our mortgage) and cash in-hand.

Emergencies keep cropping up. A pet falls ill, an appliance dies, etc. But we are trying to keep the goal in mind and make adjustments so we can deposit that monthly commitment into the moving savings.

This week, I took a tour through the job boards for the Orlando area and for Disney. I found jobs I was interested in, and then mapped out the skill requirements for those jobs. I plan to spend the next 847 days developing those skills so that I am an outstanding candidate for whatever job opportunity I might want to go for.

That's the update! I wish there was more, but, that flu bug really knocked us off our feet.

Moving to Orlando - Davenport Video

I love The Dis Unplugged and I was thrilled when they started a series about moving to the Orlando area. Their third video is "Moving to Orlando - Davenport". 

Moving to Orlando - Winter Garden Video

I love The Dis Unplugged and was thrilled when they started their series on Moving to Orlando. The following is a short video showing parts of Winter Garden.

Moving to Orlando - Celebration Video

I love watching The Dis Unplugged and was thrilled when they started a video series exploring moving to the Orlando Area.  This is their second video, named "Moving To Orlando - Celebration Florida".

Purging the Refridgerator

We purged the refrigerator yesterday. Not because we wanted to... a car hit a telephone pole, which sent an electrical surge and damaged the refrigerator. We threw away old stuff from the freezer and moved the rest to a snow bank outside to keep it cold.

Not exactly the kind of purging we were planning!

Purging paperwork

We are taking advantage of the three day weekend to purge the many boxes of papers we have. We have all the information for when we were shopping for a house and ultimately built one. I have all my old files from all my old jobs, as does my wife. And we have collected a lot of documents over the years.

We went through the boxes and looked at every piece of paper and put each in one of four piles: throw away, shred, scan, keep. We decided to shred anything that had confidential information on it. Anything that held a memory or important information got scanned and stored digitally into our family drive. Other things like certificates or special cards went into the keep pile.

We managed to discard almost everything! I can’t believe we held onto all this stuff for so long just so we could throw it away at a later time. 

Update

Here is an update: we finished purging the kitchen and it feels great that the cupboards aren’t stuffed full anymore. We plan to do at least one more purging before the end of the year.

We have started making plans for saving money for the move. I think the move is going to be very expensive:

A friend told me to plan $8-12,000 just in moving expenses

We will need a home down payment because I don’t know when our existing home will sell

The new home mortgage will likely be more expensive than our old. 

We may have to pay two mortgages for a while until the old home sells

My wife doesn’t want to work the first year

I don’t know what I will be doing for work (continue working from home or will I need a new job?)

We will loose our rental income

We may have to facilitate any other family members that want to move down with us

Buying whatever furniture we don’t take with us

Just registering our three cars will be $1200. It costs $500 to drive each one down and then the cost to fly back for the next car

I am looking at all these expenses and thinking I had better have $40,000 cash in my hand to make this move successful. Wow. 

I have a plan to raise the cash... but the best laid plans often fall to God’s humor. 

That’s our update for now!