T-Minus 245 Days: Florida Vision Board

 I was watching a Florida with Five episode and they mentioned having a vision board for their Florida move. I had never heard about vision boards before, so, I did a little research.

Vision Board Video

It makes sense. We all hang pictures in our house or put on our desk at work to remind ourselves of the things that are important.

Before cancer I was running 5 miles per day. After cancer, I put on a lot of weight. I hung this Run Disney picture in my office to remind myself of a goal I have to do a Run Disney Marathon someday. 

According to my research, this didn't work for several reasons. First, you are supposed to put the vision board someplace where you will see it every day. Second, you are supposed to look at it every day. Third, when you look at it, you are supposed to imagine that you have already achieved it (it is part of programming your mind to obtain what you want). Fourth, and optionally, you should use words or sentences that describe the feelings you get or will have from that picture.

I did none of that so the picture wasn't very motivating.

Now that I have done some research into Vision Boards, I understand them better. And I am thinking about what I might put on a vision board if I were to create one. These are some of my ideas (In no particular order):

We will live in Central Florida and vacation at the beaches

Get back into my pre-cancer shape

Certifications and/or degrees that advance my career and keep me employed

We will find a good church in Florida that we can stay connected to

Regular date nights in Disney Springs. If we just want to pop over for dinner, we can.

Season pass to Disney World. We can come and go whenever we want

Eating healthy

My Florida Car

I won't care about anything reported in the news and I won't care about politics. I want the world to just leave me alone.

Palm trees. Lots and lots of palm trees.

Participate in Disney Run Marathons 

A clutter free house

Watch TV while floating in the pool.

Relax and watch football

My summer kitchen so I can cook outdoors poolside.

Now all I have to do is print these pictures out, put them on a board, hang the board somewhere, and look at it every day.

T-Minus 247 Days: Renting a Florida House

 There is the real possibility that we might have to rent a house when we get to Florida. The possibility that our house will sell in such a way that some house in Florida is ready for us to immediatly move into is very unlikely. We may be able to use a short-term rental from HomeAway.com or, need something a bit longer term from Appartments.com . I decided to check the availability of longer term rentals from Apartments.com to understand the options and inventory.

It is important to note that apartments in the Orlando area are often advertised and rented during the same day. They rarely sit open for very long. Therefore, you are likely to find vastly different results when searching one day to the next. It also means that once you find something you like, you need to move very fast. Most of the houses are listed by how many hours they have been on the site, not how many days.

Our search: we need a four+ bedroom pool house that is dog friendly. On this day, there are only 17 available rentals, a third of which are over priced. 

Eighty percent of the houses are not furnished, which means we'll probably have to move our furniture into the house temporarily. Moving washers, dryers, couches, and everything else into a house is a lot of work and a huge pain. Alternatively, if the house was furnished then we have to pay PODS to store our stuff for a longer period of time, which can get expensive. We could unload everything into the garage only to re-pack it all back up later on... but what a huge pain that would be!

Bottom line: I hope we don't have to do a rental. But if we do, there are not a lot of options and we would have to move fast to secure something if needed.

T-Minus 250 Days: Constructing a pool

 It is likely we will need to add a pool to our Florida house because most houses don't come with one. Adding an enclosed pool can cost $50-60K! I never understood all the work that goes into making a pool until I started watching time lapse of pool construction. There is a ton of work that goes into these!

Pool Video 1

Pool Video 2

T-Minus 253 Days: Moving Budget

Moving Budget Video (6 min)

Missing from the video:

Home Inspector $800

Mold Inspection $500

Property Cost (New Builds) $2-$20K

Design Center Cost (New Builds) 7% to 15% of the cost of the house

T-Minus 256 Days: Decision Tree

One of the goals of this blog is to share our journey of moving to Florida to help others who might choose a large move. I have read many blogs and watched many VLOGs of other families moving to Florida, and this is my way to give back to the community and help others who might have a large move in their future.

 Our options for moving to Florida are becoming very complicated due to the Pandemic. We planned to visit Florida in August 2020, but that was canceled due to COVID restrictions: we would have needed to quarantine for two weeks once we arrived in Florida, and then quarantine for another two weeks once we returned to New York.

We reschedule the trip for November. The quarantine in Florida has now been lifted, but when we return to New York we would still have to be quarantined for two weeks. That is two weeks when my wife can't go to work, earn a pay check, and have her benefits (we would have to pay for the Health Insurance out of our pocket). If we violate the quarantine we could be fined up to $10,000.

If we want to build a house and have it ready for our June/July move, we need to commit 8 months in advance... which is November. In other words, we have to fly to Florida in a couple of weeks and sign papers to have someone build us a house. I don't think we can fly to Florida. And I'm not going to pick a builder sight unseen. 

Our real estate agent had told us we need to sign 8 months in advance because the normal 6 month window has slid to 8 months due to all the high demand. But now I am hearing from builders and from people who are having houses built that there is a shortage of building supplies. It can take 4 months to get a refrigerator, for example. Another person told me the stores are completely sold out of plywood. Another person who is building apartment complexes told me they have a work stoppage because they can't get materials. This makes be believe that even 8 months for a new build may be unrealistic.

Due to the shortage in building supplies, new home construction prices are rising (supply and demand). Almost overnight, houses rose $10K. Because of the challenges with new home construction, demand for existing houses is very high (it was high in Florida before, now it is crazy). Houses sit on the market for a few days and get a bidding war above the asking price. It is a great time to be selling a house... not a great time to be buying.

Due to the challenges COVID has placed on our move, I have assembled the following decision tree to try to make sense of it all. 

T-Minus 258 Days: Purging Halloween

 We pulled out the Halloween decorations to decorate the house for the last time. I have decorated this house for Halloween 17 times, and this is the last time. I would like to say I'm sentimental about this, but I'm not. Either it really hasn't hit me, or, I think about how happy I will be in Florida instead of dwelling on these final moments.

We decided that any decorations we didn't use we would sell immediately so that others could decorate their house this year. The best time to sell Halloween items is before Halloween, not after. 

This presented some difficult decisions. We have these large ceramic pumpkins that I love to decorate with, but they will never survive a trip to Florida without breaking. If I decorate with them this year it means I won't be able to sell them. But if I sell them instead of decorate with them? I could maximize the amount of money I could make.

In the end, I decided to decorate with them. Other decorations? Went to the Facebook Marketplace and sold quickly.

I think we have kept nearly every Halloween costume our kids have ever warn. We have a Halloween Costumes tote in Tub City with two dozen outfits. 

Perhaps I can sell the costumes BEFORE Halloween (because for certain, no one is likely to buy them AFTER Halloween). Costumes that I paid $30-$40 and were warn for a few hours on one night are now sadly for sale for only $5. 

I listed the Halloween items on Maketplace three weeks before Halloween. Perhaps I should have done it sooner? I'm not sure. But one thing is for sure: I am going to get the other holiday stuff posted four weeks before the holiday. 

Also... I'm considering posting the items I decorate with, but put a really good price on it. If someone wants to buy it? I'll take the decoration down, put it in a bag, and sell it. That's a difficult decision, but, maybe I should just do it.

One item I decorate with is Spiders: giant spiders and huge spiders all over the house. I have thought about taking these with me to Florida. However, according to the stories I have heard, the real spiders in Florida are larger, so, I probably don't need them.

T-Minus 263 Days: Disney YouTubers

 

In 2011, I used a video streaming service named LiveStream. With this service, I could use my cell phone data plan and the camera on my cell phone to broadcast live events where ever I wanted to.  I used it for various things, but something important I used it for was our 2011 trip to Disney World. 

 

I live-streamed my wife and I renewing of wedding vows from atop the train station overlooking Mainstreet USA. I live streamed walking around Frontierland at the Magic Kingdom and watching a parade go by. And I live-streamed the Disney fireworks.

 

The audience wasn’t very big - just a few friends. But that was OK. Just the idea of being able to share Disney World from across the Internet with other people was mind blowing.

 

Fast forward a few years...

 

In 2013, YouTube started opening livestream. Shortly thereafter, Disney introduced free Internet Wifi to their parks. Today, there is a flood of “you tubers” broadcasting live from the parks every day. Some have a few hundred viewers and some have many thousand. In fact, just about anytime you are feeling some Disney withdrawal? You can probably follow along with some YouTube as they explore the park. 

 

ResortTV1 is my favorite and is, in my opinion, the leader. Here, a brother and sister take turns visiting the parks, sharing their adventures, answering questions, and providing trivia. 

 

There are others including the CrazyDisneyLady, WD News Today, Corey Meets World, Earsom Emporium, Drew in the Moment, and more.

 

If you visit Disney World, it is likely you’ll see someone walking around holding a camera and seemingly talking to themselves. In actuality, they are talking to hundreds of people. Those people show their appreciation by replying with “Super Chats”. This is money that fans send to the Youtubers to help support their work.

I'm not trying to say that I was the first Disney Youtuber. I'm sure there were others broadcasting live from Disney before me. But I'm sure I was one of the first because I was doing it before YouTube streaming and before the park had Wifi. Regardless, I love this trend. If I have a bad day at work, or, just need a pick-me-up? I stream something from Disney and it almost feels like I am actually there.

T-Minus 268 Days: Tub City Update

 Our purging effort is chipping away at Tub City.

65 Empty totes

25 Holiday Totes

12 Marketplace Totes

15 Packed and ready for move

133 Totes yet to go!

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250 Totes total