Our first 6 months here...
 

Today (Dec. 1) marks our 6th month of full-time residency in The Villages. What a ride it has been!

Deciding on TV wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. We had vacationed here the past 7 years, the first time under TV’s Lifestyle Preview program. After spending 6 nights here in 2006, we just knew TV was our retirement destination. We just had to retire first!

Every Sunday...every week…every month…for 7 years (that’s 364 Sundays), I said to Kathy, “We’re one week closer to Paradise.” It seemed so-ooo distant at first, but finally after 6+ years, we knew we were getting much closer.

On each visit here, we looked at homes (new and existing) in different villages. It was so enticing. There weren’t any homes south of 466A when we began our house-hunting journey.

From our residency “up north,” in January 2013 we saw a listing on The Villages site (we visited that web site daily for a l-o-n-g time) that caught our eye. We called our TV friend, GracieGirl, to act as our proxy and tour the house with our TV agent. She did, and it all clicked! We put in an offer, contingent upon our physical review and approval. That happened within a few days.

We bought that house…south of 466A, in Sanibel. Now it would be only a few more weeks before I would stop telling Kathy, “Just one more week.”

May 29, I retired from a 32-year career (Kathy had retired 2 years prior). Not that we were impatient, but we loaded up the moving van on May 30. We were finally TV-bound, after 7 years of “dreaming the dream.”

The week-only TV vacations, year after year, would be over. We swung for the fence and chose to become full-time TV residents.

Every day now we (literally) tell ourselves how fortunate we are that we chose The Villages. We experience “lots of personal smiles.” The days go by so fast. The calendar fills up with golf, pickleball, clubs/social activities, etc., etc. We love our neighborhood (as most people love their neighborhoods). Hey, it’s The Villages!

To current TV wannabes…don’t stop Dreaming the Dream. The Villages is a “very friendly” place to retire and live an active lifestyle. (Can you tell we’re happy?!).

Gene & Kathy

What a beautiful post!

Thank you for sharing. My husband and I bought our house and will be visiting it in a couple weeks. We must rent for a couple years, waiting to retire but we are so looking forward to our journey that will end up at The Villages. I love your story! It reinforces our decision to invest now. Getting closer to our dream.

Congratulations! What a happy, inspiring post to all the folks who are not here yet.

And we are glad to have you and Kathy as residents as well.
Happy Holidays to the both of you.
Charlene

What a wonderful post! Thank you so much for sharing!

Ditto, Gene, I still feel I'm going to wake up and look out the window and see Michigan snow.

Talk about a seven year itch. Wow
We only have a little less than 2 years to go and we've been waiting since May 2012. We're going bonkers. It seems like forever.
Can't wait to share the dream.
Great post.

Gene:

Beautifully written testimonial. :bigbow:

I'm here only three months plus as a owner, and I couldn't happier.

I just marvel at being in my shorts, t-shirt and sandals, at this time of year.

Back home, I would be bundled up, and expecting it to get colder, until the spring. I don't miss the snow, one bit.

I am a happy camper too.

For all you wannabee's, keep on working on the dream, and you'll be here before you know it. I also thought it would never happen for me, but it did. :smiley:

Joe

BTW - I would say, that you are very excited to be here!!!

Wonderful post. We are are in Sanibel too. On Abaco. Meet you at the pool!

Our dream is about to come true. We close on our house here in Massachusetts on Friday and move into TV next week! We're renting a home in Amelia for a year while we decide what/where to buy.

See you all next week!!

We also are here just 6 months. We moved here from Bellevue, Washington. We truly love it here. We actually live in a gated community on a golf course and are driving our golf cart more then we do our car! I have a swimming pool just blocks away. I wanted a Palm tree in the front yard, ceiling fans, walk in closet and a pantry. Our house has everything I wanted plus more! The folks here are really nice and actually talk to you when passing by. Our neighbors are such great people.

We exercise, we go dancing, we walk, we go to the Squares, we golf a lot and we still haven't decided what else we want to do. The weather is perfect and everyone wears sandals and tee-shirts! It is so laid back here that it isn't even funny. I wake up every morning and thank the Lord that we made the right decision. "We ARE Living the Dream"!!

Gene and Kathy, great post. We hope to follow you there soon. We bought our first place in 2008 (the , 5 whole years ago. Still waiting to sell the Virginia home. Although we are starting to see a lot more activity, no contract yet. It will happen and we will be in TV sometime soon. As I look outside at the 31 degree temperature, I can't wait much longer.

Thanks for the validation that you really made the best decision ever. See you sometime down the road.

Great post- you just can't make this stuff up!

What a great story Gene. We have been here only a short time longer than you, but it is definitely "the place to be". Welcome again from a fellow Ohioan - born and raised in Toledo!