[The very LAST thing I will ever worry about is my carbon footprint.

The very LAST thing I will ever worry about is my carbon footprint.

Is this the greatest country in the world!, you have unlimited choices to see your life flourish as you would plan.

Tn & fl
 

Us too! Tellico Village in the Summer & Fall (our first year trying it out).

Amen to that!

Snowbird here. It is matter of what you want to pay for. I want pay to for nice weather all year long. I love The Villages but you can't beat the weather in the north from May to September.

Many snowbirds don't own a second house, they take off in their RV for the summer. They may go plop on one of their children's properties, to spend the summer with the grandkids, or they may head to the mountains or Canada. Some snowbirds don't even own a house, their RV is their home and the travel around always in nice weather.

The one factor that has only been some what touched upon is the age of the people involved.

What and how you do what ever it is we do at 55-75 is significantly different than when we are 76-95.

We had a second home on a lake in the mountains....5 wooded acres, for over 25 years.

The 10 hour drive to get there...the labor to close/open...the labor to get the property back to being lived in normal, clean and restore the dock, clean and put the boat in (take out when leaving...etc....all changed in magnitude as we passed into our 80's.

Yes there was a lot done for maintenance while absent on either end.....that still left much work to be done to keep both properties the way we like them.

Two years ago we made the very difficult decision to sell the lake home.

However.....yes we do sorely miss that part of our lives (and the family gatherings/vacations there).....with 25 years of fantabulous memories and thousands of pictures!!

It was the right decision for our ages/health/endurance. ....etc.

__________________________________________

:censored:

We always hear about snowbirds but I have never seen any statistics on their number. Are they 10% or 50% of the population?

Who really cares?

A couple of thoughts:

I don't spend twice as much for doctors and dentists because I live in two different places.

I have no one checking on my houses. I do have two Wifi bills and two security systems to pay for so I just watch my own houses. The total cost for a second house is $864 per year.

We have had two cars our entire adult lives. We leave one up north and when we drive back for the summer, we have two cars there. When we come back down for the winter, we have one car and a golf cart, which is all we need in The Villages.

What we saved in annual taxes by becoming residents of Florida covers 100% of our cost of living in Florida, other than the purchase price of a house. So other than that one time outlay for buying a house, our budget has not gone up one dime for living in two different places.

Life seems to get shorter as we grow older regardless of anyone's wealth.
We all go through this.

Commuting in and out of Florida is fun and easy when you are young, but the
day comes when it just too much to travel and we decide to stay in God's waiting room full time.

I remember something like that! at this point we are suppose to be starving , freezing , in the dark, and they (who ever they are) had the proof that this was the future , we must have slipped through a time/space warp unnoticed, luckily us

Here's a NEWSFLASH!!! for the OP:

Stuff costs money.
More stuff costs more money.

I am a snowbird with a home up north and in TV, and there are some homes in TV that are worth more than both of my homes combined. A lot more.

I enjoy the change. It comes with considerable hassle as well as expense, and I hope to live long enough that it will not be feasible to do both anymore. If/when that day comes, TV will likely be our sole home. Like all homes in TV, it was designed for easy living for old people. My northern home is a converted fish camp on a lake. Pretty enough in summer, but an easy place to get injured with funky stairways, a dock, boats, rocks on the beach etc etc.... I feel more vulnerable here every year.

interesting, I'd love to see how the numbers were crunched to get to the 1 1/2 months figure. Whenever I calculated it (which I did many times over the years trying to justify the investment) I came up with a number more like 6 or 7 months.
However, I was including my mortgage payment, and not including any capital appreciation (since that is an unknown and unpromised amount).

Whenever I've had this conversation with people, usually owners of homes, they compare what it costs them today, typically on a home they paid cash for, and bought 10 years ago, with what rents are today. It still comes out to more than 1 1/2 months, usually.