I am going to tell you what I have come up with. I call it my Master Plan. I will tell you my logic and my life on "how to retire by living low key."
I always had rich taste my entire life, but knew what I wanted in my life was too difficult to achieve with what I had to work with, such as lack of education and the lack of knowledge to being rich. I raise my hat to all those that have achieved success in their lives and wish them all the best and more to come for them. As far as my life and wanting to retire, I needed to come up with a plan that would able me to retire early in life and to be able to enjoy my life while still being healthy.
I first had to get rid of something that had been in my life for many years and that was my addiction to alcohol. Once I surrendered to my addiction, now two years sober, I started to think of what I could do to be able to live a simple yet happy life.
My first thing, and the biggest thing of all was to downsize my home and get rid of that huge mortgage payment I was making for the next 20 some years. My dream in life was to always live by the sea, and where I was brought up as child during the summers each year. I knew that living on the water, whether it be the Ocean or the Bay was way out of my reach, so I needed to think what I could do to get very close to those two bodies of water without spending a fortune, which I didn't have anyway. My wife came up with an idea to look into mobile home parks in the Shore areas and see what they were like. Most of them were 55 + community which was great because when we started looking I was only 6 months from the age of 55. We found a beautiful place less than a mile from the open bay and about 6-8 minutes from the ocean.
Now the question was, "would we be happy in a home much smaller and living in a mobile home
community?" The place that we found was a modular home (double wide) just like a rancher, but needed lots of work to get it in living order. We purchased it and paid cash and totally re-modeled
it from the inside and out. Now we have a brand new home that was paid in full. The only bill we
would then have regarding the home would be our utilities and HOA fees of $455.00 per month, which included, Taxes, water, sewer, trash, snow removal, pool and clubhouse.
Secondly, I needed to get all the rest of our bills together and start paying them off one at a time.
I cut up all the credit cards, because now everything was going to be paid in cash with no more credit.
I only buy what I need, with nothing extra.
I cut down on many things that really was not necessary in my everyday living.
I needed to do this in order to live life simple and have my dream home by the sea. If you are willing to give to get, like I was, your life can be so much easier if you take that chance. Sure, I was very nervous and worried if everything would come out as I planned, but as of right now, I am writing at my shore home with no mortgage and bills that are getting paid in full one at a time, until I have no bills at all except my living expenses.
Anyone can do it like I did. You need to have the guts to take that chance, and in my case it worked out just fine and I am happy and living like the rich with no bills and no worries anymore.
