Where to Next?

By Paul Gartner and Linda Nicolay

Would you like to spend your retirement living in places of your choice? Domestic and abroad? From big cities to small towns to tropical islands? How about doing this for the same cost as living in your current home? Is that possible?

Meet Linda and Paul. They figured out how to pull this off. And everywhere they turn, they get asked how they do it. So they took some time to put pen to paper and explain how this might work for you.

This book is about finding freedom and fun in retirement while you still have the health and ability to move about. Funny, informative, and cleverly woven with personal anecdotes and challenges, they provide the keys to making this lifestyle a reality.

Their belief that "if we can do this, so can you", is imparted with every turn of the page. So grab a globe, give it a spin, and imagine "Where to Next?"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spin the Globe
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223552789

Paul Gartner

The San Francisco Bay Area is home base for Paul and Linda. They met on Valentine's Day 2012 and exactly two years later, under the Eiffel Tower, they became engaged. They enjoy visiting their grown children in San Francisco and New York, spending time with friends in California and Mexico, biking, cooking and planning their next destination. Linda is a retired real estate broker and former Pan American flight attendant. Paul retired in 2018 after 38 years in the defense industry.

Book preview

About Where to Next?

Would you like to spend your retirement living in places of your choice? Domestic and abroad? From big cities to small towns to tropical islands? How about doing this for the same cost as living in your current home? Is that possible?

Meet Linda and Paul. They figured out how to pull this off. And at every turn, they get asked how they do it. So they took some time to put pen to paper and explain how this might work for you.

This book is about finding freedom and fun in retirement while you still have the health and ability to move about. Funny, informative, and cleverly woven with personal anecdotes and challenges, they provide the keys to making this lifestyle a reality.

Their belief that if we can do this, so can you, is imparted with every turn of the page. So grab a globe, give it a spin, and imagine Where to Next?

First Review

"Y ou have captured the lightness of what is possible during this phase of retirement in such a readable way - without over philosophizing on the deeper truths related to time, health, meaning of life as we age, etc. The practical advice/suggestions were woven with stories which made the advice more relatable; it felt less prescriptive.

LOVE the way you play off of the differences between you and Spouse - kept me highly entertained throughout. You have left me wanting more.

So many people I know are afraid to take the first step on a life adventure of this kind. I believe your book will be such a gift to these folks, giving them a sense of safety to test the waters using this as a guide/support."

Carolyn Cameron, EdD

Instructor, Educational Consultant, Author of New Book Renewal: Breathing New Life into School Leadership

Preface

Hello. This is Paul . Linda and I are sitting at a quaint breakfast café located in the back streets of Puerto Vallarta’s Zona Romantica. The vegetarian omelet and brioche French toast were a perfect start to another 80°F day freshened by a slight ocean breeze.

We’re in month two of a three month stay in our favorite town south of the border. With the San Francisco Bay Area as our home base, we are happy to see storms bringing much needed rain to a parched Northern California. We are just as happy to be watching from afar.

On the following pages we share how we have set ourselves up to enjoy living in communities of our choice. All over the globe. All year round. And, with an eye on the seasons. We think it is likely you can do the same.

This is not a travel book, per se. There is no shortage of works in that genre. No, we aren’t here to tell you where to go. We’re here to tell you how to get there.

As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.

- Rumi

Chapter 1: How Long Are You Gonna Admire That New Wallpaper?

It’s rather sudden , retirement. For the past two thousand Mondays you have been crawling out of bed and stumbling through your morning routine preparing for yet another week at the office. Then it all changes on a dime. There is no flywheel effect. No easing into it. Just, bam! One day you’re working, the next day you’re not.

But you have a plan for this Monday. This fresh new life in retirement. A nice little list of to-dos. Neatly printed. With an empty box for each task along the right-hand margin of the paper. That way, as you complete each item, you get an immense sense of satisfaction from filling in that little check mark.

It’s very much a carryover from your working life, where keeping an organized record of everything you accomplished made it a breeze to write that activity report at the end of the week.

Now you can apply the same focused effort to projects you haven’t had the time to keep up with in your working life. Things like fixing the gutters, cleaning the screens, planting new flowers, and slapping up that cool new wallpaper from Hardware Depot in the guest bedroom.

You revel in the fact that you are now your own boss, can work at your own pace, have no hard deadlines, and can do this all in your underwear if that’s what pleases you. How fun and new!

Oh, wait. You have a spouse.

Yeah. Maybe slow the train down just a bit. You might want to tread lightly to start this whole thing off. Don’t expect Spouse to seem overly enthusiastic about this new situation. Already transitioned into retirement, and very comfortable with you being out of the house during daylight hours, Spouse has been fearing this day for some time.

Square footage just got cut in half. You are now in, around, and through the house 24/7. Your running commentary on pretty much every aspect of domestic operations does not seem to be softening the blow. Coping mechanisms become imperative.

As the two of you work through the logistics of your new togetherness you will find creative methods of spousal avoidance. Honey, I’m gonna head down to the hardware store to look for some hinges. Then I’ll probably check the city’s progress on striping the new bike lanes. I’ll also run to the store and grab some milk and maybe a frozen pizza for dinner. Oh, and I gotta drive by the bank to see what time it opens on Saturday. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be back in a couple of hours.

And Spouse suddenly has a brand-new gym membership. Staggered walking times, purposely forgetting items on the shopping list, more frequent haircut and salon appointments, and the list goes on. Nothing deceitful, mind you. But as creative as you may get, these tactics will invariably get old.

You soon find that when you spend the entire day together in well-known territory, there’s not too much to talk about over dinner. Is retirement not getting off to the start you had imagined?

I’m sure most of you have spent time viewing Google Maps on your computer or mobile phone. And I bet you’ve clicked on satellite image mode and zoomed in on your house in 3D, checking it out from all angles. You might even panic a bit when you don’t recognize that car in your driveway!

If you start to zoom out one click at a time, you will eventually see your whole state, country, and entire hemisphere. And the small footprint you are living on suddenly becomes so apparent. One little speck on the surface of this planet.

Maybe that is contributing to your malaise. You are living in the same two thousand square feet day after day (OK, six hundred square feet if you live in San Francisco, but man, what a beautiful city!). Same walls, same flooring, same kitchen, same bathroom. You have been knocking all sorts of to-dos off your list, but how long can you admire that new wallpaper?

You try and take longer walks in the neighborhood, change directions, wind through every street wondering why some of your neighbors refuse to pull their weeds or trim their hedges.

You start to think that possibly you can un-retire. The old job doesn’t look so bad now. Maybe they miss me at work? They don’t.

And then you have an epiphany: Time for a vacation!

Maybe a vacation is the remedy. It would allow you to escape your Google location for a couple of weeks. You had thought you might travel a bit in retirement, but your sense of urgency has now bubbled up. Time for a meeting with Spouse.

Fast forward. You just returned from a fantastic trip to Tuscany. Great food, pretty good weather, and you tried to see as many sites as possible in your allotted time. All-in-all a success! But boy that went fast.

Plus, you and Spouse are a bit drained from trying to make each day count. You would have liked to spend more time there, but your travel budget can only go so far.

Now back at your home base, you ponder this situation. You look around at friends, family, and other acquaintances and find that they are not any different. Everyone adjusting to their confines, albeit some have terrible taste in wallpaper.

You might have been thinking that retirement would be a permanent vacation. Now, however, it seems you are back on the same treadmill with only a couple of weeks off a year. And with no office to get away to, you spend even more time at home.

Maybe it’s time to make a new list. Maybe something a bit more dramatic. An outdoor kitchen, remodeled bathrooms, blow out a couple of walls to open up the living room, or maybe convert the basement into a game room. A ping-pong table could be fun! All worthy projects that will certainly change things up a bit.

Another meeting with Spouse results in approval to move forward. In short order, you find yourself consumed with designs and contractors and disruptions that will occupy your full attention for a few months.

Removing the wall between the kitchen and family room made the house look so much more spacious. The new quartz countertops are sleek. You are especially proud of your new five burner double steel-walled outdoor gas barbeque packed with 70,000 grilling-surface BTUs.

Wow, the place looks great, although you remember being much better at ping-pong. Your budget took a bit of a hit, so vacation this year will be in the backyard around your new pizza oven and tiki bar. But as you’ll discover later, you have increased the value of your biggest asset considerably. Nice work! All good - for a while.

This is because you still find yourself in the same GPS location. Your friends enjoy hanging out in your new backyard, but it is the same yard week after week.

The neighborhood hasn’t changed much either, other than to get a little bit older. The new flowers you creatively planted along your walkway brighten up the street, but the neighbors have done little to tackle their weeds and overgrown trees.

And something else is gnawing at you. You notice many of your neighbors are walking a little slower. More canes, more replaced body parts, and more confined to their houses.

You and Spouse are exercising regularly and feeling pretty good, but you start to wonder how much longer before you are barreling down the Costco aisles in your M34 Portable Mobility Scooters.

How long before Tuscany will be only a memory? You miss the people-watching from the outdoor pizzerias, with cheap chianti that tastes remarkably good. Is there some way to do that more often? Well, that’s where we come in. We’re here to tell you there is. And not only more often, but pretty much all year round.

Full disclosure here. The subject in the narrative we just portrayed is moi. Oh, and Spouse. Excuse me, my most beloved spouse. Yes, and smart. Adventurous? Sure. Resourceful? OK, you get the idea.

Anyway, We .......kind of happened into a way to break out of our Google Map compound while our health still allows it. At some point we are figuring we will indeed have to settle down and stay put. Then we can get a dog. Pardon me, I digress.

What’s the bottom line? you ask. Well, we are now living in several places on our lovely planet each year. Typically for one to four months at a time. Enough time to get to know each place without feeling time pressure, and not so long as to become too routine. Always something new to look forward to.

Some places get revisited, such as the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, where our children live. We also like to spend a little time in Mexico each year to visit several sets of friends who have relocated south of the border. But that leaves time to explore the world and see a few new places every year.

In a sense, we control the weather for the most part. We love New York City in the Spring before the humidity sets in. And Mexico enjoys its best temperatures from November through March. Europe in the early fall is hard to beat and is much less crowded after Labor Day. Then there are some places, such as London, where you visit when it best fits your schedule. Who heads to London for the weather?

Understand however, that we didn’t just flip a switch and obtain our newfound freedom overnight. It took a couple of years with no specific plan in place. We got here through a combination of small steps, happenstance, and the lure of realizing the world is literally our oyster.

In the pages that follow, we will explain how we have managed to pull this off and