1. Welcome to Mallard Landing!

In the grand scheme of things, I had planned to retire when I was “much” older and move to our local active adult/assisted living complex in Salisbury, MD, known as Mallard Landing. My brother had been urging me to move up the schedule to immediately, but I was resisting. And I had my excuses ready.

For one thing, I wasn’t ready to retire.

For the second thing, there was a lot of fixing up I needed to do before putting my house on the market.

For the third thing, my vision of retirement was me sitting in my robe all day reading and listening to music or TV. No one around to stop by and see me because they would still be working, where I really wanted to be.

And finally, it was probably too expensive anyway.

Last summer I had a health issue, not serious but it had sapped a bit of my energy. At the urging of my family, my childhood friend and college roommate called and invited me to see her new apartment at Mallard Landing that day. As expected, her unit was lovely. Then she said there was another one like hers available in the next building, so off we went to see it. Well, it wasn’t the same floorplan and it was a bit smaller, and it was half furnished. I saw no socially redeeming characteristics that would make me want to buy it. We moved on to Happy Hour.

Now we’re talking. As I stood there looking around the room it occurred to me that people were what I was missing in my vision of retirement and here they were! I even knew several people who were laughing and waving me over to talk.

The next day I stopped by the unit and sat alone for 45 minutes thinking. Finally, I said to myself, “You can make this work. And if you want this unit that you’ve now decided is a good size and in a good location, then you had better not wait.”

Next, I called my financial advisor (my nephew) who said, “Yes, you can afford it.” I asked my family to check it out the next day. They approved….just as I had expected them to.

I wrote an offer the next day and, as I was on the golf course the following day with my friends, a call came in saying my offer was accepted! Well! I guess I was moving…