My Experience of Early Retirement and Living Alone for the First Time
I am enjoying early retirement and living alone for the first time in my life.
I’ll show you the RV park where I am living and how I’m learning to like being alone. Early retirement RV living can be hard if you are like me and never lived alone...until now.
Where I winter in Texas
A lot of people come to the 55-and-over park from October through March.
I winter in South Texas and head home to Kansas at the end of April. I’ll share the 55-and-over community and park that I winter in.
I will also talk about being alone. Why I’m alone down here while I’m married, and how it’s working out for me, and all the things I’m learning from this journey.
I love to take walks. It’s one of the things I started doing when I retired early–focusing on my health. The scenery is gorgeous walking through the park. People have their yards decorated which is so fun to see on walks.
Plus there are tons of fresh oranges for the picking.
There are cabins to rent and apartments to stay in.
This is a big bird-watching area in the Rio Grande Valley. This is a Mexican crow. A lot of people come down here just to bird watch.
The facilities are outstanding, like this pickleball court. Everybody loves this game.
Here’s a superb on-site library at the 55-and-over park. It’s all on the honor system of borrowing. There’s a self-drop box. You can donate books, too.
One thing I brought with me is embroidery. I’m usually not a cross-stitch person but I had these for a long time, so I decided to finish these projects. This is a tabletop scarf.
I brought this and my books with me, and these are things I never really had the time to do at home. I’m getting back to some of those hobbies that had gone by the wayside.
I love doing these projects on days like this when it’s 70-something degrees outside and nice and cool outside. I am doing this inside the RV today and when the windows are open, it reminds me of when the kids were small and we had a pop-up camper and we’d sit in there like a screened-in front porch and enjoy the weather and fresh air.
My backstory: alone time
What is it like to have alone time? Here’s a little back story about why I’m down here by myself and not with my husband. When we first made plans to retire early and come down here in the winter, my husband realized he wanted to work more and get some extra time under his belt to raise his social security projections.
I had worked two and three jobs my whole life, raising six children, and putting them all through college. I was ready to retire. We decided as a couple that it was a good choice for me to retire early.
I went straight from my parent’s home to marriage and never spent time living alone. I then had kids in school from 1989 to 2017. For 28 years, I had kids in grade school, high school, and college.
I finally had an empty nest and went back to college in 1996 to get the last two years of my bachelor’s degree so I could afford to put all of my kids through college. I ended up having my sixth child while I was going to college. I graduated college in 2000 with my oldest child graduating high school in 2001. My kids are now aged 25 to 40.
I didn’t aspire to live alone. But when we had an empty nest, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I felt like I had to throw myself into another business because I couldn’t bear to come home to an empty house.
So those are some transitions that I went through. But when my husband decided to stay and work, he said I should still go down and winter in Texas. The winters hurt my back and he didn’t want me to spend another uncomfortable winter in Kansas. I decided to go and spend winters down here with his parents next door to me. We FaceTime every single day.
But this time alone, cooking by myself, and doing activities alone, has been great for me. A lot of people wonder what to do when they finally retire. I had tons of things I wanted to do. I’m able to focus on myself for the first time in my life. This time is good for me. I feel more positive, energetic, and vibrant.
If you’ve never been alone, I encourage you to look deep within yourself and find those things you used to love and try them again. Or venture out to do new things. You won’t regret it. I’m loving this.
But I’m starting a list of things to do when I get home so I have something to look forward to doing. That’s the whole trick to keeping yourself motivated: find those things of interest that give you energy and excitement.
My kids are still a huge part of my life and my grandkids are ages 1 to 21 and I’ve always had a packed schedule. I’m thriving with my current minimal schedule!
Early retirement
I wanted to share all of this with you so you could understand why I took this early retirement journey. I hope this was inspiring and gave you a little insight into how to retire early. Let me know your thoughts in the comment section.
Next up, learn 8 Easy Ways to Save Money & Build Your Savings.
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