Thursday, September 11, 2014

Moving to a Smaller Home, and Decluttering a Lifetime of Belongings


THE amount of goods a couple can accumulate over 44 years living in the same house can be overwhelming. And that is what Wendel and Carolyn Thompson, of Columbia, Md., have been grappling with since January as they prepare to leave their split level and move to a retirement community this month.

Figuring out how to squeeze the contents of a house into a two-bedroom retirement unit nearby in Catonsville, Md., has taken most of their time in recent months. And they’ve had some help. “Declutter ladies,” or downsizing specialists, spend hours with them every week to sort through and pare down their belongings to a more manageable size.
“We’ll get through this. That’s what I tell myself several times every day,” said Mrs. Thompson, 77, a former teacher and Maryland school nutrition program employee, who raised three children in the four-bedroom house. An avid collector of educational materials, games, gifts and other miscellaneous items like teddy bears, she devotes time every day to deciding what goes in the boxes for giving away, the boxes for the new apartment and the boxes for each of her children — and their children.
Photo
Jewel Flick, left, of Let's Move, is helping the Thompsons prepare to move. Wendel Thompson, right, checks the value of donated items on a computer. Credit J.M. Eddins Jr. for The New York Times
“One of my recommendations for handling this,” she added wryly, “is don’t wait.”
But, of course, many people do wait — and wait, said Kimberly McMahon, co-owner of Let’s Move, a downsizing and moving specialist in Fulton, Md., whose company is helping Mrs. Thompson and her husband, 78, a former government statistician, to clear out every nook and cranny.
“Downsizing is the hardest because it is emotionally difficult for people to release their history,” said Ms. McMahon. “It’s the worst anxiety associated with any move.”
Her advice is “that nothing should be off limits. Either use it, love it — or leave it.”
Getting rid of furniture and general clutter can be a daunting task. For those with antiques, silver, jewelry and other valuables, Laurene Sherlock, a Bethesda, Md., antiques appraiser, will advise people of outlets like vintage shops, where owners can consign their precious pieces for sale.
But the value of valuables can be cyclical, warned Ms. Sherlock, who noted that 1950s and mid-modern furniture “is hot, and so is Bakelite jewelry, but something else that people love may just not be popular. A lot of younger people just don’t want to be burdened with the tchotchkes.”
While homeowners can amass impressive amounts, the task of clearing out apartments where people have lived for a long time is not any easier, said Ron Shuma, who runs A+ Organizing in New York City.
“I advise going through each drawer and each closet every six months because it’s so much easier,” he said. “But people typically don’t, and that’s where I come in to help people realize what are treasures, and then we get rid of the rest.”
When Hanan Watson, 71, decided to downsize after 35 years in a large two-bedroom Murray Hill apartment, she found that “it is very difficult to sell or even give away many things. Charities can be extremely particular about what they are willing to take.”
She donated some of her art to a nearby community art center, gave some items to relatives and friends and got a lot of assistance from Mr. Shuma in getting rid of larger furniture.
“There are a lot of challenges, for example, the glut of ‘brown furniture” — even good-quality mahogany — which fetches pennies on the dollar,” Mr. Shuma said. “The best thing is for a family member to take it.”
But with careers and young children, fewer 40- or 50-something offspring want to acquire bulkier items or take on the task of sorting and disposing of unwanted goods in their parents’ homes. In the last decade, baby boomers, more used to paying for services than their Depression-era parents, have been increasingly willing to spend money for outsiders to help them pare down their accumulation.
The price of such services can vary widely, from $60 an hour in major metropolitan areas except New York City, where the cost can run as high as $200 hourly. In other areas, downsizing help can run $40 an hour. Sorting, packing and moving typically runs from $4,000 and $10,000, depending on the locale, according to specialists.
Despite the cost, the demand for downsizing is strong, according to the National Association of Senior Move Managers. In 2014, the association reported that 50 percent of those contracting for services with its members were older adults, and 30 percent of the initial contacts leading to contracts were from the senior’s family.
An additional 20 percent of business comes from sources like senior housing communities, which have increasingly been establishing programs to help seniors pare back and streamline their belongings before becoming community residents. In 2007, Erickson Living, a major retirement community provider, started a program in Novi, Mich., to advise older adults who had signed up to move to the Fox Run retirement community.
The program, called Erickson Realty and Moving Service, is offered at the 18 Erickson retirement communities around the country, and helps older people with real estate agents, repair people, organizers and movers to smooth their path out of their longtime homes and into smaller spaces.
Last year, the program helped 230 of the 340 people who moved to Erickson properties in Virginia and Maryland, said Sharon Baksa, its regional sales director. The program provides up to $2,000 in relocation expenses — sometimes more.
“We play the role of the surrogate family member,” said Ms. Baksa, who helped start the program in Michigan. “We handle between 1,800 and 1,900 moves a year over all.”
Choosing the retirement community, the Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville, helped the Thompsons in Maryland focus on sorting and jettisoning belongings.
“When we set an August date then we knew we had a goal, and we had to meet it,” Mrs. Thompson said.
The downsizing credit was an incentive for the Thompsons, who started in February with a once-a-week visit, for three to four hours, to help sort belongings and get unwanted items out the door. By April, they had increased the declutterer’s schedule to twice a week to meet their target of an August move, and preparing their house for sale by the fall.
They did not have high-end valuables that would warrant an estate sale, but, instead, had one yard sale and then gave away many of their items to family, friends and charities like Goodwill and Habitat for Humanity. Most retirement communities and organizing professionals maintain a list of organizations and what they will accept.
Churches or temples also help. Marc J. Rosenblum, a retired lawyer and economist, has been clearing out his late wife’s belongings and various household goods from his McLean, Va., contemporary home with advice from his synagogue, Temple Rodef Shalom.
“They provided suggestions for where to allocate items, for destinations like a homeless shelter in Bailey’s Crossroads, Va., and a nearby thrift store,” said Mr. Rosenblum, 78. He first consulted a downsizing specialist, which, he said, “saved a lot of time, and helped me pick up some good ideas, including a furniture auctioneer.”
He handled the downsizing task largely on his own, but others like the Thompsons say they welcome the help and the prompting for what many see as an onerous, time-consuming job.
Even with the help, “it’s one step at a time,” said Mr. Thompson. “And I don’t see the end yet.”
For people thinking about beginning the task, here are some ideas from Kimberly McMahon, of Let’s Move..
■ Write some organizing time on your calendar.
■ Set a timer to get started.
■ Start small, even if it’s matching up a cup with a saucer.
■ Get a friend to help.
■ Fill a trash bag once a week.
■ Call and book a donation pickup for the next day.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/your-money/moving-to-a-smaller-home-and-decluttering-a-lifetime-of-belongings.html?emc=edit_my_20140908&nl=your-money&nlid=32663937&_r=0

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Increasingly, Retirees Dump Their Possessions and Hit the Road

SOME call themselves “senior gypsies.” Others prefer “international nomad.” David Law, 74, a retired executive recruiter who has primarily slept in tents in several countries in the last two years, likes the ring of “American Bedouin.”
 


They are American retirees who have downsized to the extreme, choosing a life of travel over a life of tending to possessions. And their numbers are rising.
Mr. Law and his wife, Bonnie Carleton, 69, who are selling their house in Santa Fe, N.M., spoke recently by phone from a campground in Stoupa, Greece, a village on the southern coast of the Peloponnese. He explained that they roam the world to “get the broadest and most radical experience that we can get.”
They recently decided to fold their tent. “Hey, we’re getting to be too old for this,” said Mr. Law about camping out. But they intend to continue what he termed their “endless holiday” in a more comfortable and spacious recreational vehicle.
Between 1993 and 2012, the percentage of all retirees traveling abroad rose to 13 percent from 9.7 percent, according to the Commerce Department.
About 360,000 Americans received Social Security benefits at foreign addresses in 2013, about 48 percent more than 10 years earlier. An informal survey of insurance brokers found greater demand by older clients for travel medical policies. (Medicare, with a few exceptions, does not cover expenses outside the United States). While many retirees ultimately return home or become expatriates, some live like vagabonds.
Lynne Martin, 73, a retired publicist and the author of “Home Sweet Anywhere: How We Sold Our House, Created a New Life, and Saw the World,” is one. Three years ago, she and her husband, Tim, 68, sold their three-bedroom house in Paso Robles, Calif., gave away most of their possessions, found a home for their Jack Russell terrier, Sparky, and now live in short-term vacation rentals they usually find through HomeAway.com.
The Martins have not tapped their savings during their travels, alternating visits to expensive cities like London with more reasonable destinations like Lisbon. “We simply traded the money we were spending for overhead on a house and garden in California for a life in much smaller but comfortable HomeAway rentals in more interesting places,” Ms. Martin said by email from Paris.




On her blog, Barefoot Lovey, Stacy Monday, 50, a former paralegal and mediator who lived in Knoxville, Tenn., wrote: “I used to dream about all the places I would go as soon as I was old enough to get away. But then ... life happened.” On May 1, 2010 — like many itinerant baby boomers Ms. Monday can quickly recall the date her journey started — she embarked on her dream trip. She “crisscrossed the U.S. three times” and visited Mexico, Ireland, France, Italy, Morocco, Spain and many other countries.



Travel Tips for Vagabonds-in-Training

  • Make sure travel insurance covers medical evacuation to the United States. A rider or separate policy may be required.
  • Bring noise-canceling headphones for immediate access to peace.
  • Consider downloading the Point It app, a catalog of photos of items travelers need with translations in several languages.
  • Buy a few pairs of fast-drying microfiber underwear, which take up less space in luggage than conventional knickers.

“I sold everything I had,” Ms. Monday recalled earlier this summer from San Francisco before she headed to Las Vegas, Dallas, Memphis and Knoxville. “I paid off all of my debt. I have no bills and no money.” She estimates that she now spends $150 a month — sometimes less if she is saving up for a flight — and earns a modest income through “odds-and-ends jobs,” as well as the tip jar on her blog.
To stick to her tight budget, Ms. Monday volunteers for nonprofits and organic farms in exchange for room and board or finds free places to stay through Couchsurfing.org. The company puts its membership of people 50 and older at about 250,000.
Ms. Monday monitors ride-share boards at Couchsurfing and Craigslist for free or inexpensive transportation, and she travels light. “I get away with a couple pairs of jeans, a pair of shorts, a skirt and four or five shirts and a pair of pajamas,” she said.
When she answers the ubiquitous question, What do you do? Ms. Monday notices that most women respond with encouragement, while many men are less supportive. “They say: ‘You should be home. That’s not safe. You are old.’ I get that from a lot of the men,” she said.
Hal E. Hershfield, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of California, Los Angeles who studies the influence of time on consumer behavior, observes that many “pre-retirees” still assume retirement is a “decrepit, sitting on a porch, maybe playing golf, ice-tea type of life.”
But current retirees are “changing the way they think,” he said, “because they are still healthy and sort of young at heart.” In the last 50 years, retirement “wasn’t this period that we spent years and years in,” Mr. Hershfield continues. “It really, truly was the end of life.”



Photo

David Law and his wife, Bonnie Carleton, on the Great Wall of China.

Galit Nimrod, a research fellow at the Center for Multidisciplinary Research in Aging at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, says an extended postretirement trip can assuage a sense of loss from ending a career. Travel can “act as a neutral, transitional zone between voluntary or imposed endings and new beginnings” and “serve as a healthy coping mechanism,” Dr. Nimrod said by email.
Gary D. Norton, 69, acknowledges that he felt “afraid of retirement” when he left his job of 34 years as a science professor at a South Dakota community college.
In 2002, he and his wife, Avis M. Norton, 67, a retired farmer, sold their house, bought an R.V. and started volunteering full time for two nonprofits: Nomads on a Mission Active in Divine Service, or Nomads, and RV Care-A-Vanners, an initiative of Habitat for Humanity.
The couple typically rebuilds houses damaged by natural disasters, projects that usually last several weeks. Mr. Norton, who now specializes in drywall finishing, and his wife, who studied carpentry, say they cherish the chance to give back to society while seeing the country. “Now what we’re doing is so satisfying and fulfilling, even though we have some health issues, we say we don’t want to quit,” said Mr. Norton, who estimated that he and his wife had repaired damaged homes in 28 states.
The chance to volunteer on international conservation projects and the opportunity to live like a local inspired Danila Mansfield, 58, and her husband, Chris Gill, 64, to sell their house in San Jose, Calif., last year. They got rid of nearly everything they owned — the exceptions being two suitcases, clothing and a pair of guitars (Mr. Gill’s prized Gibson ES-335 electric guitar is stowed at a friend’s house, but he totes around a travel guitar) — and do not even rent a storage space.
The purge of possessions was “a little nerve-racking” at first, but ultimately “hugely liberating,” said Ms. Mansfield, who is currently in South Africa. She and her husband plan to volunteer on game reserves to protect endangered species and then study great white sharks.
So far, their travels have surpassed expectations. They drove from San Jose to Florida over five months, before cruising to Europe. High points included meeting a judge at a bar in Amarillo, Tex., who invited them to visit his drug court, catching crawfish with locals in Louisiana’s bayou country and making new friends in Austin, Tex., who invited the couple to stay with them in South Africa.
But Ms. Mansfield has also hit bumps in the road. In Galveston, Tex., and New Orleans, an acute respiratory illness required three visits to urgent care centers. “It was really dragging me down,” she recalled. At one point she cried for home, but then managed to brighten her mood. “I kept telling myself, ‘This is home,’ ” Ms. Mansfield said. “Where I am is home.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/30/business/increasingly-retirees-dump-their-possessions-and-hit-the-road.html?emc=edit_my_20140908&nl=your-money&nlid=32663937&_r=0

Monday, September 1, 2014

8 key retirement dates you don't want to miss

In the words of Forrest Gump, blind dates are like a box of chocolates -- "you never know what you're gonna get." While the uncertainty may be fine for a blind date, surprises are the last thing you want when it comes to retirement.

In fact, there are several dates that trigger important milestones for current and future retirees. Here are eight retirement dates you don't want to miss.

Age 50: At the half-century mark, future retirees get some extra help in saving for retirement. They can make what are called "catch-up" contributions to both 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts. In 2014, the catch-up contribution limits are $5,500 for 401(k)s (increasing the total 401(k) limit to $23,000) and $1,000 for IRAs (increasing the total IRA contribution limit to $6,500).

Age 55: Early retirees can begin making withdrawals from their 401(k) plan penalty-free at age 55. This little-known exception to early withdrawals does have strict rules. For example, it only applies to ERISA-qualified, employer-established, defined-contribution plans such as 401(k) and 403(b) plans. It does not apply to IRAs. You also must have worked for your employer until you reached at least 55. You can't retire at, say, 53, wait two years, and then take advantage of this exception.

Age 59½: Just before you reach the big 6-0, you can begin making penalty-free withdrawals from 401(k) and IRA accounts. If you are still working and have a 401(k), you'll need to check with your plan administrator to see if it allows what's called an "in-service" withdrawal.

Age 62: This is the earliest age at which you can begin receiving Social Security benefits. Note that your benefits will be reduced if you begin receiving them early (that is, before your full retirement age as noted below). At age 62, the benefit is reduced by roughly 30 percent, although the exact reduction depends on your year of birth.

Age 65: Turning 65 is significant for several reasons. First, at age 65, you can sign up for Medicare. Second, those born before 1943 reach full retirement age for purposes of Social Security benefits (it varies by a few months, depending on your year of birth). And finally, those with a health savings account can make withdrawals for nonmedical reasons without paying a penalty.

Age 66-67: Those born in 1943 or later reach full retirement age for purposes of Social Security benefits during their 66 th year (if born between 1943 and 1959) or when they reach 67 (if born in 1960 or later).

Age 70: For those looking to maximize Social Security, benefit increases stop at age 70, even if you continue to delay taking Social Security. The rate of increase up to age 70 depends on your year of birth, as outlined in a chart provided by the Social Security Administration.

Age 70½: At this age, the required minimum distribution kicks in. The RMD sets the minimum amount you must withdrawal from pretax 401(k), IRA and other retirement accounts. The RMD requirement does not apply to Roth retirement accounts.

Rob Berger is an attorney and founder of the popular personal finance and investing blog, doughroller.net. He is also the editor of the Dough Roller Weekly Newsletter, a free newsletter covering all aspects of personal finance and investing, and the Dough Roller Money Podcast.
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Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/8-key-retirement-dates-dont-144917696.html