Looking back, what would you change?

[mogo51]

2 hours ago, Gratefuled said:

Just one thing?  I would if I could change a lot of things. I probably should have kept my first house and just rented it out. It was (is) in a nice location and the area has a lot of new businesses. The street now is a boulevard. The new owners have really fixed it up nice. I was young and just married and needed a larger home. That was my reason for selling it. Oh WELL 

I bought my first house for $30k, now woth $400k, smart move.  But we could all be rich in hindsight.

[Ynot]

2 minutes ago, mogo51 said:

I bought my first house for $30k, now woth $400k, smart move.  But we could all be rich in hindsight.

I can beat that, I bought my third home for $130K now worth $ 650k but sold at $240K , oh not so smart after all :(

 

[mogo51]

8 minutes ago, Jack Peterson said:

 Changed my Phone number! That Worked & the bank account of Course.

short and sweet Jack, but to the point.

[Gratefuled]

12 hours ago, chris49 said:

A lot of things when I was younger, but then I would not be where I am today.

Financial decisions. My first house was a townhouse in the Washington D.C. area, on a fixed rate VA mortgage. I was younger then and didn't see the long term implications. But we are probably looking at a $500, 000 USD difference over 40 years.

Professionally. I might have worked 2 more years and retained my nursing license, and all my credentials. The way things turned out, it might have been handy...I was in admin, moonlighting in the ER.....the nurses in ER were making what I was getting, with overtime and differentials. It was a good earner at the time...but, I went to the PI instead.

This and that, but mostly about money. When I had more money I did more....travel mostly. But money never increased my happiness.

So I have to say no regrets. But I might have done things differently.

Love and Happiness is/are everything. If you have both you are rich. 

[Nephi]

20 minutes ago, Gratefuled said:

Love and Happiness is/are everything. If you have both you are rich. 

Absolutely true. I committed "financial suicide" by moving here and retiring so early to do so. The first few years of our marriage were life - Philippine Style - in every respect. But because of the love and commitment of our marriage, they were not only the growing and testing times but also the most fun and memorable as well.

[Gratefuled]

7 minutes ago, Nephi said:

Absolutely true. I committed "financial suicide" by moving here and retiring so early to do so. The first few years of our marriage were life - Philippine Style - in every respect. But because of the love and commitment of our marriage, they were not only the growing and testing times but also the most fun and memorable as well.

I'm happy for you. You made a very big decision by retiring early for love and happiness. I'm glad it worked out well for you. I could never ever live here for the rest of my life. 

[Nephi]

15 minutes ago, Gratefuled said:

I'm happy for you. You made a very big decision by retiring early for love and happiness. I'm glad it worked out well for you. I could never ever live here for the rest of my life. 

Thank you. It just seemed the right thing to do and it worked out well. After being here for so many years now I could never go back to living in the States. It is still frustrating here on a daily basis. Especially when there is something important to deal with quickly. Takes longer to get stuff done here and so many locals have little understanding of life in general which complicates things. But if that's all I have to deal with then the problems it causes are small in comparison to living in the West.

To me it just comes down to wanting to be with my wife and children in a nice place that is not only affordable but less restrictive than back home--to say nothing of not having to deal with the snow and icy winters here.

 

Nephi

Edited March 19, 2016 by Nephi

[Gratefuled]

12 hours ago, Dave Hounddriver said:

I'd change one thing or 4 things, depending how you look at it:

First:  I would never have moved in with my second wife if I knew then what I knew now.

Second:  If I made the mistake of moving in with her then I would never have got back together with her after our 6 month long break-up, early in the relationship.

Third:  If I had still made the mistake of getting back together with her I would surely not marry her this time.

Forth:  Assuming I had made those first 3 mistakes:  When I was walking out the door, 2 years before the final separation, I would have kept walking and not let her emotional plea sway me into staying.

Now, that's funny for me but not so funny for you. I've heard many times  not to remarry your ex. 

[OnMyWay]

My wife will bring up past decisions once in a while, and of course we all have made decisions that we regret later.  I always tell her, past decisions are part of the road of life, and as some indicated here, we would not be where we are if we had made other choices at a fork in the road.  I would not have her, and I would not have our beautiful kids.

The one "regret" I always bring up happened when I was in college.  I was desperately broke, living with my parents, attending college and looking for work.  I accepted a part time job.  Just after that, my Computer 101 (mostly BASIC programming) professor offered me a job as his assistant.  It was a great honor and the pay was not bad, but I turned it down because I was making lots of money at the other "part time" job.  I was working a ton of overtime and having fun, while my studies were going downhill.  I ended up dropping out of school and worked at that "part time" job for the next 29 years!

The other fork in the road?  It was the beginning of the dot com boom.  High paying IT job, perhaps part of a startup.  Who knows?  Regrets?  No serious ones but it is fun to think about it.   My little girl just woke up and bounced down the stairs, and I would not trade that for anything!

Several mentioned houses.  I bought a house in Florida for 198K when housing was shooting through the roof.  I moved to Germany and could have sold it for twice what I paid for it (in 4 years) but I was greedy, thinking it would keep going up.  I rented it and the market went kaboom the next year.  At a certain point it fell to less than I paid for it but it has recovered to about 300k now.  I am still renting it.

[manofthecoldland]

16 hours ago, Nephi said:

Thank you. It just seemed the right thing to do and it worked out well. After being here for so many years now I could never go back to living in the States. It is still frustrating here on a daily basis. Especially when there is something important to deal with quickly. Takes longer to get stuff done here and so many locals have little understanding of life in general which complicates things. But if that's all I have to deal with then the problems it causes are small in comparison to living in the West.

To me it just comes down to wanting to be with my wife and children in a nice place that is not only affordable but less restrictive than back home--to say nothing of not having to deal with the snow and icy winters here.

 

Nephi

A good, balanced assesment of your over-all, high quality of life here when looking at the other optiions available. I'm fairly sure that there are literally tens of millions of older men living in advanced economic countries that would happily trade places with you if given a magic wand.