North Carolina Retirement Journey

 

As many of you know that follow my blog.  Terry and I have started to think about retirement.  We have lived in Illinois all our adult lives.  Our family and friends are all here.  

With that said this is going to be a fun journey to explore other more retirement friendly states.   It still will be hard to leave what we know and family and friends.

I will show you in this post the types of homes that we liked on our journey to North Carolina.
Ha Ha Terry said no to this beautiful converted bus lol!
I could easily live in that or the glamper I opened with but it is not for him.

I have to tell you we hit the ground running when we arrived in North Carolina.  We stayed in an Airbnb in Charlotte and branched out from there.  Most towns were about 20 to 30 minutes from Charlotte.

We went on Realtor.com and found houses we liked and then drove to them to check out the neighborhood and what was around.  I wanted to know is there a cute downtown area and there is bigger shopping like a HomeGoods, grocery stores etc within a reasonable driving distance.
This house we found above was in a sweet neighborhood in Huntersville.  Gorgeous city that checked off all the boxes.  Very cute house and perfect size.  My great friend has a daughter that lives in Huntersville so they were both so helpful with all our questions.

 I love small I do not want big.  We would need at least two to three bedrooms for when the kids would come to visit.  Also want one level living.  No stairs.  These seemed to be big asks in a lot of the areas.

One of the issues we ran into in North Carolina was that most townhomes and houses are two stories.  They tend to not have a lot of yard area and like to build up.  If you want land you need to buy big or go out to the rural areas.  

It was hard to find one level living.  It was out there but mostly in bigger 2500 to 3000 sq. foot homes and way over what we want to spend.

The smaller ranches and craftsman type homes were so me and had the cottage look and feel. The problem with most of them were they were in not so nice neighborhoods.
They like to take smaller houses with history and character and flip them.  They are gorgeous but then your neighborhood is not good

I applaud them that they are trying to revitalize these neighborhoods but I am at retirement age and do not want to live in an up can coming neighborhood for however long that will take.

We actually found two beautiful homes with so much character and charm,  oh my gosh I just loved them.   They were even on the preservation list of important homes with history and yet they were in the worst neighborhoods.

Terry and I are off to hit a few towns over the border on Tennessee this holiday weekend.  It is drivable from our home in Illinois so we will go and explore a few of those towns this weekend.  

Then I will plan our next trip to fly into the Knoxville Tennessee area to branch out and see different towns in that area.

After Tennessee we will then hit Alabama.  I am so lucky I have become friends with a lot of you sweet bloggers through the years that live in these states.  You all have been a tremendous help.
It is overwhelming when you do not know the areas and culture.
 I thank all of you for all the help you have given us on our journey. 

The other issues is whether or not they renew Terry's contract for two more years.  He would love to work two more years to help this growing Fire Department.

After 50 years in the fire service he has been the happiest at this department.

Lots to think about and lots of decisions still on the back burner until we know what they will do with Terry's roll at the FD.

While overwhelming it has been fun to discover places that we have never been.  North Carolina is a gorgeous state.  It has so much to offer.  Two hours one way you have the mountains and two hours the other way you have the beaches and ocean.

We whirlwind journeyed to all the areas around Charlotte and will need to plan another NC trip and fly into Raleigh Durham area to check out the top and eastern part of the state. 

Hope you all are having a great week so far.
Hugs,
Kris