Wednesday 24 April 2013
Logistics
In the last couple of days Warren and I have talked in some detail about the timeline we will need to follow once his extended visa is in place. This will involve selling our car either first or last, depending on how things pan out time-wise. We really need to re-pack our storage locker...at least the last 1/4 of it as we add the possessions we currently have with us. We also want to visit family in Whangarei (a good 5 hrs drive north from where we currently reside) and plan a family gathering on the North Shore, Auckland. We have a couple of special friends we want to share a meal with and spend time with our elderly parents before we depart. We don't know how long we will be gone, so the latter is especially important.
There are, of course, the details of where to stay in Auckland while we complete our various last minute tasks. Renting furnished apartments rather than Motel/hotel rooms works best for us, we find. It is also considerably less expensive for the most part, means we can cook and visit our friends and family without taking up space in their guest rooms. We like to be independent.
I have been searching online for airfares, but there is nothing we can book...yet. It is good to know I can also book United Airlines Mileage Plus Award Travel, having enough miles to get both of us one way from Auckland to Houston, TX. It just means we wont have the ability to visit with our family in two different US states. This is unfortunate, but the budget wont allow for it at this stage. Lets hope they can come and spend some time on the boat with us.
We have been in a holding pattern for the past five months. We applied for Warren's visa at the beginning of December 2012. Just prior to that he received a 6 month US visa, but leaving NZ and returning every six months over a ten year period (the life of the visa) was not going to be economically possible. Other issues come to bear on this also...see below.
Because of this we have made the decision to stay in NZ until his 2 yr visa is approved and then move to the USA. We can apply for an extension for that visa before the 2 yrs is up, from the USA.
The big challenge with a 6 month visa is that when you need to renew, you have to leave the environs of the continental USA. You cannot go to Canada, the Bahamas, Mexico etc and then try to re-enter the US and expect to get a further 6 month extension, too many times. We know of others who have been turned away at the border regardless of their visa. You are expected to leave the USA for a min. period of 15 days between visits.
With all this in mind, and not wanting to take the risk of being turned back at any time, we are sitting tight in NZ. It is easy to get disillusioned throughout this whole process, though.
Two years ago, the US Embassy in NZ used to process the whole of the Visa application and issue it from Auckland. Now, they only conduct the final interview and process the NZ Police record form. The rest of everything is couriered at great expense to mainland USA. Not only is this superbly inefficient, it just doesn't make any sense. It isn't centralized and the different departments don't appear to share information. We know, we asked!
We signed up for e-notification from the National Visa Center (NVC), and have learned to expect mail from them on a Tuesday (being Monday in the USA) which sends a shiver down our spines because there is usually a request for more information or money. This of course cannot be E-mailed back to them. It has to be couriered! Then we wait another week to 10 days to be told that something isn't right, more information is needed or they couldn't process our fees! aieeeeeeeeeeee~! Mucho frustration!!!
We have not heard from them (NVC) this week and are holding our breaths until next Tuesday morning when we hope we will hear only the good news that Warren can go and get his Medical certification and a date for his interview in Auckland. If we don't hear from them, we will call to make sure they have everything they need. This of course means we wait on the phone for at least 30 mins. to be connected to a real person. Said person rarely knows much more than what is on their checklist of documents they should have in our folder.
I have to say, it would be VERY helpful if the applicant received a checklist at the beginning of the process so that we could send everything at once. We thought we had done that with the initial application, but apparently that went to a different department and the NVC was not given that information...hence the need for additional copies, fees etc etc. I do wish they would learn to share!
Tuesday 23 April 2013
Planning
When people ask us what we are doing in our 'Leisure time' while we wait to begin our Great Adventure, we hear from so many mid-lifers who can't wait to retire and live their dream.
The very idea that retirement will offer the individual/couple a panacea is rather interesting, in itself.
Let me tell you right now; Retirement can be nasty if you don't have interests or hobbies or something to fill your days . The Dream, as it were, is a myth that can hastily turn into The Nightmare if you have not taken good care of your financial goals for your post-work life.
Take dental care, for instance. Suddenly, I have had to have dental work done that was unanticipated (isn't most of it?) and it has cost thousands of dollars. I have also had a (at this stage) small medical matter to attend to which has the potential (I guess) to also cost many dollars that were unanticipated.
Fortunately we have Medical Insurance, though the premiums grow each year as we get into that higher age bracket, and fortunately we live in a country with socialized medicine...well, kind of. User pays more and more.
Getting back to The Dream:
As with most of the bigger things in life, planning is essential. Warren and I have been in the planning stage for our mid-life adventures for the best part of two years. We did not anticipate being 'retired' this early in our lives, but the downturn in the economy, selling our business and being unable to find worthwhile work at this age has meant we have had to make other plans. It was not as if we stuck a pin in a map and said "let's go there". We just knew we didn't want to spend the rest of our lives making things in the garage and tending the vege garden, though they are definitely included in the 'retirement experience'. They just were not going to be the raisin d'etre! (deliberate spelling!)
We had been planning to sell 'Warren's' boat for some time. Well, that isn't strictly correct: 'I' had been nudging him to consider the possibility of selling the boat, for some time:) When the two of us got together as a couple, HE came with a boat and 'I ' came with a dog. We have enjoyed both for the past 6 years.
Even though I grew up with a small boat in the family and a father who 'went fishing', I cannot say I spent much time on a boat. Warren had spent most of his life boating and owned sailboats and later the 41ft Launch (Motor Yacht) he brought with him to our relationship. The attraction of boating, for us, was that this was one of the very few ways we felt we could completely 'get away from it all' in our busy lives. Our own little 'Desert Island'.
With the boat on the market (online) we had to check out the opposition, as you do. Warren found a 40-something foot Bayliner for sale that had 'done X number of thousand miles' and gave a brief description of where the boat had been (USA). It was also imported into NZ from the USA. This gave us the idea of buying a boat (Motor Yacht or Launch) to live aboard and discover the delights described by so many on The Great Loop.
We sold 'his' boat just before Christmas, 2012.
In 2010 when we were about to go to Texas for two weeks, we were looking on Google Earth, as you do, to see where we could go during that time that would be of special interest. We discovered that the Intra-Coastal Waterway (known as the ICW) runs along the Gulf Coast of Texas between the Barrier Islands and the Mainland, all the way from Brownsville, on the Mexico border, to Florida.
Warren then went further on Google Earth and discovered that we could motor the ICW all the way up the east coast of the USA though canals, behind Barrier Islands and estuaries to New York. From there we could go up the Hudson River and into either the Eerie Canal from Albany, NY to Buffalo on Lake Eerie, or up the Champlain Canal from Albany, NY, to Montreal on the St Lawrence Seaway. The possibility of boat travel on the Great Lakes into Canada, using their canal systems was most exciting.
Of course one has only a few months to visit Canada before the weather becomes too cold and the Lakes are closed for the Winter. In those circumstances, you have to either winter your boat over in heated sheds or go south back down the ICW again or through the Chicago River at Chicago, into the Illinois River etc to complete The Loop to the Gulf of Mexico.
Now, before we go any further, and you think that you have to be 'well off' to do something like this, you don't. People 'do' the Loop in anything from 21ft sailboats (with their masts down) and power boats to 60ft vessels (albeit with a height restriction due to one 19ft bridge in Chicago). Some people do half or 1/4 of The Loop, others do the complete loop (approx. 7,000 miles) repeatedly over many years.
The costs associated with doing 'The Loop' are as varied as the craft doing it. There is much discussion on various Looper Blogs and Forums about the costs, but they are entirely individual. Taking into consideration the amount of fuel needed to power your boat, side-trips, personal preferences, groceries, restaurant meals, marina fees, rental cars, accommodation other than your boat etc etc, the costs vary widely. Some people might spend $50k over 8 months travel, while others might spend $15k or less.
There are no hard and fast rules for how to do it or when to do it, other than the weather restrictions and the warmer months. The New York canal system doesn't open until early May due to ice, so I guess that says it all. The usual traffic pattern on the ICW is northbound early in the Spring and southbound on the rivers in the Fall.
Back to the Planning:
Along with the excitement of a pending adventure, we have had to deal with the real-life issues of what to do with 'everything'. Reducing our personal possessions and household to the equivalent of a 40ft container (storage unit) was a challenge when coming from a 250 s. metre home. A garage sale...or two...got rid of many items, with the rest of the decent but not throw-able goods going to goodwill stores.
Having sold the business, plant and equipment as well as some other assets, we made the decision to sell the family home and invest that money in an income stream. We had long thought that living in one's retirement fund (family home in Auckland, NZ) was not the wisest of investment strategies. Actually taking the leap to divest ourselves of a permanent family base, as it were, was not as hard as expected. With the last of the children leaving home to work in another city in NZ, the two of us rattled around rather.
We advertised the home ourselves online and sold it to the 2nd people through the door at the beginning of December. With Christmas getting in the way of the ownership change we didn't actually vacate until the middle of January. This gave us plenty of time to 'sort our stuff', in more ways than one.
Perhaps the hardest decision we had to make was that of re-housing our much loved pooch. She had been in my life since the age of 4 months, and was a wonderful companion to both of us. We know it pays to talk to all kinds of doggy people about your dilemma because inevitably one of them knows someone who will love your dog to bits. We are fortunate that this happened for our girl and we are in no doubt that she is much loved by a special family. That is not to say that we don't miss her every day. We get our doggy loves when we can with obliging pooches and owners:)
We planned, with the sale of the house, to set aside an amount of money for the purchase of the vessel that is going to be our home for probably the next couple of years. What kind of vessel does one need in order to live aboard? We can think we know, but when it comes to the crunch, we don't! Again, there is much discussion on blogs and forums as to this very question, and no one answer has been arrived at. It is entirely individual!
We had done extensive research over the two years into the kind of vessel that we thought would take us where we wanted and needed to go. It was most frustrating at times converting our dollars into Greenbacks, until we set a benchmark at which we could afford to buy, and nothing less. This turned out to be .84c NZ to the US$.
As luck would have it, the NZ dollar settled between .83 and .85 around the time we needed to send the money overseas. We used Forex to send the money because there was no commission and better exchange rates. We could also do it all online in a flash. Easy!
Along with the 'price' of the vessel, we also had to factor in such additional expenses such as survey of the boat, marina fees, State Sales Tax, registration, ownership transfer and many other 'small' items. This can add beaucoup bucks if you don't plan well for them. So much expense, you say...but consider all the expenses involved in buying a home or a car. This, after all, is our home.
Besides the planning for the boat, we had to plan for our banking (online), medical, legal, family obligations (including our senior members in their late 80's-90's) among many other considerations. Going paperless is proving more challenging that you would have thought, especially in the USA. Our USA online banking is also proving to be hugely challenging. NZ makes it seem so easy by comparison.
The minutae of our lives have had to go under the microscope and be deemed worthy of keeping or discarding. This is not always straight forward. It has proven an interesting exercise in what is most important in our lives.
The very idea that retirement will offer the individual/couple a panacea is rather interesting, in itself.
Let me tell you right now; Retirement can be nasty if you don't have interests or hobbies or something to fill your days . The Dream, as it were, is a myth that can hastily turn into The Nightmare if you have not taken good care of your financial goals for your post-work life.
Take dental care, for instance. Suddenly, I have had to have dental work done that was unanticipated (isn't most of it?) and it has cost thousands of dollars. I have also had a (at this stage) small medical matter to attend to which has the potential (I guess) to also cost many dollars that were unanticipated.
Fortunately we have Medical Insurance, though the premiums grow each year as we get into that higher age bracket, and fortunately we live in a country with socialized medicine...well, kind of. User pays more and more.
Getting back to The Dream:
As with most of the bigger things in life, planning is essential. Warren and I have been in the planning stage for our mid-life adventures for the best part of two years. We did not anticipate being 'retired' this early in our lives, but the downturn in the economy, selling our business and being unable to find worthwhile work at this age has meant we have had to make other plans. It was not as if we stuck a pin in a map and said "let's go there". We just knew we didn't want to spend the rest of our lives making things in the garage and tending the vege garden, though they are definitely included in the 'retirement experience'. They just were not going to be the raisin d'etre! (deliberate spelling!)
We had been planning to sell 'Warren's' boat for some time. Well, that isn't strictly correct: 'I' had been nudging him to consider the possibility of selling the boat, for some time:) When the two of us got together as a couple, HE came with a boat and 'I ' came with a dog. We have enjoyed both for the past 6 years.
Even though I grew up with a small boat in the family and a father who 'went fishing', I cannot say I spent much time on a boat. Warren had spent most of his life boating and owned sailboats and later the 41ft Launch (Motor Yacht) he brought with him to our relationship. The attraction of boating, for us, was that this was one of the very few ways we felt we could completely 'get away from it all' in our busy lives. Our own little 'Desert Island'.
With the boat on the market (online) we had to check out the opposition, as you do. Warren found a 40-something foot Bayliner for sale that had 'done X number of thousand miles' and gave a brief description of where the boat had been (USA). It was also imported into NZ from the USA. This gave us the idea of buying a boat (Motor Yacht or Launch) to live aboard and discover the delights described by so many on The Great Loop.
We sold 'his' boat just before Christmas, 2012.
In 2010 when we were about to go to Texas for two weeks, we were looking on Google Earth, as you do, to see where we could go during that time that would be of special interest. We discovered that the Intra-Coastal Waterway (known as the ICW) runs along the Gulf Coast of Texas between the Barrier Islands and the Mainland, all the way from Brownsville, on the Mexico border, to Florida.
Warren then went further on Google Earth and discovered that we could motor the ICW all the way up the east coast of the USA though canals, behind Barrier Islands and estuaries to New York. From there we could go up the Hudson River and into either the Eerie Canal from Albany, NY to Buffalo on Lake Eerie, or up the Champlain Canal from Albany, NY, to Montreal on the St Lawrence Seaway. The possibility of boat travel on the Great Lakes into Canada, using their canal systems was most exciting.
Of course one has only a few months to visit Canada before the weather becomes too cold and the Lakes are closed for the Winter. In those circumstances, you have to either winter your boat over in heated sheds or go south back down the ICW again or through the Chicago River at Chicago, into the Illinois River etc to complete The Loop to the Gulf of Mexico.
Now, before we go any further, and you think that you have to be 'well off' to do something like this, you don't. People 'do' the Loop in anything from 21ft sailboats (with their masts down) and power boats to 60ft vessels (albeit with a height restriction due to one 19ft bridge in Chicago). Some people do half or 1/4 of The Loop, others do the complete loop (approx. 7,000 miles) repeatedly over many years.
The costs associated with doing 'The Loop' are as varied as the craft doing it. There is much discussion on various Looper Blogs and Forums about the costs, but they are entirely individual. Taking into consideration the amount of fuel needed to power your boat, side-trips, personal preferences, groceries, restaurant meals, marina fees, rental cars, accommodation other than your boat etc etc, the costs vary widely. Some people might spend $50k over 8 months travel, while others might spend $15k or less.
There are no hard and fast rules for how to do it or when to do it, other than the weather restrictions and the warmer months. The New York canal system doesn't open until early May due to ice, so I guess that says it all. The usual traffic pattern on the ICW is northbound early in the Spring and southbound on the rivers in the Fall.
Back to the Planning:
Along with the excitement of a pending adventure, we have had to deal with the real-life issues of what to do with 'everything'. Reducing our personal possessions and household to the equivalent of a 40ft container (storage unit) was a challenge when coming from a 250 s. metre home. A garage sale...or two...got rid of many items, with the rest of the decent but not throw-able goods going to goodwill stores.
Having sold the business, plant and equipment as well as some other assets, we made the decision to sell the family home and invest that money in an income stream. We had long thought that living in one's retirement fund (family home in Auckland, NZ) was not the wisest of investment strategies. Actually taking the leap to divest ourselves of a permanent family base, as it were, was not as hard as expected. With the last of the children leaving home to work in another city in NZ, the two of us rattled around rather.
We advertised the home ourselves online and sold it to the 2nd people through the door at the beginning of December. With Christmas getting in the way of the ownership change we didn't actually vacate until the middle of January. This gave us plenty of time to 'sort our stuff', in more ways than one.
Perhaps the hardest decision we had to make was that of re-housing our much loved pooch. She had been in my life since the age of 4 months, and was a wonderful companion to both of us. We know it pays to talk to all kinds of doggy people about your dilemma because inevitably one of them knows someone who will love your dog to bits. We are fortunate that this happened for our girl and we are in no doubt that she is much loved by a special family. That is not to say that we don't miss her every day. We get our doggy loves when we can with obliging pooches and owners:)
We planned, with the sale of the house, to set aside an amount of money for the purchase of the vessel that is going to be our home for probably the next couple of years. What kind of vessel does one need in order to live aboard? We can think we know, but when it comes to the crunch, we don't! Again, there is much discussion on blogs and forums as to this very question, and no one answer has been arrived at. It is entirely individual!
We had done extensive research over the two years into the kind of vessel that we thought would take us where we wanted and needed to go. It was most frustrating at times converting our dollars into Greenbacks, until we set a benchmark at which we could afford to buy, and nothing less. This turned out to be .84c NZ to the US$.
As luck would have it, the NZ dollar settled between .83 and .85 around the time we needed to send the money overseas. We used Forex to send the money because there was no commission and better exchange rates. We could also do it all online in a flash. Easy!
Along with the 'price' of the vessel, we also had to factor in such additional expenses such as survey of the boat, marina fees, State Sales Tax, registration, ownership transfer and many other 'small' items. This can add beaucoup bucks if you don't plan well for them. So much expense, you say...but consider all the expenses involved in buying a home or a car. This, after all, is our home.
Besides the planning for the boat, we had to plan for our banking (online), medical, legal, family obligations (including our senior members in their late 80's-90's) among many other considerations. Going paperless is proving more challenging that you would have thought, especially in the USA. Our USA online banking is also proving to be hugely challenging. NZ makes it seem so easy by comparison.
The minutae of our lives have had to go under the microscope and be deemed worthy of keeping or discarding. This is not always straight forward. It has proven an interesting exercise in what is most important in our lives.
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