The Best Laid Plans . . .
Roberto gets a shock.
When we first hatched our plan to retire in France, Carolyn and I discussed it nonstop, did a bunch of reading and talking with friends, and then met with our financial team in the spring of 2022. Our “team” is two people, Steve the accountant who does our taxes, and Darby the financial planner, who is a brilliant woman in charge of the big picture and managing our investments.
We were lucky; we were in much better shape than we realized. I wrote to an old friend, “We over-prepared for retirement!” That was a slight exaggeration, but we did get back good news—thanks to the low value of the euro, we could buy our apartment in France as soon as we found one that fit our budget! Fantastic!
(Please remember that we don’t have children to put through college and, miraculously, our parents don’t currently need our financial support. We acknowledge that this is amazing good fortune. We started this newsletter with the hope that if any of you want to move abroad in the future, you can learn from our many ridiculous mistakes and hopefully have an easier go of it.)
When we got the retirement forecast from the financial planner, something didn’t look right in the spreadsheet. “Why do you have me earning a fraction of my actual salary starting in 2024?” I asked, thinking I’d found an error.
“That’s when I have you switching to part time work as a consultant,” Darby replied.
I was over the moon with excitement; I could drastically cut back my work schedule in as soon as two years and maintain our current standard of living? Amazing!
I’m an architect, but for the last decade I’ve been working as a project manager on highly custom, architect-driven residential projects (and one very fancy boat dock). Just a few months earlier I had told my employer that I was working on a plan to retire in about FIVE years.
The five year plan was intended to be helpful for my employers, Rebekah and Eric of Rauser Construction (who are also very good friends). The homes we build can take upwards of four years to complete. Five years would give me time to wrap up the job I’d been building and finish one more project before retiring.
Shortly after our meeting with Darby and Steve, I asked Eric and Rebekah for another conversation and said sheepishly, “Remember that five year plan I told you about? The one where I move to France at the end?”
“Of course.”
“Well . . . that’s more like a TWO year plan now; I don’t want to leave you in the lurch! Is there a way to make this work?”
Rebekah immediately gushed, “Roberto, If you CAN do that, you SHOULD do that!” They might have high-fived me at that point—I honestly can’t remember, but they were almost as excited as I was.
As I said, they are very good friends and lovely people, and there was none of the acrimony or concern I had imagined. I asked for ten days off in November to go to Montpellier and start searching for property. Not a problem! They were incredibly gracious about making that happen for me and Carolyn.
We took our November vacation in Montpellier. That fall and winter the Fed continued raising interest rates, crypto was imploding, banks were failing, inflation continued to climb, the cost of construction materials continued its pandemic-induced upward trajectory, and jobs my company had lined up for the spring began to seem uncertain. Architecture firms said projects they had on the boards were getting smaller or being put on hold. The pipeline was drying up.
Carolyn and I had returned from our November trip with a signed a contract to purchase an apartment. I asked for a month off “sometime” in the spring to return to France, close the purchase, and set up our new apartment. After four years of work, my current project was wrapping up; a month off would be a real chance to wind down before starting the next build.
In January 2023, I met with Eric and Rebekah yet again. A few projects had, in fact, been delayed or cancelled, and they were uncertain they’d have a project for me when I returned from a month off. The conversation was very open and honest. They didn’t want to put me in a bad position, but they were in a difficult position themselves. Even if they did have a project, for the level at which we work, clients don’t want to bond with a project manager only to have them retire 1/4 of the way through the build. Rauser Construction sets itself apart by being hyper-focused on transparency and delivering an excellent client experience throughout construction.
This was a “state of the union” meeting and we discussed many possibilities, but tabled the discussion without making any concrete plan about how to move forward.
The uncertainty was tying me up in knots. Finally, a few weeks later, Rauser proposed that I take off March 15-April 15 (paid) to go to France. I could return to work in mid-May, wrap up the last two weeks of my current project, and stop my employment as of June 1. This was the new retirement schedule.
Carolyn here: In January, when Roberto told me he was about to be laid off, I rolled my eyes. He is always bracing himself for imagined disasters, and I was 100% sure he was exaggerating. But okay. He was correct this 1 out of 100 times.
Carolyn and I emailed Darby: would stopping work June 1 screw up everything? It was a tense night. This time we were both imagining disaster, but we had a reply from her the next morning. I'm not worried, she said. We’d have to figure out health insurance and adjust tax withholding, but it wasn’t a threat to our plan.
I’m now about two weeks into what I am calling my “first retirement.” Already I can tell I’m going to need more to do than write a Substack post every other week. (The trouble with retirement is you never get a day off!)
I’m disappointed that my final project didn’t conclude with the usual excitement and celebration. The client decided to sell the property and won’t ever live in it. It’s a gorgeous homestead, but there will be no move-in party, our client will never get to work in the beautiful painting studio, and it probably won’t be staged and photographed for publication.
I have a few ideas and interests that I want to pursue and which I hope will give me the flexibility to go back and forth between our two homes. I’m interested in clothing and fashion, I have an idea for a book to help people building their first (or fifth) custom home, and I am thinking of starting a business that takes on smaller construction projects using a 3 month cycle alternating between planning/design (while I’m in France) and construction/execution (while I’m in the US). I’ll write more about those ideas in a future post.
Jusqu’à la prochaine fois (until next time),
Carolyn & Roberto
Thank you for sharing all the photos of your beautiful work. My recently retired husband calls retirement “six Saturdays and a Sunday.” Good luck as you embrace this transition. Sounds like you will land on your feet. 😊
I found the photos exciting; I’m an archi-photo enthusiast. Just one more reason to check out southern France.