My husband and I have always lived in large cities. This was not what we wanted، I grew up on a farm and he grew up in a very small town. We talked about wanting to live in the country and have some acreage and a nice house with a country porch on the front. Our careers lead us to city life. We assured each other and ourselves that this would only be for a short time، until we had gained experience and saved some money. We were both fortunate enough to have great paying jobs and we both received promotions which meant moving from time to time and also staying in metropolitan areas. We have finally decided that our lives and our dreams are passing us by and we need to make some changes if we want to realize our dream of living in the country and watching the sunsets from our country porch.
Two years ago I became quite ill and needed to leave my job. I invested half of my severance pay in high risk accounts، and got lucky. I tripled my money in four months. I reinvested the initial investment and put the rest in savings. I again was lucky with the reinvestment and this time doubled my money. This gave us enough to look for a country home and for my husband to find a job that would be less demanding on his time، energy and spirit. We do not have children so we could relocate to wherever we wanted. We took several trips to different locations to find our country home. We found a beautiful mountain home with the big country porch over looking a valley. This was a beautiful place، however there were no employment opportunities. We looked in the lakes regions of the country. Again we found beautiful homes with views from a country porch، but again employment was an issue.
We decided that we would compromise and find a home in the suburb closest to my husband’s job. He needed to work three more years to qualify for a pensions plan and then we would be able to live without depending on a job. The suburb that we looked at had several established neighborhoods with mature trees and quiet streets. We found a home that was twenty five years old and was on the end of a dead-end street. The home had a big country porch complete with a wooden swing and window boxes for planting flowers. We love the neighborhood and enjoy spending evenings sitting on the country porch and visiting with neighbors that stroll by.
