ON THE ROAD TO.....RETIREMENT-PART 1

I don't usually post a lot of personal stuff here but, I am going to make an exception as I get closer to the BIG R.....Retirement. Over the years when some one would ask me "When are you going to retire?" my reply had always been, "The First!" Which always brought the followup question, "Oh, the first of the Year," to which I always replied, "No, The first time they piss me off."  Well, it finally happened and a few weeks ago, they pissed me off enough for me to finally pull the trigger and start the process.

I have been employed by the State of Virginia for the past 43-years, in fact this is the only job I have ever had. But, without going into the politics of working for the government, the last few years have been challenging and it finally dawn on me, "You don't have to do this anymore." So a few weeks ago I started looking into actually retiring.

One of the best benefits of working for the State is it's leave package. If you treat your leave like an extension of your pay check and carefully manage your leave, a seasoned employee only has to work about 8 months of the year. The problem is when you finally decide to retire the the state will only pay you for a small portion of your unused leave. So the first thing I did (after picking an actual retirement date) was to calculate my leave and figure out how much leave I have to take so that I can get paid for the max while not loosing any.

The one thing that I found is that my agency's personnel office (if you want to be politically correct - human resources office) is really little help in helping figure out my current leave balances and no help at all in calculating my future leave balances. So my own calculations show that I will have about 70-days of discretionary leave that I will have to take by the end of the year.  Figuring that each month will require an average of 20-days leave, I will have a little over 3-months of leave to take. So with that being said, I will basically stop working about the middle of September.

My next thing was to sit down and do a monthly budget. Listed my bill, and other monthly expenses. For the last year I have kept a pretty detailed log and have a pretty good idea of what I will cost me to live month to month.  Some of the expenses will go down, like gas to and from work, and eating out. Some may go up like, groceries.  So I have a good idea what it will cost me to live month to month and have found that I should have a good bit of money left over for discretionary spending, and hopefully may be able to continue to save a little each month.

So now that I have set an actual retirement day - January 1, 2018 and an actual leave date - September 15, 2017, it was time to looking in to the dreaded paper work.  I first started the process by looking on line at the Virginia Retirement System (VRS) website and downloaded the Retirement Handbook.  This is a must for anyone who is considering retiring from the state in the next year or so. It is full of information and I found it very helpful.

My next step was initiating a call to my agency's personnel office and setting an appointment for an initial review. From where I live in southwest Virginia to my agency's personnel office in Richmond it is a good 4-hour drive. I have to say that this was a total waste of time.  The person I initially set the appointment with and was scheduled to meet with wasn't working and I had to meet with another person who did little else but print off the necessary forms. She could not even get logged into the correct website to calculate my financial numbers. The entire meeting took about 20-minutes. So 4-hours up and 4-hours back for a 20-minute meeting. Waste of time. I ended calling the VRS office direct and found that they are very helpful and provide a bunch of information that my personnel office didn't. The VRS Representative also was able to correct some of the "Mis-Information" that my personnel office had given me.  Moral of the story, while you may have to deal with your personnel office for some things, I have found that it is better to go to VRS for accurate information.

Some people will disagree with my next statement but after meeting with my financial and tax people, I have decided to start drawing my social security as soon as I can. After considerable thought, there are a couple of reasons that I have chosen to take early social security.  First and foremost, is it is never ever a good idea to allow the government to manage your money. So I am going to get my money that the government has been holding for me and run with it.  The second reason is by drawing social security I will be able to leave my investments alone and they hopefully will continue to grow. I anticipate that with my monthly retirement and social security check I will be able to live comfortable while allow my investment to grow. The initial plan is to use my state retirement and social security for my monthly bill and still have enough left over for monthly discretionary spending and using my investments for emergencies and travel.

The next big benchmark that is coming up will be actually filing the retirement papers and applying for social security, and that will come in the middle of September. The VRS will not accept applications for retirement no more than 120-days in advance of the actual retirement date. Applications for VRS retirement must be files 60-days in advance and they advise 90-days is ideal.

Since I have made the decision to retire, another question that I am often ask is, "What are you going to do."  My answer is more often than not, "Nothing."  But the truth of the matter is, I plan on traveling. I have even thought about sell out and becoming a full time RV'er, but have basically talked myself out of that for a couple of reasons.  First, while I like the idea of waking up in different places, the constant setting up and tearing down does not appeal to me.  Second, I have watched a number of YouTube Videos from full time RV'ers and the one thing that they all have in common is that you are driving your house and there is always something breaking.  Most full timer's are really quite handy at fixing thing themselves but the truth of the matter is I am not that handy and if it requires much more than changing a light bulb, I am totally lost.

So, I have decided to keep a sticks and bricks home, whether it be at my current location or at another site we will have to just wait and see.  But I do plan on traveling, some times it will be just a day trip, others it will be a weekend excursion, and yet another time it may be a week or so it will just depend on my mood.  I do plan on taking a couple of extended trips each year. One in the spring of the year around the time of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and another in the late summer or fall of the year.

Over the years I have have kept a rather detailed travel journal and I have also kept track of my expenses. In 2015 I managed to take a 9-day trip to the the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Hudson Valley of New York. During that trip my average daily expenses was $107.00. Of course my biggest daily expense was lodging, followed gas and food.

In 2013, I attended the NCAA Basketball Tournament in Kansas City, Missouri. This trip took about 17-days and again I kept a very detailed travel journal and expense log. My average daily expenses was $97.00 per day. This included lodging, food, gas and tours.

A lot of people tell me that is very low considering hotels and food should be my biggest expense, and I am a able to minimize or some time eliminate some of the bigger expenses like food, and lodging.

I am a big fan of rewards programs especially hotels and gas stations.  Currently I am a member of the Choice Hotels reward program which features Comfort Inn, Sleep Inn and Quality Inns.  I really like Choice Hotel's programs as it seems like I can accumulate enough point for free nights quicker especially during the early spring and late fall when they often offer double points or stay two nights and get a free night.  Plus accumulated points don't expire.

While Choice Hotel are my number 1 hotel chain when traveling I am also a member of the Holiday Inn rewards program.  While Choice is usually cheaper than many of the competing brands, I have found that Holiday Inn are by and large more customer service friendly and the rooms and common areas are nicer.  I am usually able to keep my lodging expenses down by using my rewards points for either free or reduced stays at Choice Hotels and Holiday Inn's Nationwide.

Another way that I reduce my expenses, is in my daily food budget.  Most of the hotels I stay at feature a complimentary breakfast.  I always take advantage of this breakfast before hitting the road. For lunch, it usually hit up fast food (I know it's not healthy) but a lot of the time I opt for subway, or eating the lunch at a place that is recommended by the locals.  For supper, it usually a nice sit down chain restaurant or again a local recommended place.

Also another way that I minimize food expense is I start buying gift card a few weeks before I depart. I usually by them at Kroger's where I get double, triple, and even 4-times the fuel point which serves to reduce my fuel cost when I am on the road.

So you ask what is on the horizon. Well, first up is submitting social security and VRS Retirement applications in September.  Then in October my sister and I are off to Washington D. C. for my birthday.  She has never been to our Nations Capitol so it is going to be an awesome adventure.

Then in November I am planning on taking a short Amtrak Trip just to see how I like traveling by rail. Everybody I have talked too tell me you will either love it or you will hate it.  Where am I going, well I haven't decided yet, I am looking at either Charleston, South Carolina, or Savannah, Georgia. If it doesn't happen in November I am looking at somewhere in Florida in December.

January 1, 2018 will be my official retirement date and somewhere along the way, I will be getting a new car. Yes, Hannah Honda (my 2010 Honda Insight) has almost 180,000 miles and it is going to be time to trade her in before I hit the road for my first big retirement Adventure in March of 2018.

Yes, my first big road trip will be in March 2018. Right now, I am planning on a Texas vacation where I want to attend the 2018 NCAA Basketball Tournament at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.  I won't know for sure until I am able to purchase ticket in Mid-October, but right now I plan on hitting the road the first of March and spending the better part of a month piddlin' around Texas.

So that's the plan for the next few months as I make my way down the road to retirement.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY - AMERICA

The 4th of July would not be complete without fireworks.  This year despite a light and steady rain, the Town of Christiansburg, Virginia celebrated the 241st birthday of our county with a great fireworks display at the High School .  Because of the rain I chose to view the the "bombs bursting in air" from the shelter of my back deck.  Here is a short video of how our small town celebrates freedom and independence.

CHASIN' THE 611 - MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND 2017

Elliston

For the past two month the historic 611 steam locomotive has been pulling excursions in North Carolina and Virginia. The last of these excursions occurred over the Memorial Day Weekend with The Powhatan Run between Roanoke and Radford.  This is one of the shorter but one of the most scenic and most popular routes of the 2017 excursion season. The route takes passengers through Roanoke and Salem before climbing the famed Christiansburg Grade in Elliston and Sahwsville.  One of the most popular sites on the run is the twin tubes of the Montgomery Tunnel, which was made famous through the photography of O. Winston Link.  The train continues through Christiansburg passing the Cambria Depot.

Montgomery Tunnel

From 1868 to early 1950s, the Cambria Depot was the shipping point for all the goods coming into and leaving Montgomery and Floyd Counties, including the Towns of Christiansburg and Blacksburg. Every Sears mail-order house and Wishbook gift; every letter and package; every rug and factory chair and wedding dress sold by the mail order firms from New England to the West Coast; every Model T and Stutz Bearcat; and every secret decoder ring came through the Cambria Depot.

From 1868 until 1906, the Cambria Depot also served as the passenger station, including during the height of immigration. The depot and Cambria welcomed the miners from Wales and Czechoslovakia, farmers from Germany and Ireland, cabinetmakers and home-builders, masons and seamstresses. The languages spoken in the freight-house were as diverse as the last names in the County.

Elliston

In 1906, the Norfolk and Western built a new passenger station on a site east of the old depot and on top of a small spring fed pond (and we wonder why we have stormwater problems), and the old depot was converted to a freight station and a maintenance of ways & engineering office. The new station was built, not because there was a need for a new passenger station per se but because of the political, social, and cultural demands for segregation. The old depot, one of only a couple of pre-segregation depots left in Virginia, could not be segregated because of the configuration of the waiting rooms.

In its heyday, Cambria boasted of five mercantiles and general stores, a china shop, a notions shop, the Phoenix furniture factory, a grocery store, a couple of banks, more than a couple of hardware stores, three mills of various types, a creamery, four hotels, and more than its share of bars, brothels, and pool halls. She also had her share of ugliness-- a history marred by the racial divides made worse by economic woes.

Spring Hollow

Like most railroad towns, Cambria went through a period of decline, resulting in consolidation with a larger neighbor (Christiansburg) in 1965. The construction of Route 11 and Route 8 in the 1930s, increased automobile ownership, and the introduction of truck transport and bus service from Roanoke following the end of World War II spelled the end of Cambria's role as the primary shipping and immigration point for Montgomery County, Floyd County, and eastern Giles County. 

(Source/Credit: VISIT HISTORIC CAMBRIA)

From Christiansburg the excursions continues west passing under the coaling tower at Vicker Switch before arriving in Walton to make the turn and return to Roanoke.

Along the way The Powhatan routes affords you several great Photo opportunities to see the Queen of Steam. Over the three days of the excursion I was lucky enough to get some decent photo and video from West Salem, Spring Hollow (Arthur on the Norfolk Southern Route) The Christiansburg Grade at Shawsville and at Montgomery Tunnel.

Here is the Video from my three day chase. It's not my best work but it is what it is.

THE TOMBSTONE TOURIST VISITS OHIO

I'm going to make this a really short entry as most of this has been covered in previous posts. This posts features a short video made from the photographs that I have taken during my travels around the Buckeye State.  During each of my visits I had the opportunity to visit a number of cemeteries. Some were very large cemeteries like Spring Grove in Cincinnati, while other were small rural cemeteries like Rushtown Cemetery in Rushtown, Ohio. In the video we visit two of the Great Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, Branch Rickey and Walter Alston as well as the great Yankee Captain, Thurmond Munson.  We also visit the graves of two U. S. Presidents, William McKinley and William Henry Harrison.

This is an older video so there is no narration.

ROUTE 52 - THE OHIO RIVER SCENIC BYWAY

A few years back, my annual NCAA Basketball Tournament Vacation took me to Kansas City. On the way I left the Interstate and traveled on Route 52 between Huntington, West Virginia and Cincinnati, Ohio. This entire route ran along side the Ohio River.  One of the great things about leaving the interstates and traveling the "old roads" is they still retain their character.

The interstates are great from getting from Point A to Point B, but it you want to see the true character of America, you need to travel the old roads.  Route 66 is the most famous of the pre-interstate highway and many of the classic motels, restaurants and attraction have been preserved. But other highways like U. S. Routes 11, 60, 460 and 50 are great roads of character.  The one thing that you must remember is to take your time and not hurry.

As I was meandering along Route 52, I came across a couple of old Mail Pouch Barns. For those of you that don't know about these barns, they were forms of advertisement for the Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company which made Mail Pouch Chewing Tobacco.  The first Mail Pouch Barn appeared in about 1891 and continued until the early 1990's. These barn along with others such as "See Rock City," and "Ruby Falls" were extremely popular in the 1960's. During the 1960's there were more than 20,000 Mail Pouch Barns alone in about 22-States.

Sadly the barns began disappearing in the late 1960's thanks to the Lady Bird Johnson highway beautification act which prohibited certain forms of outdoor advertising. Over the past 50-years or so many of these old barns have faded into the past and have been lost to father time. So it was wonderful to find a couple of these relics of the past on the banks of the Ohio River.

I must confess, I just didn't happen to stumble onto Route 52, there was a method to my madness. I am a fan of American History, especially Presidential History. So in addition to a nice leisurely drive, Route 52 runs through the tiny village of Point Pleasant, Ohio which is the birthplace of President Ulysses S. Grant.

The village of Point Pleasant is located about 25-miles east of Cincinnati, where on April 27, 1822 Ulysses S. Grant was born.  The future president only live here for a few months before his family move to nearby Georgetown. The small home was built in 1817 and in 1821, Jesse and Hannah Grant move here and paid $2 a month rent.

Today the house and surround area is preserved by the Ohio Historical Society. The home is furnished with several pieces of furniture that was owned by the Grant family along with several period pieces.

While the grounds are open year round the building have seasonal hours and during my visit were not open for tours.  The Ulysses Grant Birthplace has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

From Point Pleasant it's just a short drive into Cincinnati where I was able to find a parking spot near stadiums and I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the Riverfront, Paul Brown Stadium and Great American Ballpark.

After visiting the stadium area I called it a day. Below is a short video from my trip along the Ohio River Scenic Byway.