Journey to retirement and Sweden

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The preparations for our retirement and departure for Sweden are nearing completion. We depart on July 4th. Right now we are ensconced in our little one bedroom transition apartment near downtown Portland where we have a great view of downtown and Mt. St. Helens.

It has been a lot of work to get to this point and a lot of people have asked me to write about how we did it. We started clearing junk out of our house about 1.5 years ago, just one small area at a time and lots of trips to local charities. In September, when we decided that we were in fact going to move to Sweden, we made a rough project plan and schedule so we could start prioritizing activities, kept lists of tasks and added things as we thought of them. We had a garage sale which was not very successful, and sold some things on Craigslist which worked for items that were less than $100. Consignments and the final estate sale turned out to be a much better way to get rid of stuff we were not going to take with us. We sold one car in September and the other in May. The potential show stopper was the sale of the house. I'm happy that a family with young children liked it. The hard part now is saying goodbye to our friends in Portland, while we are looking forward to spending time with our family and friends in Sweden.

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Photos

View from the patio
We have a view over downtown and have seen a number of beautiful rainbows.

Comments

[Greg Aitken]

Best wishes, Ann!
Hi Ann, sorry I didn't have a chance to say good-bye. I want to give you all my best wishes for a wonderful transition into retirement, and your new life ahead in Sweden!

[MMD]

Happy Trails!
Ann, thanks so much for writing this blog. I look forward to reading about the rest of your adventures. The apartment in Portland sounds sweet. And your approach to moving sounds just like a good project manager's approach to a huge task. Well done. John and I will be thinking of you. Love, Marilyn

[Mavis]

Are You Settled In Yet?
Hope to hear more about your travel to Sweden and getting settled in. Hope all is well with your family and you are waking up each day glad to be there!

[leskayvida]

Sverige
Hi Ann...I finally figured out how to access this. First post from Sweden???

[Ann Levine]

Hi Leslie, Yes that was my first. I'm about to start on the next one. Don't want to overwhelm people. Thanks for the phone starter package. I'm still using the setup with Telenor.