Posting again here after two years

Long story about where I've been. Actually I've been blogging elsewhere but that has all disappeared so here I am again :)

It's late August 2012 and I am now living in Sierra Vista, Arizona. I don't hike as much as I used to. It's much hotter here than in Arizona and I don't have as much free time during the week either. I spend quite a bit of time with daughter and grandchildren as they live in the same town. And during the school year I substitute teach. But I still love to travel; in two weeks I will be in Northern Ireland for two weeks. I am very excited about it, to see where my grandmother was born and lived for the first 20 years of her life. And to visit Belfast, hopefully understand something more about Ireland than shamrocks, leprechauns and St. Patricks.

A fellow blogger posted the question what would I do if I won a lottery? Hmmm.... Depends on how much money was in the lottery. If it were a million dollars, I would pay off both of the houses we currently have mortgages on and are slightly underwater for. That would take (ulp) $300,000. Then I would probably continue to rent them to others until we could sell them and recoup what we lost. I would give that rent to public education in Arizona, a place which sorely needs the money. But I'd like to be like the Gates and be careful about where that money is going. I would want it to go for technology in the classroom and more counsellors.

I would like to live in the house we are currently renting or buy a house that is in the same development. If I bought another house it would cost $200,000. The house prices are reasonable (right now) and the houses a perfect size for two retired folk. Oh and of course, I would tell my husband to retire if he wanted to. That's the most important thing. He is getting mightily tired of work and perhaps if he retired he would find more fulfillment. He is close to where he could receive Social Security and I am already receiving Canada Pension. We could retire if we had zero debt.

Buying our daughter a bigger house would be nice but I would want to sit down with her and her dh and caution them about living within their means. Which could be interfering--don't really want to do that. So perhaps I would simply buy the house they are currently in and gift it to them or something. I don't know about that. I know they could use a bigger house with four small children. The kind of house she would like would be about $250,000 but they are into their current house probably about $185,000 in a mortgage. So perhaps the best thing would be to give them the money to pay off their mortgage, then they could sell it and I would top up whatever they would need to buy the $250,000 house.

The rest of the money? Put it somewhere where we could draw on it when we wanted to travel or when we heard of someone in need.