Do I rent an apartment or buy a mobile home? What’s the best long term solution since I am 72?

We still have Koda, his dog. I rehomed Grace. I hated doing it, never had such a smart dog. But a lab puppy needs a yard and he had little patience with her. Koda is happy laying around. He’s 18 months now and more settled. We get him fixed in June and he will settle more.

The apartment is the easiest for now. My husband is getting really stressed and that’s not good, for him or me. I am stressed as well. It is crazy how expensive things are right now. A sellers market for sure. He wants to rent now and pay double for a month or so. I am going to agree to renting starting June 1.

I will stay here till the house sells. Lol, I could use a break from him, although I will be back and forth between the two places. He can move into the apartment, with his dog, which should satisfy him. This should calm him down. He’s been a bit strange the last couple of days.

I have packed at least half of the house and we have moved it all to storage. Started throwing away some stuff we don’t use today. Once we unpack I’ll downsize more. It’s stupid to keep/have all this stuff when both of us are on the edge of dying in a year or two. Same with buying a new place, we have to get more realistic. We have to make it easy for our son.

It’s strange and it must be some kind of denial process where your mind, or spirit, won’t let you face the reality that, yes, your time is coming to an end. I just talked to my 94 year old mother who is having the same issue. She just moved to a new apartment.

She passed out in the new place, fell, and broke her ankle. Was in the hospital, rehab for a week, and then home against medical advice. (I must have inherited my hatred of those places from her, lol.) Anyway, her heart caused her to pass out, and the docs said nothing they can do. Yet, she persist in living as if she had forever and was fine.

Humans are certainly a strange bunch. Lol.
 

Well, when I was on line today I checked the apartment complex. It said they had a 2 bedroom 2 bath on the ground floor. Got him up, went over there, sigh, and they didn’t. But they did have a one bedroom disabled unit. Took that instead of the three bedroom. What won’t fit into the apartment we will store in a garage which we will rent.

This is unit is in a much better spot, and available June 1. He will move in June 1, with his dog, and I will stay in this house till it sells. Hopefully fast, as we are paying double rent and I just have enough savings to do this, then my saving will be all gone. But, with him there and me here, it will be a nice break from each other.

Hopefully everything works out.
 
Aneeda72 said:
Well, when I was on line today I checked the apartment complex. It said they had a 2 bedroom 2 bath on the ground floor. Got him up, went over there, sigh, and they didn’t. But they did have a one bedroom disabled unit. Took that instead of the three bedroom. What won’t fit into the apartment we will store in a garage which we will rent.

This is unit is in a much better spot, and available June 1. He will move in June 1, with his dog, and I will stay in this house till it sells. Hopefully fast, as we are paying double rent and I just have enough savings to do this, then my saving will be all gone. But, with him there and me here, it will be a nice break from each other. Hopefully everything works out.
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Hope your house sells fast Aneeda, and the apartment works out for you both.
 
Mobile home living isn't as easy as one would think. I've checked about downsizing into one. Without whopper size social security checks you're treated like a kid. They want first, last , security. Unless social security and/or pensions, iras are enough regular monthly income they don't want to hear you have investments or money from a house sale coming. Also some parks are like a storage place that comes with a rental increase at least once a year. I've even offered 6 months to years rent at one time. This on top of a good credit score.

There are months to months out there which is what I like. I'll even accept application fees, deposits etc. But living off investments can mean irregular income which does not fit these cookie cutter formula's a processes property managers and realtors like to use. Unless a 55 plus community many are geared/priced for a much younger crowd. They're out there but you'll have to hunt and/or relocate.
 
There have been complications, there are always complications. People tell you one thing, someone else tells you something else; and no one knows that they are doing. Putting the house up for sale next week. Haven’t been able to paint the deck since it has done nothing but rain and rain is predicted for another two weeks-every single day-rain.

Has to be a conventional loan since we can’t get the deck painted. Haven’t been able to get an apartment yet. Lol, the story continues.
 
Aneeda72 said:
There have been complications, there are always complications. People tell you one thing, someone else tells you something else; and no one knows that they are doing. Putting the house up for sale next week. Haven’t been able to paint the deck since it has done nothing but rain and rain is predicted for another two weeks-every single day-rain.

Has to be a conventional loan since we can’t get the deck painted. Haven’t been able to get an apartment yet. Lol, the story continues.
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I've been following this post and just want to say...my heart goes out to you. At our age, life decisions shouldn't be so difficult, should they?

In many ways, we have a similar type of husband. Mine isn't abusive in any way, but he can't make decisions. I've had to do everything, including deciding how his pension should be distributed when he retired in 2001. I knew nothing about those types of things and, now, years later, I know that I made the wrong decision because if he passes away before me, I'll get nothing from his pension. I didn't understand it at the time, but he didn't either so that's the way it was set up. That's the way it's been for 22 years and it makes me very tired.

The only thing he's ever made a decision on was where we were going to live. So far, we've lived in PA, CA, TX, then back to PA (that was my ONLY request) and now AZ. In that short period of time, we've bought 5 houses. None have been "homes" for me except the one in PA when we went back in 2008. We will never have a home paid for and will always have a car payment. He's always been terrible with money and it's taken me a while to start saying "no" to him. Is a $5000 shotgun really necessary for trapshooting?? I didn't think so, but he did. He wore me down until I finally gave in and let him buy it. Did we need a big 4 bedroom/4 bath house with a pool? No...but he wanted it so that's what we got. Three years later, I told him we needed to downsize (my phraseology for...we can't afford this house any more!) so we sold it and live in a much more manageable house.

When he fell from a ladder in 2012 and shattered his left ankle, we lived in PA. Two years later, we moved to AZ. I tried to talk him into buying a home in a retirement community that was all on one level and there was no maintenance for him to do since he had to wear a special brace for his ankle. I loved our town and we had many friends there. Nope...we had to move 2000 miles away where we didn't know anyone. It never mattered what I wanted....in any situation. We can't even agree on what to make for Memorial weekend. I was going to fix one thing...he wants something else.

I feel for you. When you're stuck, there's not much you can do about it and if you depend on someone financially, that makes you even more stuck.

Good luck. Keep us posted on what happens. We care :)
 
Colleen,

Thanks so much for your post. Difficult husbands make life so much more difficult than it has to be. I found out his life insurance is not as much as he stated it was so it was so probably just cover bills. Therefore I am pressured to get rid of this house as soon as possible since we don’t know how the lung cancer thing is going to go.

His pension, if he dies before me, will be almost 400 a month which I will get. Since I get 800 SSI, it will bring me to 1200 a month. I will probably be able to get into government senior housing with that income and not be on the street once the life insurance is gone. Otherwise, currently a single studio apartment is around 1000 a month.

But you need double the cost of the apartment to get one, so I just don’t know how to manage that. Doctors say I can’t work, sigh. I would love to get a job again.

I finally told him I was not going to move into an apartment without Comcast. We lost the deposit, which is against the law, but will deal with that later. The complex I decided we were moving into said they had an apartment but they don’t. They either have an apartment ready in mid June or late June. One is expensive, one is very expensive.

Course he wants the very expensive one, the three bedroom which we don’t need. I want the two bedroom disabled unit which may or may not be available in mid June. But I would settle for the affordable one bedroom, he won’t. Doesn’t matter since none are available at this time. We just have to wait.

Son is coming Saturday to help him rearrange the storage unit so we can put more in it. I am emptying the house of everything I can in case we need to stay in a hotel for a while. The more I pack the more I notice I need to pack. Plus the realtor said to hide our medications so they don’t get stolen. Lovely.

Anyway, hopefully the house sells the first week. And it closes the end of June. The apartment can be worked out somehow. If push comes to shove husband can stay with son and I’ll go to Texas and stay with daughter and family and her six dang dogs. My doctor would be very unhappy but oh well. Gotta do what you gotta do. Lol.
 
Just when you think you are making progress. Sigh.

It was not supposed to rain today so a neighbor came over and helped us paint the deck. Husband painted the deck itself, a redwood color. Of course, the old color we used was russet. Neighbor used the russets to paint the railings. The deck will now be three colors, redwood, russet, and a natural red sort of color. Lovely.

Anyway, I told husband to be careful and not get the stain on the siding. Yup, the stain is splattered on the siding three feet plus up and on the sliding glass door as well. Splattered on three different types of surfaces. When I asked him why he did this he gave his usual answer “because I did”. Sigh. If he doesn’t get if off the door, I’ll have to replace it.

I gave my usual answer which is, minus the swear words, wash it off. Course, the water and soap that gets on the deck will wash the stain off. Plus, it’s started to rain again. Kill me now. One step forward, three steps back.

Son came over as well and we put some heavier stuff into the storage so now we’ve moved out about everything we can. Son also rearranged storage so if we have to put our beds in storage, we can. Checked on the apartment and the guy that was going take the two bedroom disabled apartment didn’t, yay. We will take it and it will be ready June 20 or so.

The complex insists they only do one year leases, but I want six months. If husband is unhappy again, one year will be way too long. Plus he wanted the three bedroom which is too expensive. Hopefully we can get the two bedroom on a six month lease. We took down some fencing, so now the RV pad place is restored. Moved the dog run to the more rustic side of house.

We put the house up for sale on Tuesday. We are both exhausted. But I goggled and he’s got to get that stain off tonight, each hour he waits it becomes harder to remove. He should have listened for once. Got all the flowers beds weeded and planted annuals. It looks great. Hopefully the house will sell fast.
 
Our house goes up for sale Saturday. We have a deposit on an apartment which will be available in late June. This whole situation is extremely stressful. I refused a for sale sign in my yard since I live on a dead end. Also, no open house since open houses don’t sell houses.

People just shop the internet, look at the pictures, and then see the houses that interest them. We put the house up for less than I wanted/expected to try and get it sold this weekend. It looks really good.
 
Aneeda72 said:
Our house goes up for sale Saturday. We have a deposit on an apartment which will be available in late June. This whole situation is extremely stressful. I refused a for sale sign in my yard since I live on a dead end. Also, no open house since open houses don’t sell houses.

People just shop the internet, look at the pictures, and then see the houses that interest them. We put the house up for less than I wanted/expected to try and get it sold this weekend. It looks really good.
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You certainly do have your hands full! I can't keep up with you. I thought husband was going to one place and you another. Have you had a doctor evaluate his mental situation? This is not normal. Good luck.
 
Colleen,

Thought I had already explained, perhaps I did on another thread, lol. He had testing done to “prove” me wrong. I won’t go through the whole thing. The testing showed he has some degree of mental illness. Up until the testing was done the doctors believed his side -always. Since he “appeared” to be so nice.

Once testing was completed, it showed every single problem I had been complaining about including his hostility. All of a sudden after 47 years, the stupid doctors are worried that I’m in danger. Really? Like what have I been saying. I was telling everyone he was getting worst. Sigh.

He won’t agree to separate places. While we have the apartment, I am thinking once the house sells we need to buy another house. A rambler with a mother in law suite, or a finished walk out basement would work so we could live in the same place only separate as we do now. Looking into this.

Meanwhile, his appointment is Friday with the mental health professional. Which is good, cause he is extremely difficult lately-very oppositional.
 

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