Retired and Ready To…….

Welcome to the Retired and Ready to….(you fill in the blank) website.  Whether you are a “retired now” or a “ready to”, this website will eventually have something for you.  As we travel on the retirement adventure with you via this website, we are going to share everything from wishful thinking about retirement to very specific information that will allow you to add to your enjoyment or help you find a solution for a situation that is providing a roadblock to your current or future retirement. Along the way on this adventure we invite you to share with us as well….share what you are retired and ready to do or what you are retired and already doing. Share some of your questions, concerns, issues or just stories about your retirement—current or future.

Let us introduce ourselves. We lived in what the Weather Channel calls a “Plains” state all of our lives prior to retirement. We were ready to start “working” at this retirement “thing”, knowing that our dream, situation and approach still needed attention, focus and decisions as well as a side order of more money!

As life would have it, the very first full day of our retirement life TOGETHER turned out to be September 11, 2001. When some of the shock and horror had worn off, we looked at each other and realized that we needed to adopt the “life is too short and too uncertain; we needed to follow our dreams” approach to our immediate retirement. By November 1, 2001, we had sold our home and many of our worldly possessions and were living in a beautiful seaside community in an area referred to as North County, San Diego.

We are James and Carol Ann Wiley.  We both worked within City and State government, primarily in the field of aging and human services. Although we do not consider ourselves so-called “experts”; we do consider ourselves to be an excellent resource on information on information about aging and aging issues and also a knowledgeable referral source for elder services,

We are not here to tell you that retirement is the end all – be all for everybody. Just as we are all unique individuals, so too is our retirement. Not everyone wants to live their retirement in the heart of a large city nor travel the country in an RV.  Not everyone wants to live their retirement playing golf or fishing; nor quilting or playing cards. Not everyone has the amount of money that makes their retirement truly carefree nor the ability to generate new sources of income. Not everyone has the “health” nor the health insurance that permits living an active lifestyle with no concerns over health care. You can see that there are a multitude of issues that many people overlook as they focus primarily on the financial.

Within this website we will share some of the adventures and misadventures which brought us from 2001 to this day. As Retired and Ready to grows and you help us fill the site’s categories with information about retirement resources, interests and activities; all of us will be supporting a vision for a authority destination about the retirement adventure for all.