|
Welcome to Rick and Rory's Travels and Retirement website.
We moved to Columbia, SC from southwest Florida in the fall of 2007. Our home is located in the "Five Points" area. We are within walking distance of many restaurants, shops, and other services. We're also about a three block walk from the University of South Carolina (USC). We continue to meet lots of people, making many new friends, and getting involved at the University and in the community. Here'a a short article on why we picked Columbia. We had our first house guests at the end of March, 2008 (our friends Trevor and Fay from Denham, Western Australia). In addition to Australians, we've had guests from Florida, Georgia, New Mexico, New York, and China so far. We look forward to many more visits from friends around the world. Not only is our house in a terrific location, it's also maintenance-free, which will allow us to "lock and leave" it while we're traveling. Our life plan includes traveling 3 - 6 months each year, with volunteering, continuing education, and local activities keeping us busy the rest of the time. We spent three years planning extensively in advance of Rick's retirement. (See Rick's Retirement page.) We have been in "execution mode" for almost 4 years now (time flies when you're having fun) and we are proud to say that our plan appears to be working quite well. The combination of retirement and the sale of the FL house, has enabled us to travel extensively. We completed our first extended trip--3 months in Australia in 2006; and our second to Greece (2 months in 2007). We we returned from our third one: back to Australia and our first visit to Tasmania including 8 weeks caravaning with Trevor & Fay across the north of Australia. We left at the end of July and returned in mid-October. On the homefront, Rick is finishing his second year on our
home owner's association board of directors and has found opportunities to volunteer in the local
school system with an organization called "Communities in Schools" and anticipates new
opportunities at the USC Moore School of Business and the School of Music.
Thanks to the link to us from The Kaderli's website, and various search engines, we've received emails from many people we've never met, asking us questions about our travels and retirement planning. (Our email address is: RickandRory@AckTwo.com or click on "Email Us" at the top of this page.) If you'd like to be included on our mailing list, let us know.
We have also been featured
in the October 2005 issue of "Kiplinger's Personal Finance" magazine in the article "7 Ways to Retire
Rich" (we were #5)
and The 2006 Kiplinger's annual "Retirement Planning" magazine in an article titled "Playing
Catch-up".
the video of Rick's first acting role. Proceed at your own risk..... in order to escape his wearisome life. He wakes up in what appears to be the afterlife, only to discover that heaven is not eternal bliss, but an on-going therapy session.] [We are now on Skype. Our Skype ID is: RickandRory. Rick is also on Facebook.] |