About Me
Approximately 20 years ago a work associate offered her colleagues a timeshare week on the Garden Route she couldn’t make use of that year. Surprised that I was the only one who was keen, I accepted the offer and took my family – father, mother and sister (my husband couldn’t get leave) off on a 2 week holiday. It was 2500kms round trip so it seemed a bit far to go for just one week so I found another week’s accommodation at another resort close by.
That began years of holidaying along the Garden Route, incorporating it at times with trips to Cape Town and up the Atlantic seaboard to see the West Coast flowers. I have many photos of happy faces when we arrived and dejected faces the day we left. The time always went too quickly and it got increasingly agonising to leave.
My husband, Wayne and I started looking at houses and then vacant land and after a few false starts eventually found our perfect stand along the lagoon at Sedgefield in 2002. When we put in an offer which was accepted, we were over the moon. Suddenly our dream of having a home on the Garden Route looked like it was going to become real.
In May 2006 a contractor started building our house in Sedgefield and by December it was completed. We sold our house in Heidelberg, Gauteng in January 2007 and the transfer was registered in May. We handed in our notices at work and the middle of July, with our staffie, Duke, we moved lock,stock and barrel to Sedgefield.
My Dad didn't manage very well without her but now, frail at 88 years of age, we have him living just across the road from us in Sedgemeer Park Retirement home. Happily, we believe he couldn't be in a better place and I can easily walk across the road to visit him every day.
Together with the long term plans we had made, our jobs had enabled us to achieve our goal of retiring to Sedgefield. It wasn't tough for us to leave the rat-race and daily predictable grind behind.
When we arrived in Sedgefield we spent two weeks in our holiday flat which we thoroughly enjoyed as we gradually unpacked our boxes, hung our pictures and placed our worldly possessions into the right spaces to make our house feel like a home. I took to our new life like a duck to water – no regrets, no looking back. It took Wayne a while to get used to the freedom of being his own boss every day!
It’s turned out the best decision for all of us! Every day it just gets better. We have a great circle of friends. There’s a wonderful sense of community in Sedgefield and an inexhaustible number of things to do. We actually have to be careful not to get over-involved. The environment is second to none – and living along the lagoon is like being on holiday every day. I have to pinch myself to believe I’m living this great life.
I must admit that we live circumspectly knowing that we need to consider inflation and monetary devaluation in order to avoid the possibility of outliving our money.
At the back of my mind I've known that once I'd given my "working persona" a good break - like a year or so, I was going to look for some fun thing to do to earn me money - a kind of insurance policy you could say - so that we can refrain from putting strain on our pension funds early on. Boy, were we right to be careful! The whole world economy took a dive as 2007 progressed and it affected everyone in a kind of unavoidable chain reaction. The people who have survived best, let's face it, are those who live on a cash basis, who live simply and don't spend more than they earn. Nevertheless there are escalating costs that one isn't always prepared for like huge increases facing South Africans in the cost of electicity, fuel increases, revaluation of property using different criteria so hikes in rates and taxes - we now pay for rates and taxes what we used to pay off a bond - how ridiculous is that? Fortunately we have in place a few different streams of income because of the old adage "Don't put all your eggs in one basket". It's turned out to be a sound strategy. At the same time increasing one's multiple streams of income if you can do it, is a good thing although I don't believe in taking risks with non-renewable sources of income. So such a venture has to be a sensible one and not a "get-rich-quick-scheme" that loses me my savings or investments. I have considered creating a website several times but was stumped by my lack of know-how. Now I’ve got the time to do it and I have a topic I’m passionate about. Then by some lucky strike of fortune I’ve found the right people to show me how to do it right way! And a year down the road with SBI, I am more that happy I chose them to guide me. If you're interested you can click here to go to my personal SBI page to find out how to do it for yourself! or click on the banner below!
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We had such a great holiday. We are all nature lovers and were blown away by the outdoor activities and the beauty of the area. By the time we returned, I had bought us our own week of timeshare (speaking to my husband, on site over the phone) at a new timeshare that was being built on the cliffs at Wilderness overlooking the Indian Ocean.
We did go to other places some years, the Kruger Park –also love that place - and New Zealand and Australia. But we always suffered “withdrawal symptoms” when we missed a year of coming to Sedgefield. There was always so much to do and our days were crammed with outdoor activities from sunrise to sunset. We needed to go home for a rest!
Changes at my husband’s work had also made him restless. We did our sums, made some sacrifices and brought our retirement forward.
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