In 1979, I became a home owner in Chicago. I bought a brick bungalow on the northwest side. It was built around 1920 and had a “French” concrete tile roof (which is a pain in the wallet to maintain). I bit the bullet and hired a roofer to replace the tile roof with a conventional shingle roof.
The original coal-fired boiler had been converted to a Timken oil burner in the 1940's. The old Timken burner was unreliable, so I had a new, current technology oil burner installed. I wasn't ready to replace the boiler with a gas-fired one.
In 1992, I opened an account with the Vanguard Group mutual fund company and started investing every month. I also invested bonuses and tax refunds. This will pay off big in the not-too-distant future.
In 1992, I bought a house in the 'burbs and moved out of the city. It's a newer house than my old bungalow as it was built around 1977. It's nice to have forced-air heating and cooling.
The main reason for the move was that my employer, Sears, moved from downtown Chicago to the northwestern suburb of Hoffman Estates and I was tired of 90+ minute commutes.
In April, 2003, Sears invited me to participate in the Targeted Headcount Reduction Process and laid me off. I was not surprised. Since I had been there for 30 years, I got a large pile of severance. Being age 50, Sears declared me to be “retired” and threw in some extra benefits. I suspected they would do this eventually, so when Sears resumed paying annual bonuses in 1992, I invested each and every bonus in my mutual fund account. I also started cashing in my stock options as I expected the stock price to plunge. It did but then crawled back up.
February 13th, 2004: I rolled over my Sears 401k account to my IRA. Since about 40% of the account was in Sears stock, I wanted to get it converted to cash before it falls. It's a nice pile o' loot that I cannot touch until I'm 59 1/2.
