Crowd sourcing a future

[politicat]

My mother is in her fifties, and if nothing goes rancid in the next few years, she'll be eligible to retire on schedule. She's once divorced after a long marriage and once widowed and has worked all of her life, so she should be good for Social Security and Medicare once she reaches age, and assuming it doesn't evaporate on her (she's in the least likely to get screwed age).

The problem is not so much her future as her now. When her husband got sick, he and Mom downsized. She knew that her ability to cope with a house and yard would be limited, and she acted accordingl, but they still got hammered by his final illness. It killed their savings and Mom has never really recovered her economic cushions. She owns outright a reasonably sized mobile home in a small, seniors' park near the Arizona-Mexico border, but that house comes with an ever-growing lot rent payment. Worse, the drug-immigration war is further depressing the local economy. Her chosen field (construction management) is currently dead, more so in her region than in the rest of the US, but not improving anywhere. Her second field (non-software project management) is in only slightly better condition. Her third, and original, field -- accounting -- is currently glutted with applicants who are younger and have more recent experience. Her aspirational field is media production - TV, film, documentaries. Since she was a child, she has wanted to do production management, and for the last fifteen years, she's been a production assistant, production coordinator and location manager for multiple small projects and commercials. The money isn't great, but she has the experience to do it full time if she wasn't tied to her house.

At this point, her sole responsibilities are one cat, one cell phone bill, and whatever associated costs go into living and working - food, lot rent, cat litter, car insurance, gas, power. In theory, she could pack a couple suitcases, hold the mother of all garage sales, sign the title for her mobile home over to the park, put the cat and her laptop in the car and go wherever. She's mostly surviving on temp work anyway. She lives a thousand miles from me already, and because she had me very young, she never really had a chance to be a bachelor. She does have a job offer for reasonable money in a region with more growth than where she's at, and that job is in a place with a lower cost of living, but she knows hardly anyone there. However, that area also has a vibrant film and arts community to which she has ties and she's got a tentative offer to trade her house and furniture for a self-contained smallish RV that would be sufficient for one person and one cat. Alternately, she can stay where she is, in a house that is pretty cheap and from which she can't be easily displaced, but where getting a job is getting harder and where the border violence is getting closer.

So I'm asking: what would you do? Is fifty-mumble too old to chase a dream? What do you do when the safe, sensible thing starts looking like it's built on sand?

[wickerwoman]

1. I would get out of Arizona if at all feasible.

Climate change, peak oil and water shortages are not going to be kind to the border states.

But that's me. :shrug:

[Skittles]

2. I say she should go for it

yes INDEED

[newfie11]

3. GO

Why not try something new. If she doesn't try she will never know and doesn't seem she has much to lose.

[FarCenter]

4. Ditch the cat

It is expensive, limits your ability to travel and work, and limits your choice of living accommodations.