Making the move to cottage country requires patience, planning and cash.

It’s four o’clock on a hot Sunday afternoon. The lake quiets down as the boat traffic subsides. While most cottagers are busy packing their cars and coolers for the trek back to real life, Jan MacNaughton, a retired physical education teacher, contemplates going waterskiing. That is, if she can convince her husband Stu, a retired electrical contractor, to abandon his La-Z-Boy recliner and current novel. Oblivious to the mass exodus taking place around them, they are just two of the many retirees who now call the cottage “home.”

More and more Canadians are retiring to their summer retreats, but making the move to cottage country requires patience, planning and cash. Carol Baird-Krul, a 63-year-old retired school librarian, and fellow retiree Enise Olding co-authored the book, Transition to Retirement: the Uncharted Course. Baird-Krul recommends new retirees should not make any decisions about where they’re going to live or what they’re going to do for a period of time.

“Talk about it, plan it,” agrees Debbie Simmonds, a real estate agent who specializes in Vancouver Island’s Cowichan Valley, “but take time to adjust to being retired. The scaffold that frames your life falls away. A lot of other things fall away. Give yourself time to settle in.”

To read the full story, pick up the March/April issue of Cottage magazine at your local newsstand. To get more great articles like this one delivered conveniently to your doorstep, subscribe now.