Please tell me your positive stories of creating a new life in a new place aged 50+

[hereorhome]

I'm struggling with a big decision and it's exhausting me.

Basically, one of my options is to move to the area I lived in until I left for university, the place I still think of as home even though I've been gone for 30 years. I am not in touch with any old friends other than the odd Xmas cards but do have some elderly family members still there.

It would mean starting over in my fifties and I'm not sure how realistic that is.
There are several other aspects worrying me. What I'll be leaving behind here is one of them, finances is another as I will be significantly less well off (any equity from my current house won't go far, and I need to face the very really possibility that I will actually be poor, especially when retired). I feel the pull of home though, and it's getting stronger.

Has anyone ever moved to a new place and created a whole new life for themselves at 50+? Although I know the area I will know no-one my age, will need to find work and create a whole new social circle. I did it in my twenties, full of the optimism and the energy of youth, with my whole life ahead of me but today I am wracked with doubt. What if it all goes wrong? If I am lonely as well as poor? It will be an irrevocable decision, so I want to be sure as I can that it's the right one. (Oh, to have a crystal ball, and a spare £500k!).

Please tell me all your positive stories and give me your best advice.

Could you do all those things where you are now? I wonder whether you feel the feel the pull of childhood but if you lived back in your hometown you would realise that there was nothing left of your childhood there.

Join the women's institute in your new home area. It's a great way to start making new female friends and they usually have walking and book clubs amongst other things

I left a bf, moved to a new and unknown area, didn't know anyone, aged 49.

Now have loads of friends, loads more than I ever had. I didn't need to worry about work because it's commuting distance to London and I was commuting before from way further away.

I don't really have money worries.

I don't really get why you are moving though? I was just leaving a bf and could go anywhere. I had no base to go back to. I was never based where he was either.

Anyway, I met people in my village, through hobbies and charity work (I don't have kids, and not much family either). But not via my job because I either commute or work from home for that.

I’m going to do the same in about a year. Early 50s, moving with a disabled child and a rough divorce, to many miles away where I have a small network of people.

It is scary, but I think it’s also refreshing. What have we got to lose?

You could always move back couldn’t you? Would you give it a year?