Planning for Dreams and Goals – Brodie
I’m one of those people that love to make others happy, especially my wonderful husband. I’ve written before about how he is a massive Arnold Schwarzenegger fan and this year will be his 70th birthday (Arnie…not my husband). Anyway, I thought that as a fantastic wife, I’d organise for my hubby to go to Austria, Arnold’s birth country, to celebrate Arnold’s birthday at his childhood home that has now been converted into a museum. Now don’t worry, this blog piece isn’t going to be all about Arnie so you can keep reading. It gets better I promise.
What I actually wanted to write about was the process of how I did this. We have two (2) small kids now both at schools, a sizable mortgage (like everyone), our normal expenses and a few unexpected ones too. But what made this doable was deciding to do it. I’ve got the flights booked and paid for, accommodation all booked and deposits made, I just have transfers between places to organise and pay for. But how on earth did I find the casholla to fund it all – short answer is “I have no idea” but the long answer is that I decided that hubby should go. The timeframe was already set for me as everyone knows that Arnold’s birthday is the 30th July, so next was to get the money together and once you’ve decided to do something, the world moves in mysterious ways and it happens. It also happens through savings, selling unwanted stuff, birthday and Christmas presents, but because this was a priority to me, it happened.
Looking back in my life, there’s been a number of achievements like that. While I haven’t actively decided and written down specific life goals, I have decided the next thing that I want to do to the house, or with the kids or for my family. I’ve always got something on the go. The last major thing was fake grass in the backyard that set us back a bit, but I found the money as I knew I wanted it before Christmas a couple of years ago as I was hosting the festive celebrations and thought it would look nice for my guests. Before that I hated having lights on in the middle of the day but my kitchen was always so dark and thus a skylight was installed after some money management skills were put to work.
I’ve now decided that I need to keep this up. I’ve taken the Christmas break to decide what the next dream I can turn into reality. It seems I’ve already been doing it for a long time and never noticed it. I’ve also worked out that if I don’t have my next goal to work on, that I seem to have no money to do anything. It gets spent and I have no idea on what. I know I’ll never have enough money – most of us won’t – for everything that we want so let’s start focusing on the big things and try to get them. Achieve them. Tick them off a list.
It’s also an infectious process with my mum now taking baby steps to achieving the kitchen she wants. She know that she’ll never have the lump sum to do a massive kitchen reno so let’s plan bit by bit. Monday she had an electric cooktop installed that she’s always wanted. Tick and a step closer to her dream. I’m hoping by writing this blog piece that it will inspire you. What’s your next big ticket goal? I’m already saving for a family holiday to Disneyland in Orlando for my 40th birthday…(a few years away – I know you were thinking I looked too young to be 40 – thank you for your kind thoughts 🙂