I guess we could look at this in formats.

• What we want to do today.
• What we want to do next week.
• Next year.
• Five years.
• The impact we would like to have on our family/legacy.
• How we can have an affect on others.
• What matters most?

So we are playing catch up…

The fact that we lived separate lives up until our mid-forties has made some conundrums. There is certainly a blend of life stages going on. We have a thirteen year old still with us, and try to balance his life with ours, yet we strive to get as much time as we can together. There’s our careers that eat up lots of time, yet our need to still find each other. Sometimes we’re just hungry- like horny teenagers who can only see each other on the weekend with someone’s watchful eye always upon us. It seems the freedom we get comes a few times a year with vacations and road trips. So let me just vent for a second…I WANT MORE TIME AAAAAHHHHHHHGGGGHHHHH!!!

Okay thanks. So what do we want to do today? Feel progress. Whether your planning a trip, working on your debt, looking at your 401K, or just doing something simple like yard work you want to see progress (those weeds aren’t going to pull themselves). Progress is hope. You’re moving toward a goal. It’s that light at the end of the tunnel that says “Just a little ways further…” So to reflect often on the day with the end in mind is fuel for the next day. To get up in the morning and repeat what you have to do becomes more possible and makes you less of a pussy. 

So what matters next week? Well you get time to reflect.. Are you still focused on what needs to happen moving forward. We’ve had times where after just a week of focus and clarity we just push back on each other. Like change is the enemy, yet we can look at each other and know, fully, that our egos are talking shit. Not to each other, but to ourselves. Attention spans don’t hold a candle on whore-like interest rates when it comes to hang-time.

Next year we have a plan. February- Tropical vacation in Playa Del Carmen. The rest of the year- focus on paying debts and increasing retirement savings. Is that the plan? Well it’s kinda complicated. We have trouble deciding what we will do with the house we are currently in. It could be a great rental income for us, but we would have to shell out some dough for a down payment for another property (preferably) out in the hills. We have a goal to travel all throughout the world and currently live ten minutes from the airport. What’s not to love? It’s just not the Colorado residence we imagined (ie. mountains are 30 minutes away through lousy Denver traffic.)

Five years– Oh yeah!!- Providing the stock market has been good to us we will fully be able to exercise our exit plan. Not to say we won’t work, but definitely a time to open our doors to so many other options. The corporate life we both once knew will be history. It’s super exciting just to think we can put our energies into whatever tickles our middle-age fancy and we will have the capital to back it up! Or.. We will have enough to just keep it simple and say “We’re done.”

Legacy feels like a heavy word as I write this, but it really has been the bedrock of our relationship. We both have always believed to leave things better than you found them. We just haven’t had the quality time with our children to discuss the merits of such (three kids each #BradyBunch). Our hope is for all of them to make smart decisions with their finances and (hopefully) listen to at least some of what we have been reading ourselves. It’s more “Don’t listen to us. Do what @mrmoneymustache did or @1500days.com did. If you want to get cerebral then follow @madfientist or Jim Collins. All are, at the very least, good informative reading.

So how can we affect others in a positive way? Read from the group of people I just mentioned. Hopefully, take some advice from us based on our trial and error financial experience. Meaning- Don’t do any of the stupid shit we did 🙂 The list goes on and will likely keep growing.

So what does matter most? Again- Feeling the progress? Time to reflect? Is it what we expected?  Options? What not to do? What matters most is that we learned from our mistakes and didn’t repeat them. That we communicated with others to hopefully give them a sample of what we went through. To feel fulfilled in our own time on this planet and leave this place better than we found it.

Thanks 🙂