Thanks again

For my family goal, I want to design a house that will be good for my kids and grand-kids to come back to for holidays and family reunions. I already have graph paper and pencils. What I need are a few ideas.

I set a goal to spend some time at the “Parade of Homes” looking at some of the biggest, fanciest houses in my area. My daughter has to go for an interior design class so we will have fun together :D

I think the tickets are $10 and I’ll take pictures of every good idea I find. My goal is more steered toward “big” rather than “fancy” but at the moment I don’t even know what is available.

I designed the house we built 15 years ago and still live in, but the kitchen was just a blank spot in the middle of the floor plan. Luckily we found used cabinets that fit in our blank spot and saved us close to $7000.

This time I want to design the perfect large group kitchen. :D And a bigger family room would be nice too.

I think you got your short term goals right there.

In the next tree days, I will find the balances and percentage rates of all my accounts.

In the next week, I will call the credit card companies and negotiate better rates. I will also set up an automatic deposit from checking to savings, even if it’s one dollar a month. I will also set a weekly budget for my ‘wants’, assuming all my needs are already taken care of.

Every week, I will take the money from my budget that I haven’t spent, and put it in savings.

In the next month, using the money I’ve put aside from my weekly budget, I will significantly pay down one of my credit cards.

In the next six months, I will either have six of my credit cards paid down, or I will have money in the bank.

-Dave

Rob, I thought the same thing when I began this exercise, so I began by doing two things for my “Fun/Pleasure/Enjoyment” goals:

1. Made a list on a blank sheet of paper of all the hobbies and activities I really enjoy, want to learn more about, places I would like to visit, etc.

2. I asked about a dozen people what their 25 year goal would be for “Fun,” and I found some remarkable data. Most people don’t think past 5 or 10 years (from my age group–the twenty somethings, all the way to my parents age group), but in a 25 year context, you really think about what motivates your “free time” and how you spend the hours in the day for yourself and enrichment.

Lastly, after I made the list and asked around, I noticed that for me, part of this value of “Fun/Pleasure/Enjoyment” includes “Excellence.” Once I hit on that one word, the 25 year time frame became LIBERATING! In 25 years, I could really learn to excel at something, imagine that!

I went back to my list and saw that I enjoy: travel, mountaineering, cooking, languages, learning new cultures, and reading. With this information I could make my 25 year goal: “In 25 years I would like to choose 3-4 countries or regions to become an expert in language, type of cuisine, a cultural activity, history, and current events. Each study would conclude with a month long sebatical to visit the country/region and climb a mountain there.”

This goal now governs ALL my free time. While I haven’t quite figured out how to include others (God, Family) into this goal, I’m excited to include my love ones in this pursuit.

Now, everytime I pick up a newspaper, a book, go to the library, look up a new recipe, sign up for a language learning podcast, I’m excited to think to myself: “maybe this book or this recipe will reveal my NEXT 5 year adventure in travel through excellence!”

Lastly, my one year “Fun/Exellence” goal is to choose a country and enroll in a course associated with the first thing that I’d like to learn about that country. I’m thinking either Russia or Tanzania. Russia, due to my heritage, or Tanzania because I’m eager to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

Happy Living!

And Bob, thanks for the tip about gubb.net. All these lists were getting a little unwieldy!

thanks again.