If you expect to manage money well, it is very important to have goals. Several times I have experienced that a particular goal I had set put me on a path that ultimately led me to a whole new array of options that I couldn’t have even envisioned originally. In fact, I would argue that the particular original goal or destination is essential to get you moving in some direction, but ultimately the journey will bring you to new places and even better options you couldn’t have seen before and that is the more important point. The keeping moving towards something is the key.

My earliest organic vision process was setting my heart on having my own horse at age 10 after a week at summer horse camp. I was all notebooks, calculators, and goal chart… AT AGE 10. Ultimately, I saved about $4,000 during my teen years. The new opportunity that turned my head away from the horse (besides the fact that 4K was not going to sustain a horse)?? A top of the line laptop computer to join me at college- in the year 2001 when top of the line laptop computers and their accessories cost nearly $4,000(!) and being required to bring a computer to college was still a novel concept.

On a larger scale, my life vision has generally included a strong theme of self-sufficiency and sustainability. I don’t want to depend on others, and I want to live in a way that is sustainable for me, in terms of my own intrinsic resources (time, energy, money), and the greater community of humans (be gentle on the planet, sensitive to the needs of others). Another theme that has strengthened over time is the desire to ‘break the mold’ and live life differently than the norm. I’m admittedly drawn like a moth to a flame to stories on living a homestead lifestyle, hustling in general, tiny house living, and even homeschooling for a few examples… not to mention silently envying any story I heard of someone quitting their 9-5 professional career and launching a brand new company or something risky and creative. Now, very importantly, NONE of these topics describe my current life in the least! (well, except for pandemic homeschooling, but that’s most parents to some extent this year)

My Family Money Mentor vision exercise

So, when I complete the visioning process in my current life, it looks like this (spoiler alert: still no horse!):

1. What do I crave more of in my life?

• outdoors, being in nature
• creativity
• giving and hospitality
• cleaner, neater house (ha)
• eating healthier food
• physical activity (if you know me, also ha)
• privacy
• time freedom
• sewing
• reading
• school involvement

What do I want less of in my life?

• commuting
• constraint by the clock, being late
• debt
• clutter, mess
• other peoples’ stress

Now having gotten myself thinking about the things that I really value and what changes I’d like to make in my life for the long term, time to structure that into something a bit more tangible… fitting these ideas into where I see myself and my family in the near and further future, using a few key categories that will link to my money life:

2. Where do I see us in 1, 5, 10+ years?

From these two simple exercises, I identify broader priorities these listed bits are telling me:

• I need to fix my commute which is an hour each way, by either working from home mostly, having a formal schedule reduction, or leaving my job altogether to pursue other things… this became more apparent during the pandemic when I switched to full remote work and knew I could never go back to daily commuting for two hours in constant traffic.
• I need to craft a life with more time freedom. My commute, in conjunction with young kids, is/was a big part of the very stressful morning rush and being late constantly. But ultimately I desire a life that isn’t bound by “office hours” at all. I like to work hard, but not on a clock. I want to freely move the tiles of my time around, using Laura Vanderkam’s mosaic analogy in her book (that I highly recommend!!), to lead an impactful, fulfilling life where work and life can blend.
• I need to find a way to live a healthier lifestyle, where activity is part of the daily routine, not something I need to pay a gym to make me do by squeezing another set of hours out of a week for assigned exercise time. This issue really became highlighted in this recent pandemic summer of 2020 when I developed an autoimmune syndrome that I know was antagonized by stress and lack of self care in general.
• I need to create. I come from an extremely creative and artistic mother. I also have some of that in me (though not nearly her level of artistic talent!), and whether its sewing or writing blog content, I just feel better creating something that didn’t exist before.
• And though I actually hate to admit it, I need our home to feel better. I also have always felt my working and living environment were really important to me, influenced how I felt and my stress and anxiety level. During the recent baby years, however, I’ve tried to just let it all go and not care- lowering your standards is an important part of surviving early parenthood! But ultimately I would prefer a small, well-designed home with less stuff and space to manage.
• As for my family, my husband may need to work less in his current career at some point, because his job is hard on his health and is stressful. My kids need more of my energy- not necessarily more time, but time when I’m not sapped from a lifestyle that drains me instead of energizes me. And struggling in certain ways through kindergarten for our oldest made me realize more of our involvement was needed in finding solutions in that area as well.

Translating the life assessment to a new vision for my life

So where does this point me in terms of our money? For my vision for an ideal future for our family, things really point towards 1) lowering our cost of living and 2) socking away and protecting lots of reserve cash… both to buffer some potentially major changes in income ahead.

1) Moving away from a traditional schedule or traditional job altogether for either or both of us will require other income and money to bridge the transition

2) Creating this site, a place to help others achieve financial stability and use money as a tool to live their best life, is a fantastic creative and fulfilling outlet for me! Other creative outlets I enjoy include sewing kids clothing and costumes. It’s time to work out the nuts and bolts of doing both of these activities in a way that I can earn money doing it to sustain our family with work that doesn’t feel like work.

3) My long time goal of having acreage and a mini farm lifestyle will ultimately give me the space, fresh air, privacy, freedom to create, and outdoor routine work that I crave. But buying property in our desired location (while, ideally, not selling our current properties that I want to keep for future rental income) is expensive.

A quick tangent before concluding… on a spring break family campground trip, we stayed in a little cabin and just hung out around a campfire each night. I felt so free having less space (tiny little kitchen- so efficient!), less stuff around to manage, and more time just being. We knew we wanted to simplify and became more impassioned towards our long time goal to move to the country and create a farmette type lifestyle in a smartly designed, small house. I even doodled this little watercolor pencil drawing one day soon after that trip, which now hangs on our ‘fridge with a little fortune cookie phrase attached (“A great pleasure in life is doing what others say you can’t”). This pictures helps us stay focused on the long term family vision. I highly recommend creating some kind of visual for yourself, whether it’s a collage from magazine clippings or just a compilation of key words that inspire you on post-it notes. Place it somewhere you see daily!

If you’re more auditory in nature, find a song that hits the nail on the head for you- for me, it’s currently “A Million Dreams” from the movie “The Greatest Showman.”

I’m beginning to realize that money we’ve been socking away for land may more likely be used for buffering our transition from two full time traditional careers to a more entrepreneurial lifestyle, probably starting within 2021. Recent changes with my team at work and recent experience in pandemic life (no commute, more control over my time, kid situations, etc) are making it clear that the time to make this kind of change may be sooner rather than later. And making that big working life change first will enable the geographic freedom (sans commute) to choose our next home site much more freely. Just another corner off the path that I’m beginning to see around… all about the journey.

So, final conclusion from this introspective process? Every decision we currently make with money relates to 1) enabling us to transition away from secure traditional careers to working for ourselves and 2) ultimately buying acreage to create our family farmette. Since we already financed our current home to a 15-year mortgage to accelerate to the opportunity for passive rental income, and we have no other non-mortgage debt, that means minimizing costs and spending to reduce how much of our current income we actually need, while maximizing and protecting our savings. Having these goals and vision for my life makes skipping that great stuff at Target or abandoning my Wayfair.com cart items quite a bit easier, as those items generally pale in comparison to the life I see for my family’s future everyday on the refrigerator.