Long Term Goals

Sorry I haven't written in a while, life just happens at lightning speed sometimes! We have been talking long term goals for a few months now. See, we had worked on my staying home for about 7 years. It was a long term goal that started before we even thought of having a baby. I have been home for about 8 months now and I love it! It feels a bit like limbo though. When you achieve a long term goal it sort of leaves you with this "what now?" sort of feeling.

We talked about traveling or the possibility of buying a new house. We just couldn't quite latch on to a goal that meant buying things and spending money. We would still like to travel at some point but there is no urgency to spur us on. It cam to me the other day and I suggested it to sort of test the waters...

"Wouldn't it be cool if you could stay home too? we could run The Crazy Elephant together."

It was like the light bulb turned on for us. Since I have been a stay at home mom (although work at home might describe it better), I have built a pretty good business for myself with The Crazy Elephant. In fact, if we had 0 debt The Crazy Elephant could almost support us as it is now, no changes. So, we made being a stay at home family our new long term goal with the mind set of accomplishing our goal in 5-10 years!

Here is the plan:

Phase 1 - Pay off all of our debt! Adam's calculations show that if I contribute about half of my profits to debt reduction, we should be debt free in just under 4 years...that includes the house! We also are doing a remodel of the shop to really put our best foot forward and re-pricing for a sustainable store.

Phase 2 - Complete any major home improvement projects and buy a car. They are the things we want, not need, but should do before Adam stays home.

Phase 3 - The nest egg! Things happen sometimes and we want to be prepared. We will be making sure we have a nice big cushion.

It feels great to have a long term goal again! I almost wish I could fast forward to see how it turns out, but then I would miss all the fun along the way.