When you’re a kid, the word ‘goal’ is hard to relate to. The only things that enter your mind are when the school year will be out, how you will spend your allowance, or when you will be able to drive? As adults however, we come to realize that goals are one of the biggest aspects of our life. Our goals are what take us from one year to the next and outline what our future will hold. Our future happiness and success depend on them.

My husband and I recently got married and since then we have been working on merging our goals to align with one another. We have from the start, tried to work at being a team, helping each other have the life we want. I must admit though, this has not always been easy. Some days we find ourselves arguing about what goal to reach first or about the pace of completing certain goals. Other times we find ourselves overwhelmed with the amount of goals we want to reach. In an effort to minimize some of the tension, we have come up with a 5 year plan. This will help us stay focused and not get distracted with other goals in the meantime. Once we complete this plan, we will build another.

The 5 year plan:

  • Pay off our line of credit in the next 12 months. Currently we are putting 29% of each of my paychecks to our line of credit. We may need to adjust this as the months go on. 
  • Own at minimum 25% of our home. This will involve making additional payments on our mortgage over the next 4 years; something we will need to budget for.
  • Take two exotic trips before mid 2012 and pay cash for 75% of them up upfront. To us, exotic is going to countries we have never been. South America, Thailand, and Australia are all part of the discussion. This again is something we need to budget and save for.
  • Have our first child in early 2013. This involves saving for my maternity leave as well as for the first year or two of expenses that come with a baby. 
  • Build up our emergency fund to $30,000. We want to make sure we have a decent resource if something goes array. 
  • Save for our retirement. We both are fortunate to both have funded pension plans at work but we know that won’t be enough. Once our line of credit is payed off, we will increase what we are putting aside for our retirement. 
The above listed goals are the ones that are top on our list. Projects around the house, me finishing my degree, etc. will be fit in as we see fit but the bottom line is that our top priorities won’t change. By making this commitment, we are able to avoid the disappointment later of not having reached them. 
In future posts, I will let you all know a status of our progress as well as any lessons we are learning as we go. 

So what are your goals? Have you made your 5 year plan? Are we being too ambitious or are we being realistic? What do you think?
Where Will You Be In 5 Years? Miss T has written 582 articles on this blog.

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