Saturday, August 27, 2005

Contraction and a vision

I've been thinking. My blogs tend to be chaotic, confusing, disorganized, long and everywhere at once. Wow I just said three things that mean the same thing...basically. SO I'm going to try keeping each post as short as I can and make it about ONE THING. Hopefully then you'll all have something to comment on and I won't bore you so much with long disorganized rants.

SO this post is about our hopes for the next couple years. I spent the better part of yesterday updating my budget through 2007 and there's still a lot of planning to do. Here's what's NOT in the budget at the moment:

Tithing (We have GOT to get started on this)
Sporting Events (Padres, Gulls, Football, Soccer, and NHL Hockey)
Concerts
Local Events (Fair, Street Scene, Races, etc)
Emergency Car Repair (There will be at least 2 in the next 3 years)
Mini-Vacations (visiting family, far-away friends, etc for a day or two)

I budgeted in basic car maintenance, personal grooming, clothing, memberships to AAA, CostCo and our annual donation to the San Diego Zoological Society and also Christmas and Birthdays.

So with the way it is now we can pay off one card by Fall 2006, the loan by May 2007 and the last card by October 2007. NOW that won't happen because of all the above that's missing but it's fun huh? We're also taking a cruise with Victoria's parents in Spring 2007 and we'd like a vacation or two in the next couple years. We like to take one a year but 2006 isn't looking good for that unless we both see significant raises to our income.

Here's what we want in the next 5 years...

Temple Recommends and all that comes with that
Vacations to Boston, Las Vegas, Utah, and seeing a few more ballparks. OH and we'd like to see Europe at least once. Even if it's just London.
I'd like a new car. Preferrably a hybrid or maybe something better will come out in the next 3 years. Like Hydrogen fuel cells or Natural Gas Vehicles or something that doesn't hurt the environment or the wallet for that matter.
We'd like to own a home and start a family. That includes a cat and a kid or two.
We'd both like to be started in our careers. She would like to start writing and do web development in the 'tween times. I'd like to do anything with computers. Webmaster, Database Administration, programming, Systems Maintenance, Engineering or something. Better get started with those classes, huh?

All this seems so impossible but we're trying to find ways to slowly accomplish each one. We're only 27 and there's a lot of years left to get this stuff done. Getting started now is certainly going to help.

So...what do YOU wanna be when YOU grow up? LOL