Not another New Years Resolution

Before diving into this I want to clarify that this post is not about my New Year's resolutions. I don't like making them because I usually abandon them after a month. However, when it comes to setting goals for myself and my family, I take it more seriously. In this blog post, I plan to go through our next big goal. I find that writing down our goals makes it easier for us to follow through on them. When we started our family our big goal was to buy a home and we did that in 2023 and we couldn't be happier! The girls have space to play outside, we don't need to worry about being too noisy for our next-door neighbor, and we have a lot more privacy and we are now paying our mortgage instead of someone else.

Now that we have hit our big milestone what's next? Now we are thinking about buying our next home. We want to step into the real estate investing world and build our portfolio over time to the point where we are able to make enough passive income that I can retire early ( my wife will keep working, she likes to work) This is a big goal, one that can seem practically unreachable, but it’s not!

Making MONUMENTOUS goals manageable.

The way we make our goals manageable is by breaking them down into smaller goals. If the goal is to buy an additional property within the next 2-4 years and add it to our real estate portfolio then we need to be thinking about our day to day actions and how those actions carry over to the bigger over all goal.

What can I do this year to accomplish that goal big goal

what can I do this month to accomplish my year-long goal

what can I do this week to accomplish my month-long goal

what can I do today to accomplish my goal for the week

By breaking down our goals into manageable bite-size goals that can give us daily wins.  This gives us some instant gratification on the progress of our goals which in turn keeps us motivated and moving forward towards. Eventually, all of those little wins are going to add up and take us to the point of purchasing our next home. These small daily contributions are making a big impact on the overall goal. This way motivation won't disappear and progress is being made even if it's only a little bit at a time.

What's the plan?

That’s all well and good but what’s the plan? At this point, I have a rough outline of how we are going to accomplish this.

GOAL: Purchase a new home in 2-4 years by:

• Creating a budget and sticking with it.

• Reducing our expenses

• Avoiding debt and monthly payments

• Increasing income

• Saving!

Now let’s dive deeper into our roadmap and how doing those things listed above will contribute to reaching our goal. We can start by breaking down the components of this roadmap and translating them into actionable steps that will guide us toward our desired goal.

Create a Budget:

Creating and adhering to a budget is crucial and potentially one of the most important tools we have at our disposal. Without a proper budget reaching financial goals is nearly impossible. Utilize budgeting apps or spreadsheets to track your income and expenses meticulously. Review and make sure that every dollar has a job, adjusting the budget regularly to stay aligned with our financial objectives.

Developing and following through on a  budget requires consistency and determination. It's about making conscious choices every day that align with your long-term goals. Small adjustments made today can lead to significant rewards tomorrow.

Reduce Expenses:

We will evaluate our monthly expenditures meticulously. Identify areas where we can trim unnecessary costs. This could involve renegotiating subscriptions, finding more cost-effective insurance plans, or making conscious choices about dining out or discretionary spending. This by all means doesn’t mean that you get rid of things that you enjoy, for example, if you are a coffee person you don’t have to give up coffee in the morning before work, you can find something else to give up. Or if you aren’t a big coffee drinker but love your Netflix, you can get rid of your morning coffee and keep Netflix. Reducing our expenses should help us reach our goals not make us miserable. Remember to give every dollar a job and reassign if needed.

Avoiding Debt and other Monthly Payments:

We are currently debt free (Yay!) and the plan is to keep it that way. One of the things we noticed along our journey is that debt is the best way to stay broke. When we were in debt we were paying over $1000 in monthly payments from cars, to credit cards, etc and even though we made okay money all of that debt kept us stuck and broke and because we were giving minimum payments we were staying broke and not progressing in our goal. Once we figured out that the key to moving forward with our financial goals was to be debt free we hyper focused on our debts and paid them off. This is one of the main reasons we were able to accomplish our goal of buying our first home. So, no debt and no other payments period.

Increasing Income:

At this point in order for us to really make progress on buying a new home in 3-4 years we will need to increase our income. We are currently making okay money and are able to save up a decent amount BUT if we want to accomplish our goal then we will need to step it up and make even more mney. Luckily this a place where both my wife and I have plenty of room to grow in. My wife can look for a job that pays moe than her previous job and give us an instant boost there. Another way to get more income is start a side hustle! Without increasing our income it will be nearly impossible for us to accomplish our goal.

Saving Money:

Saving requires discipline and a systematic approach.  I include our monthly savings into our budget by doing so I am ensuring that we are saving money every month. But even if we are disciplined in saving money this step wont help much if we are only saving a few hundred dollars a month. That’s why the previous step is so important. If we are able to increase our income and save a good amount of our monthly income we will reach our goal in the specified time frame.

This is by far not an easy task, but I have learned that if we are intentional in our everyday living and follow our game plan then we can accomplish anything set our mind to and this is no different.

I know how interested you all are in our journey so ill make sure to keep you all updated regularly!