April 2019 Goals

April Goals

• Pay off loan #1
• Pay as much as possible on loan #2
• Cash flow our trip
• Major decluttering
• Family time/Get outside more
• Continue researching travel trailers and remodeling them

If you read the end of the month review for March, you know that we made some big decisions last month. We have been on a bit of a proverbially high ever since. We hope to bank on that excitement and momentum to make huge strides towards our goals in the next couple months. So much of the ability to achieve a huge, slightly unrealistic goal is the mental belief that one can and will do it. We want to go for big goals this month. We want to really push ourselves harder than we have in ages. We want to pay off loan #1 and put a dent in loan #2. Loan #1 has a balance of almost $1,300. Loan #2 is $2,500. I don’t have the receipts handy to give you the exact number down to the cent like I did when accessing our credit cards online but these numbers are really close.

We are going out-of-town for five days to visit family this month. We are driving and hope to make the full drive in one day. It’s 13 hours on Google maps so with three kids it will take us all day. We have budgeted to cashflow the entire trip. We already paid for our hotel. We just need to cover our food and gas. We are giving ourselves two days to get back home because we didn’t want to take any chances with work.

We hit this point last month where this started to feel real. Until that moment it still felt like a daydream. I’m not sure what pushed it over the line between dream and reality but I’m glad it happened. It has made the idea of decluttering and saving money so much easier. It was hard to see the big picture before that mental shift. It completely changed my entire mindset. Preparing for long-term travel has been extra hard because we are still living a normal daily life full of the normal everyday parts of living in the suburbs with three kids. It felt like I was walking in two worlds that were constantly at odds with each other. This mental shift was exactly what I needed. I’m still stressed out and have too much to do but it feels like all my efforts are pointed in the same direction now. I am anxious to be rid of the physical trappings of our current daily life. We are continuing our decluttering this month.

We have decided not to buy anything unless we truly need it. We will not be buying many things for the next year. Our list of items that we are no longer buying includes toys, games, clothing for our two youngest children, kitchen items, jewelry, and decorations. We are currently not buying lotion, soap, or makeup until we use up the large amount that we already own. When we first began sorting through things, we were shocked by the amount of things that we had.

We are trying to spend more time outdoors and being active as a family because we are dreadfully out of shape for what we are planning in the near future. Hiking miles day after day is something that we couldn’t logically do right now without being completely miserable. We have started going to the park to walk the trails or strolling around our neighborhood a few times a week.

We have spent all of our free time in the evenings researching travel trailers and how to renovate them. We have read about things that commonly go wrong. We have looked at floor plans. We have made a list of our must have items. We will be continuing this until we can narrow down exactly what we are looking for.

It’s another busy month around here. What are you up to? Working on anything? Please leave it in a comment below.