Financial freedom sounds like a dream. It's something a lot of
people work towards, but not many people that I know ever achieve.
It's certainly something that we've been working towards....for
years. Budgeting, cutting back on unnecessary things in our life,
and raises at work almost yearly have certainly put us in a better
place, but the end still seems so far away. A friend at work lent
me his Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University CD set a few months
ago. My partner and I listened to them together, learned a lot
about ourselves, and had a few words and tears together. We decided
we were really going to buckle down and try. Of course what
happened the first month? The air conditioner goes out, the car has
to go in the shop, the truck has to have new tires, the car has to
have new tires. Budget? What budget? So, the next month is a
do-over. You have to start somewhere, right? Then came the
epiphany....
"Let's move to Florida."
"Huh? Are you serious?"
"Yeah, let's do it! What's holding us back?"
We'd nonchalantly talked about it for years. How one day we'd like
to live closer to the beach. I grew up in the panhandle of
Florida. Sunshine, white sugar sand beaches, hurricanes, hotness
and all. The beach is one of those things that you hardly ever get
to appreciate when you live there, but once you leave you miss is it
so much. Labor Day weekend, while out sailing with some friends on
Pensacola Bay, we had an epiphany......let's move. So, we came up
with a plan.
1) Sell the house.
2) Use the money we make off of the house to buy a smaller
house/property (downsize), pay off all of our debt, and become debt
free.
3) Put as much money in the bank as we can for 5 - 7yrs.
4) Buy our dream place.
You cannot imagine the weight that was lifted off of our shoulders
when we decided to do this. Just making the decision made us feel
amazing, and we hadn't even taken a single step in that direction
yet. Neither one of us is quite sure why we didn't think of this
before. We love our house and our property, but it's not in the
location we'd like. We were settling and we didn't even realize
it. We have a lot of work to do to get the place ready to be put up
for sale, but we're both so excited. I hope you'll follow us on our
journey to financial freedom!!
