Priorities

They change.

Sometimes they don't change very often, sometimes they do.  Sometimes events happen in our life that have us call into question the path that we're on and require some thought about the fork in the road.

It has been ten weeks since my father passed away.

My priorities have changed.



Jordan and I have had some pretty big plans in finishing our house, including a garage, fence, landscaping, deck, basement development ect. - all really big things.  While I still want those things, I no longer feel the need to have them done right this minute - at the cost of our debt load and financial and personal well being.

What I want now, is to spend as much time as possible with my family.  With Jordan's family.

What Jordan and I both want is some calm, some steady peace in our financial house.  We want to be able to go on a trip with friends for a weekend, go camping with family and not worry that we can't because we've got this garage we're building (or whatever 'big project').  We also want to enjoy our house and our space with said family/friends.

So, we've adjusted our priorities.

If you've been following along in our growth over the last few years, you've seen that typically we save for a number of different things at one time.  Sometimes, as many as six or more.  This puts some pretty long sights on all of our goals and means that we don't have to prioritize them if we focus on all of them at the same time.

There's a few things that happen every year: Christmas and Camping - so, doesn't it make sense to save for those right away in the beginning of the year?  We've moved some cash from our 'house fund' into those funds so that they are done.  We've met two goals already and that feels great.

We also know that we want at least $1,500 in our emergency fund (about one month on EI if anything were to happen) - so, we moved some cash from our 'house fund' into our emergency fund and that's a third goal that we've met.

A weight has been lifted.

I then moved $500 to add to the debt pay off for this month and kept $1,000 in the house fund for some short term items around the house that we want.  Now that we've reached three goals and have the ability to get some things done around the house with out the weight of a garage weighing over us, we don't have to keep contributing to these small goals - so i'll be cancelling those auto-debits and adjusting the budget.  That also means that we can pay off our debt sooner.  Much sooner - but more on that tomorrow.