What is your dream? Where do you see yourself at age 50? If you haven’t begun to think about this type of stuff, now might be a good time to start.
Personally, my dream is to be on a boat one day with my wife, our parents, my kids, and my grandkids. We would have the time of our lives and we would do this at least monthly. But how do I get to the point where I can afford to do this for my whole family?
This is the part where we convert our dreams into reality, or better known as goals. Goals allow us always to work towards our dreams. They are a step by step guide to follow in order to stay on course throughout our lives. How do we create goals? The best advice is to be as honest as possible with ourselves. We won’t reach our goals if we believe that we can get there faster than we can. We need to be extremely realistic in our approach. Let’s break down my dream of being on a boat. Let’s work backward from the dream. The constant assumption is that we will keep our family tight enough to even want to be on a boat together, lol.
- Have enough overall money to comfortably buy and maintain a boat (roughly $5 million).
- Have enough money to afford travel for kids and grandkids (roughly $5 million).
- Save and invest enough to afford travel and expenses for everyone.
- Retire from the second job.
- Retire from the Marine Corps.
- Start long term businesses.
- Start investing money in the stock market.
- Start budgeting in order to start investing.
The long term goal is basically to retire from the Marine Corps and another job. Starting now, invest in the stock market. Starting now, produce real estate income and business income that will supplement retirement income. Although $5 million seems like a lot of money, when you break it down, it is very achievable. When I turn 70 we should have 2 retirement checks, 2 social security checks, dividend income, 410k income, business income, and real estate income. This should allow us to reach our dream boat vacation.
This is actually a very vague set of goals. As you progress, you will want to drill down into each of your goals and have smaller goals. For instance, this goal “start budgeting in order to start investing”. Once you complete your budget, your first goal may be to pay off your car. Then once the car is paid off, your goal may be to invest $1000 a month. Then, you would want to get a promotion or start to Uber in order to generate more investment income. So on and so forth. The more detailed you are, the more chance you have of achieving your goals and reaching your dreams.
Remember, do not be too hard on yourself. Life has a way of setting us back. When life gives us lemons, we have to make lemonade. Most importantly, keep your family together. Even if you get to age 70 and you don’t have enough to buy a boat, you can still rent one. As long as your family is together, you will be golden. The most important dream is to have a family.
Disclosure: I am not a financial advisor or money manager, and any knowledge is given as guidance and not direct actionable investment advice. Please research any investment vehicles that are being considered. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
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