Do you know what this year is? No, not the number 2007 – it’s the beginning of the year and the rest of the year is spread out in front of you and it’s packed full of potential. One of the problems that confronts the majority of us as we get older and more mired down in responsibilities and obligations that we forget that we can make our own opportunities and we can make our dreams come true. That’s what this year is for you and your spouse – this is a year the two of you can make your dreams happen.
How can you make your dreams happen?
What Are Your Dreams?
What are your dreams? What are your spouse’s dreams? Do you know? Do you remember them? Have you talked about them recently? One of my dreams is to finish my Bachelor’s Degree. I finished my Associate’s Degree in 2004 and I only need about 30 more credit hours to get my bachelor’s degree. Going back to school costs money and it takes time and it can make life a little more difficult, but isn’t that what life is about: achievement in the face of difficulty?
Talk to your spouse, today. Talk together about what you both want and what you both want to do. Work together to make a list of dreams – dreams you have individually and dreams you have together. Maybe you want to go on a vacation to a foreign country or maybe you want to go back to school, maybe this is the year you want to write a book or maybe you want to make a baby or you want to redecorate the house or put in a new carpet? Knowing what you both want is the first step towards making your dreams come true.
How Do You Make Your Dreams Happen?
You’ve talked about what you want. In our house, that means I want to go back to school and he’d like to take a trip back to England. We’re both interested in another Disney World trip and we both want to make some changes around the house – including some new carpet – that’s a lot of dreams and a lot of them are pretty pricey. So how do we make all of those dreams happen?
Here is a short list of how to suggestions that we are using to make our potential dreams a reality:
- Enrolling in community college – that’s me, I know what I want my Bachelor’s Degree to be in, so I’m heading back to community college to knock out a handful of credits that are far less expensive to take at the community college level than they are at the University level
- For vacation plans – Disney World and England are radically different destinations, but will cost around the same overall (hard to believe, but I do have family in Britain so that helps save on the cost there) we’re going to put 10% of our joint funds into savings on every payday with a goal for heading out on vacation in six months – England for starters and then we’ll keep socking away 10% for another vacation six months after that for Disney World – that’s our plan
- Redecorating & New Carpet – We’re going to clear off one of our credit cards in order to cover the cost of doing a new carpet in the house – likely it won’t be until sometime in the summer, but that’s all right – as for any redecorating, anything we can just do ourselves, that’s what we’ll do. My husband has laid carpet before and we have friends who know how to do it, so there’s a good chance, we’ll save quite a bit on installation for carpet and we’ll get to make that dream happen as well
The idea here is to look at the dreams you have and then look at how you can realistically make them happen. No, I won’t get my Bachelor’s Degree this year, but I will be well on my way. No we won’t necessarily make it to both England and Disney World this year, but we can make at least one of those happen. As for the makeover on the house, we chunk the job into a room at a time, and then different portions of the room as we need to do it.
You Have the Power
You have the power to make your dreams come true – you just have to work together to make it happen. What dreams would you like to make happen this year?
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