"I've Got A Dream"

Rapunzel: [after releasing a branch that hits Hook Hand Thug on the head] PUT HIM DOWN (Flynn Rider)! [Everyone stops and stares at her in disbelief] Okay, I don't know where I am and I need him to take me to see the lanterns because I've been dreaming about them my entire life! FIND YOUR HUMANITY! Haven't any of you ever had a dream?!

Rapunzel has a dream.  To see the lanterns of the Festival of Lights that appear in the sky every year on her birthday.  What a magical experience!  I would love to see something like this in my lifetime too.  I think about this scene often, as Rapunzel belts this song out amidst a bunch of thugs in a tavern, who want to capture Flynn Rider.  She distracts them with questioning what dreams they have ever had.  After inspiring each one to consider their dreams they are then free to go. 

I have lots of dreams, but the one dream that has taken a center stage this year is the dream to attain complete financial freedom.  Ever since I graduated from college and was given a copy of The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey (from my mom), I have always dreamed of attaining this sort of freedom.  Inspired by what I read, the principles took deep root in my heart and I started living them out.  I was able to pay off $21,000 of school debt within 18 months of graduating college, while only working part time in my field! I was absolutely determined and I reached my goal.  I have been working the Baby Steps ever since then. In addition to paying off the debt, we've purchased every vehicle we've owned with cash.  Our only remaining debt consists of the properties that we own.

These Baby Steps have served me well.  They have given me direction and wisdom of what to focus on in order to gain financial stability.  Thankfully I married someone who was raised with a good financial head on his shoulders, and whose family prepared him well for financial success.  At this point, we are working on Step 6- Paying off Our Home Early.  

This is my Dream!  I dream of not having a monthly mortgage to pay.  Imagine not having a housing expense line in the monthly budget?!  More and more I am imaging what an amazing thing this would be. Sure, there are lots of things I would love to do.  I love to travel.  I love to work on renovation projects at Redwoodshire.  And all those things can still happen, if we are wise about our resources.  

Recently I have been evaluating our budget, which is actually more of a "Spending Tracker" than an actual budget we live by.  We used to be really good at saving money- that was before we purchased our old 1890's farmhouse with 5.5 acres of land.  Things all changed in 2013 when we moved here to Redwoodshire.  We needed to make some renovations to the house to make it more livable.  And once the money started flowing out... it just kept going out.  We have been doing projects and starting hobbies since then and haven't gotten out of the "Spending mode".  With land, we needed a riding mower... and then a wood splitter... and then a snow blower... and the dining room needed to be renovated... and then it was a chicken coop & a beehive..... on and on and on.  We plan to live here for the long run, so spending money on needed things did not seem like such a big deal, as they are more of an investment than an unnecessary expenditure.  

This time last year, I revisited my goal of eventually paying our home off.  I got the Laird to agree to putting a chunk of money available savings into the mortgage, and that felt great.  But it sort of just increased the itch inside of me to keep paying things down.  But then we decided to build a chicken coop and buy a beehive, and the itch faded for a while.  Last summer I noticed that mortgage interest rates were at an unbelievable all time low.  We discussed possibly re-financing the mortgage and decided this was a good move, considering our mortgage was in the mid-4% range.  Not bad, but rates were hovering around 3% at the time.  We ran the numbers for both the 30 and 15 year mortgages, and realized it was only going to cost about $100/month more for us to refinance down to a 15 year mortgage, which then allowed us a slightly lower interest rate.  AMAZING!  So we did it!  Original closing was October 2013, with a 30 year mortgage.  With 3 years paid off of that 30 year loan (27 to go), we refinanced down to a 15 year mortgage.  So with that move, we saved ourselves 17 years of mortgage payments.  Can't beat that!

After reaching some financial goals we had before us, I started looking at the numbers and running them through amortization calculators again.  With what it seemed like we could pay extra per month, I calculated that we could pay the remaining $127k on our mortgage by March of 2023.  That's 6 years from now.  Essentially that means paying off our new 15 year mortgage in a total of about 6 1/2 years.  Seriously!?!  This was all a hypothetical IF we could actually pay as much as I thought extra each month.  I shared my new goal with the Laird, and painted the picture of having our house paid off by 2023, and after a weekend of mulling it over, he seemed sold on the goal.  Once we looked at our budget, it appeared like the reality of this payment would be a lot more difficult that I had initially perceived.  And why wouldn't it?  It's like paying off a huge debt in lighting speed!  It's living like no one else today, so that you can live like no one else tomorrow.  Isn't completely DEBT FREE worth the sacrifices right now?  I believe it is.  So this past month we declared as "Frugal February".  We have really become aware of our spending, and have tried our best not to make unnecessary purchases.  The Laird has been amazing and has chosen to eat lunch at home or pack lunch so far all month.  I have been tempted, but resisted buying for the sake of buying.  We have cut back and have literally cut our expenses down dramatically.  Unlike most months, I look forward to itemizing all the expenses and inputting them into our budget to see how well we did this month.  There are so many fewer transactions, so it will take me a fraction of the time.  Not to mention the inspiration of what we're capable of when we really try to save for a greater purpose.  

So we're 23 days into February.  With only 5 days left of this short month, I asked myself how life has changed with spending less.  Has my quality of life diminished because I haven't made random shopping trips for things that we "need", but may not really need?  Has it been intolerable that I haven't stopped to McDonald's for a Mocha Frappe (my weakness, and source to make it through the sometimes long days of being a stay-at-home-mom)?  Has it been hard not eating out?  The answer is NO!  Life has felt so much simpler.  Less stuff.  More contentment.  Connection to gratitude for what we have.  Clarity of mind to know that WE WILL reach financial freedom in the near future.  Gratitude that we have the ability to pay extra on this huge debt.  Gratitude for the vision of something greater.  It's SO WORTH it.  

I got the "mortgage payoff chart" that I started last year back out and was able to color in one line of the picture.  We still have so far to go, but I now know that we're focused and we're going to be coloring in more lines of that chart every couple of months now, rather than one line each year.  On March 1st we will make our 2nd extra payment toward the "principle only".  Yay!  Let's hope that we can figure out a way to keep motivated toward making the little sacrifices that will be necessary for us to be able to continue making the largest extra payments that we are able.  That March of 2023 date needs to be our bottom line.... I would love to see that date move up closer and closer.  That may be a little overboard, but one can dream, right?!

DO YOU HAVE A DREAM?  Let yourself DREAM BIG about things that seem unreachable- because you just may be able to reach them.

Current State of Finished: Our Dining Room Renovation (continued)...

For those interested and following, we have continued to plug away at bringing our dining room to a state of completion.  It's been a longish process, considering we officially started working towards an end goal back in September of 2015, when we removed the large Buck Stove from the corner. From that point on, the room has been getting a little attention here and there and the progress has been slowly but surely moving forward.  All in all, the whole room probably would have taken a handful of months if we worked every weekend straight and didn't have small children to attend to.  But that's not our life;)  We are very lucky to have the blessings that we do have, and have learned so much in the process of priorities and doing what we can, with the time that we DO have.

Here are the links to all previous posts on the Dining Room renovation- for reference as to what the original dining room looked like and the process we have traveled to arrive at this.

Jan/Feb 2017

Jan/Feb 2016: Staining & Finishing Hardwood floors

Jan/ Feb 2016: Hardwood floor installation

Dec 2015: The Plan/ The beginning

The Antique Hutch

Current Projects: Dining Room Photo Progression

This past weekend we caulked, painted, hung crown moulding, installed shoe moulding....  And we finally cleaned things up.  The dining room table is no longer a work station, it's a place to eat again.  We unpacked a few boxes of photos and set them atop the picture shelf above the board and batten wainscot.  We moved the large, temporary bookcase over to where we will eventually be building in one of the floor to ceiling bookcases, as part of a window seat unit.  We mopped the floors.  And much to our joy, it looks like a dining room.  We've been admiring it every day... actually probably every time we pass through the room going up or down the stairs.  It really feels great to know that we did this!  It's amazing.

Check it out:

Our next project for the immediate future is figuring out what to do with the trap door.  We need to trim down to size, as the wood swelled during the summer.  We also need to figure out a handle situation.  

      

Here's a cool light fixture that we found at Lowe's.  Because our ceilings are abnormally low, we were limited to flush or semi-flush lighting (not my favorite).  There are so many amazing pendant lights out there that I would have loved to get, but we needed something that wouldn't be a hazard to people of normal heights:)  I love that it has both chicken wire and twine, with a rubbed oil bronze finish.  And it was super affordable. The chicken wire ties into the amazing Pottery Barn pendant light fixture that I have hanging over my kitchen sink.

This corner is the Laird's "Jungle Corner".  In our previous residence we dedicated our whole living room to be of the "Jungle Room" designation.  Unfortunately, in our home at Redwoodshire there isn't really a whole room fitting to be the "Jungle Room".  The "Jungle Room" in our old home was painted a bright jungle green.  The walls were covered with pictures and cool "gifts" we got on our travels to other places & countries.  Every time we went on a trip we would pick up a "souvenir" for the Jungle Room.  At Redwoodshire, we now have a Jungle Corner off of the dining room.  It's quite fitting that that portion of the room was covered with pine panels- something the Laird wanted to keep.  I got him to let me paint the areas surrounding the window white, in preparation for the eventual bookcase-window seat unit.  The pine paneled portion was very strange because it was only a portion of the room and ended at the wood stove.  It's hard to say the thought process as to why the previous owners who installed it this way did this, but then again there are a lot of details that make us wonder.  

This is a view from the Jungle Corner towards the dining area, and through to the kitchen.  The pictures up on the picture shelf are in temporary locations as we still have many more to unpack & organize.

This is a view from our kitchen doorway.  This shows Jungle Corner on the left & dining area on the right.  This is our current state of finished, but the intention for next winter is to finally build in 2 floor to ceiling bookcases surrounding the triple window area, with a window seat in between.  The bookcases will be about 26 inches wide (you can see where the white paint extends beyond the window on both sides.  The bench will serve as extra seating & storage, but I imagine will look amazingly cute.  That is a project for next year, so we will be able to dream up a design in the meantime.  We also need to unpack all of our framed pictures and figure out how to best fit them on the Jungle Corner walls.  That's a task for the near future.  For now they will hang out in their new home.