The Ending to the Five Year Plan

Five years ago, on my birthday in May of that year, it suddenly dawned on me that I was no further ahead than I was twenty years ago and I needed a five year plan.

My income has gone up but so has the cost of everything else proportionately. The house was the same, my job was the same, and I needed a change.

My two lifetime dreams were calling out to me.

While I have a nice career, there’s one thing that I’ve always wanted to do. These days, thanks to HGTV, it’s almost cliche to say it but I wanted it way before the shows started.

I’ve always wanted to flip houses. Since my early teens, that’s what I wanted to do but life took me in other directions and people always discouraged me. I have often tried to leave that desire behind but it always catches up with me.

But there was another dream, a part of me that has always wanted a home where I could have horses. I own a Tennessee Walker but I only see him a few times a month and pay a lot of money to board him.

Five years ago, I decided that I couldn’t fight these dreams anymore. I had to do something big enough to change the stars. I needed a new path.

The first thing on the list was money for a down payment – either for a flip or a new home. Even though it seemed like there was never enough money, I knew I had to do something. That’s where Dave Ramsey came in.

I started listening to his podcasts every day. Even the older episodes were downloaded and listened to until I was completely brainwashed. It helped a lot!!

The most important thing was getting on a budget.

I didn’t just make a budget and forgot about it, I checked that thing twenty times a day. With no late payments, paid off credit cards and a better debt to income ratio, my score soared from 580 to 760.

But even with all that, there still wasn’t much extra money for saving.

It had been close to three years and the progress was very slow.

As I was decluttering my house, and giving lots of things away, it suddenly dawned on me that I could be selling some of these things and putting the money towards debt.

And that’s exactly what I did. Using the Dave Ramsey method of paying off the smallest debts first, things started moving more quickly.

Before I knew it, most of my debts were paid off.

Now it was time to start saving up some money.

With only a year left in the five year plan, would I ever be able to reach at least one of my goals?

Then in the beginning of 2020, we all know what happened with Covid-19. But what people might not know is that eBay sales skyrocketed.

While people were stuck at home, they shopped and my savings grew.

Was it enough to make something happen?