Change.......some of us like it, some of us don't. The Swensen family is divided on this change, but it will probably make for a smoother transition and changes the timeline for everything. We had our garage sale and it went well, but we will be having another later this Summer as we get very serious about moving stuff out of the house. Something else that changed this weekend was the early stages of our ultimate plan. Instead of selling the house and moving into an apartment we will be staying in the house until our debt is paid off and will then sell and move to our destination. So while this does prolong the amount of time it will take us to pay off our debt, it shortens the time until we move. There are pro's and con's to both plans of course, but I think ultimately this one will work better in being a compromise of what Jason and Anika both want.
There is still a lot of discussing about our individual plans and dreams and then what they are collectively. We are planning a night to get a babysitter and go our seperate ways to really think about what our plans and dreams are, really, really think about them and write them down. After that night we will come together with our dream sheets and look them over, see where they overlap and go from there. We think this will help take some of the frustration out of the decision making and help us feel more settled that we are on the same page, since lately it seems like our thoughts might be going in opposite directions. One thing we do know that we both agree on is that wherever we decide to move is where we will be until Akina and all future children are graduated, so it needs to be a place that we like and meets all criteria.
Peace out!
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
One man's junk is another man's..........junk???
We are currently in the process of working on the next step in our plan. We are slowly, but surely clearing out all of our unneeded "stuff". This is a little painful for Jason because he forms more of an attatchment to "stuff" than Anika does. We are hoping for a very successful sale since we will have all kinds of things there. Baby clothes, scrapbooking stuff and so on, and so on. We are very excited about getting the house cleared out because right now it is just chaos and clutter.
On another note, Anika has decided that for some insane reason running a marathon sounds like fun, so she is going to start working toward getting to a point where she can run. She is going to need a lot of motivation and would love to find someone that would commit to getting in shape with her. The goal is to run a marathon by the time she is 31. She also just wants to be in shape for her kiddos and be able to run all over the place with them. (The current child we have and any future ones.)
On another note, Anika has decided that for some insane reason running a marathon sounds like fun, so she is going to start working toward getting to a point where she can run. She is going to need a lot of motivation and would love to find someone that would commit to getting in shape with her. The goal is to run a marathon by the time she is 31. She also just wants to be in shape for her kiddos and be able to run all over the place with them. (The current child we have and any future ones.)
Sunday, April 26, 2009
And that's a 1st down!!!
The evening of Thursday April 23rd we made our way over to our dear friends, Nate & Paige's house for dinner and to watch Dave Ramsey's Town Hall for Hope. Jason and I used this as our semi-official "kickoff" for our debt elimination. It was a lot of fun and some good laughs, Dave has some good philosophies on money, in my humble opinion. So now we have been kicked off and sent home to do it on our own. Speaking of doing it on our own:
We received our tax return sometime late Thursday/early Friday and with that......drumroll please.......I said drumroll please...........we paid off the first of three credit cards!!! WOO HOO!!!
We will also be able to make a large payment on the second card. I decided kids are great for tax returns. ;)
We have started work on the house. We are trying to figure out how we are going to fix the deck and put a new roof on, it's not really in the budget, but has to be done in order for the house to sell. We are very excited to have the first of many hurdles down and are optimistic that the others will continue to be tackled as we work toward our goals. We leave you with a quote from Anika's all time favorite movie (I know all my peeps will know what it's from ;) ): "In the immortal words of The Doors "The time to hesitate is through."
We received our tax return sometime late Thursday/early Friday and with that......drumroll please.......I said drumroll please...........we paid off the first of three credit cards!!! WOO HOO!!!
We will also be able to make a large payment on the second card. I decided kids are great for tax returns. ;)
We have started work on the house. We are trying to figure out how we are going to fix the deck and put a new roof on, it's not really in the budget, but has to be done in order for the house to sell. We are very excited to have the first of many hurdles down and are optimistic that the others will continue to be tackled as we work toward our goals. We leave you with a quote from Anika's all time favorite movie (I know all my peeps will know what it's from ;) ): "In the immortal words of The Doors "The time to hesitate is through."
Friday, April 17, 2009
Everyone.......we have some 'xplainin to do!!
For those of you that know us, ignore this part. For those of you that don't and just happened across our little path of super magnificence.....hold onto your hats:
We are The Swensens, Jason, Anika & Akina. We live in South Dakota and we, like pretty much all Americans, are in debt. We don't like debt, it should be included in the list of four letter words that should never cross a persons lips. That being said, we will now tell you about our little journey that we have decided to embark on. :)
Here is our dream, laugh if you will, but we LOVE it and are SO excited about it:
First and foremost, we want to be debt free. This means no home mortgage, no car loans, no credit cards and no school loans. We have quite a few steps we are going to take to accomplish this. First, we are going to sell our house. Yes, we will move into an apartment. Yes, there will be less space, and, YES! We can handle it and live with it. It is a very short term sacrifice to reach a long term dream. To reach the goal of selling the house and moving into an apartment, we must first purge ourselves of all things unnecessary. We will be going through our entire house and only keeping what we deem necessary. This "Spring" cleaning will result in........garage sale!!! After the sale of the house we will put all the money we save from paying the mortgage, utility bills, maintenance, etc. towards credit cards. We will follow Dave Ramsey's plan for this and start paying on the card with the lowest balance first. Then the snowball effect will start. Here is our goal: We believe that we can have everything paid off, EVERYTHING, including the car and school loans and be 100% debt free within 2 years.
Second:
Once we are debt free, the whole amount that was going into paying off our debt will go into savings. We will be in save, save, save mode.
Third:
After we have our goal amount saved up (this is, of course, in addition to the recommended safety net by Dave Ramsey) we plan to buy some land outright, no mortgage and on that land construct a Yurt dwelling. If you don't know what a Yurt is, please visit http://www.rainieryurts.com/ and check them out. We are planning to live somewhere warm, and my personal preference, very close to a nice, sunny, warm, OCEAN beach. Once we have constructed our yurt, we will plant a large garden and quite possibly sell some of its yield at a local farmer's market. All of our friends will be more than welcome to come visit us for a nice beach vacay!!! As of yet, we have not decided where we will end up, but some of the destinations have included Costa Rica, southern Florida, possibly, but probably not southern Cali (because let's just face it, California is cuckoo!!!). If you have any suggestions for beautiful, warm destinations with gorgeous beaches, let us know.
So, ultimately, this is a 5 year plan. It could take us longer, it could take us not so long. Either way, we would love to have you enjoy this journey with us. If you want to be positive and encouraging, please leave us some feedback. If you want to be negative, we're really not that interested because it is our plan and dream, not yours. I am going to try to update as much as possible, but I forget a lot of stuff a lot of the time, so I will give it my best shot. So until next time!!
Peace out!!
We are The Swensens, Jason, Anika & Akina. We live in South Dakota and we, like pretty much all Americans, are in debt. We don't like debt, it should be included in the list of four letter words that should never cross a persons lips. That being said, we will now tell you about our little journey that we have decided to embark on. :)
Here is our dream, laugh if you will, but we LOVE it and are SO excited about it:
First and foremost, we want to be debt free. This means no home mortgage, no car loans, no credit cards and no school loans. We have quite a few steps we are going to take to accomplish this. First, we are going to sell our house. Yes, we will move into an apartment. Yes, there will be less space, and, YES! We can handle it and live with it. It is a very short term sacrifice to reach a long term dream. To reach the goal of selling the house and moving into an apartment, we must first purge ourselves of all things unnecessary. We will be going through our entire house and only keeping what we deem necessary. This "Spring" cleaning will result in........garage sale!!! After the sale of the house we will put all the money we save from paying the mortgage, utility bills, maintenance, etc. towards credit cards. We will follow Dave Ramsey's plan for this and start paying on the card with the lowest balance first. Then the snowball effect will start. Here is our goal: We believe that we can have everything paid off, EVERYTHING, including the car and school loans and be 100% debt free within 2 years.
Second:
Once we are debt free, the whole amount that was going into paying off our debt will go into savings. We will be in save, save, save mode.
Third:
After we have our goal amount saved up (this is, of course, in addition to the recommended safety net by Dave Ramsey) we plan to buy some land outright, no mortgage and on that land construct a Yurt dwelling. If you don't know what a Yurt is, please visit http://www.rainieryurts.com/ and check them out. We are planning to live somewhere warm, and my personal preference, very close to a nice, sunny, warm, OCEAN beach. Once we have constructed our yurt, we will plant a large garden and quite possibly sell some of its yield at a local farmer's market. All of our friends will be more than welcome to come visit us for a nice beach vacay!!! As of yet, we have not decided where we will end up, but some of the destinations have included Costa Rica, southern Florida, possibly, but probably not southern Cali (because let's just face it, California is cuckoo!!!). If you have any suggestions for beautiful, warm destinations with gorgeous beaches, let us know.
So, ultimately, this is a 5 year plan. It could take us longer, it could take us not so long. Either way, we would love to have you enjoy this journey with us. If you want to be positive and encouraging, please leave us some feedback. If you want to be negative, we're really not that interested because it is our plan and dream, not yours. I am going to try to update as much as possible, but I forget a lot of stuff a lot of the time, so I will give it my best shot. So until next time!!
Peace out!!
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