How To Make A Plan For Your Future

 While living in the present moment is really important for your happiness, it is equally as important to make a plan for your future. Making a plan for your future will enable you to take steps and reach goals and dreams that you have for yourself. Many people will make the mistake of thinking about their dreams and how they wish their life to unfold, but not take any action towards reaching them. This means that many people get older and live with regrets. It also results in not having the career you wished for, and reaching retirement without any plans or finances in place for yourself. 

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To prevent this from happening, you can take steps to prepare yourself. When you make a plan, you will live with more clarity and happiness, and you can rest knowing that your life will unfold the way you want it to. Of course, you can update your goals and plans at any point in your life, but it is a great way to get thinking about what you want so you don’t miss out on any opportunities, it will keep you motivated and moving forward, help you to have more control over your life, and you can live and retire with peace. A plan is also extremely helpful in helping you to think ahead with your finances so you are able to do the things that you want to do. Here are some steps to help you get started.

Think about your goals

The first and most important thing that you need to do, is to think about your goals. This might take some time. There might be some goals that you know you want to achieve in life, but there may also be some that you need to think about and discover. Make sure you think about all kinds of goals. There are going to be serious ones you must think about, like your finances, your investments, your career, whether you want to get married and have children, etc. Some of these serious goals may also include your retirement, your wills, and what happens after your passing. You can find helpful information online to help you craft goals and plans at www.Memorials.com and other sites online.  You also want to include some fun goals in there, like adventures that you want to go on. 

Think about what steps you need to take to get there

The next part of the plan making process is to think about what steps you need to get there. Be realistic and consider the small actions, as well as the big ones you need to achieve your goals. SMART goal setting is a good framework to follow, as it will ensure your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound. 

Think about how you can finance it 

Make sure you consider your finances when planning your goals. There is nothing worse than wanting to achieve your goals but not having the means to do it. A plan will help you pull all this together. Think about the costs related to your goals, and how you can save towards being in a position to make it happen. 

Write it out 

The last step you should take when it comes to making a plan, is writing it out. This makes it more permanent and holds you accountable. When you write it down, you will also be able to remind yourself what you need to do to get to your goals. Make a tracker, schedule reviews and reminders, and make sure you go after those goals. 

Making a plan for your future is a great way to ensure you can look back at your life and accomplish everything you wanted to. 

Finding New Goals For Your Hobbies

 Hobbies are good for our mental health and can help to build our personality. For a hobby to stay interesting, you need to keep finding new goals. If you’ve found yourself losing interest in a hobby or you simply feel your hobby doesn’t satisfy you as much, you should consider whether it’s time to set a new goal. Below are just 5 examples of goals for your hobbies.

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Learn New Skills/Techniques

Consider whether it’s time to go out of your comfort zone and learn new skills related to your hobby. There are always niche skills that can be learned. A few examples include:

• Expanding your piano skills by trying new genres like jazz or classical
• Improving your knitting skills by learning new stitches
• Learning how to grow new vegetables in your backyard

You can learn new skills by looking up tutorials online, getting paid lessons or reading handbooks. Work out what is the best form of learning for you.

Master How To Use New Equipment

There could be new equipment that you could buy to get more out of your hobby. Challenge yourself to master this equipment. Examples could include:

• Buying new camera lenses and learning to integrate them into your photography
• Buying new cake modelling tools to build your cake-making skills
• Buying a new effects pedal to use in your guitar-playing

Saving up for equipment could be a goal in itself. Make sure to research into equipment so that you buy the best equipment and keep it well maintained.

Build An Online Fanbase

Find an audience for your hobby by sharing videos, images or blog posts online. You can then challenge yourself to build followers by consistently posting engaging content. Examples of this include:

• Sharing images of sketches and paintings on Instagram and building followers
• Posting video reviews of great books you’ve read
• Writing educational/informational travel blog posts of places you’ve been to and amassing lots of loyal readers

Becoming an influencer could allow you to gain appreciation for your hobby, pass on knowledge and connect with fellow hobbyists. You could even monetize this following through options like sponsorships and ad revenue, which leads onto the next goal…

Monetize Your Hobby

Almost any hobby can be monetized. This could be a chance to earn an income - even if it’s just some money on the side - while doing something you love. A few examples include:

• Selling handmade jewelry online
• Becoming a paid soccer coach
• Making money from a beauty vlog via ad revenue and sponsorships

Monetizing your hobby requires understanding how to market yourself. You’ll likely need to build social media pages and launch a website using a platform like WooCommerce hosting. In other cases, it may benefit you to attend events such as craft fairs or paid competitions. Speaking of competitions…

Get Competitive

You may be able to compete with other hobbyists to win events or break records. Competition can be a great way to take your hobby to the next level. Examples could include:

• Playing video games in an online tournament
• Taking part in a chilli-eating competition
• Downloading a running app like Strava and competing with the performance stats of other users

Make sure that you understand the rules of competing. Set realistic competition goals so that you stay motivated - know your own ability. 

I hope these tips will help you find new goals for your hobbies. Add your own in the comments below!

How To Start Writing In Your Spare Time

When you’re someone that dreams of writing, that dream never dies. It stays with you. Even when you go off into your career, when you forget about all things creative, and when you go off into your adult life. It’s still there.

Because writing comes with so much passion. When you love to read and create and get lost in an imaginary world, it’s only natural that your mind will often come up with characters and ideas, plots and plot twists. So whether you were a budding author as a child, or you were someone that just wanted to write features and stories and snippets from your life, you will still have that feeling until you put pen to paper. Or, perhaps more aptly, fingers to keyboard.

So, you might be interested in writing in your spare time with the intention of turning this into a career. Or selling a story. Or an article. But how do you do it? And how should you start? Well, let's find out.

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Just Start

First, you just need to get started. Right now! When you’ve finished reading this post, open up your word processor or your Google Doc and just get writing. Getting started is often the hardest part, so if you just do it, you’ve beaten that hurdle.

Set Aside The Time

But at the same time, you need to make sure that you’re actually doing it. Don’t just get started, write once, and then stop. You need to find time to write by making time for it. So schedule it in. Whether it’s an hour in the morning, on your lunch break, or in the evening, slot it in. Because when it’s in the diary and the time is set aside for it, you will write.

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Get Into A Routine

You then will want to make sure that you’re being consistent with it. So get into a routine of writing an hour a day or whatever you can commit. Because the more of a routine you get into with your writing, the easier it will be to build up a momentum.

Take It Seriously

But then there may also come a time where you feel ready to take this whole writing thing seriously. Maybe you want to look at online jobs from home where you can write to make money and then write in your spare time creatively too. Or maybe you want to think about getting a pitch together for a book proposal? No matter what you want to achieve, you will start to realize that there is a point where things get a little bit more serious for you.

Do Something Big

Finally, you may even want to make more of a move than that. You might want to do something big and exciting and different. Maybe starting a blog and publishing some of your ideas there could be perfect for you? Or maybe you would love to write your own book and self-publish it? Just make sure that you have some kind of goal that you’re working to, that something big you’re chasing that can help to keep you on track.

What are you waiting for?

Back And Forth And Around Again

Around this time last year, I was in the process of moving. And so it goes, I'm getting ready to move again.

City life is not for me.

We have been looking all over in quiet little towns to find our perfect place. Where I'm from and where I am right now, the noise never stops. I thoroughly enjoy our trips to the mountains because it's so very peaceful...

Yes, yes I am a little cliche...you know, a writer and shady forest hideaway...

Anyway, I think we have found our perfect little place, but I don't want to say it's ours for sure yet because I did that last year and we ended up in our current terrible apartment.

I lovingly refer to it as "The Box In Rat City."

It was hard for us to decide what we were going to do after my husband retired from the Navy. We want to convert a bus into a camper, we want to travel all around, we want to find land, we want to buy a house...

We ended up in the city where my daughter is attending college. It's her first year so we wanted to make sure she was all set. I thought it was going to be weird for her at first, but it worked out. Her best friend from back home got accepted and they are going to room together next year. So, now...

I will officially be an empty nester. All of my butterflies have grown up and flown away. 

My point is, it's gonna be weird.

Therefore, I am going to need to be busy.

All of the time.

No time to miss my sweet babies, busy busy busy.

I have been thinking about those goals a lot more seriously lately. 

I think my husband and I are finally in fairly stable financial shape. Well, better than we have ever been in our lives.

So, maybe we will convert a skoolie, maybe we'll get an RV instead (I've found some nice new campers for sale in PA). Maybe we'll buy a house on a giant piece of land or maybe we'll find something better. I have definitely been spending A LOT of time on living room design websites, that's for sure!

Who knows? It could all change by next week.

What kind of goals or plans do you have? Have they changed as life changed? 

Dreams, Goals, And Trucks

*This post is sponsored by Cars.com*

It's nice to have goals, right? Dreams are important.

Since my husband retired from the Navy, it seems like we have a new dream/goal every other day. First, we were going to get an RV and travel all over. Well, that's a little difficult when your entire life is on the east coast and you have a little bit of separation anxiety (ok, alot) from your adult children (yes, that one is me). Ok, we still want to travel but now we want to get an old bus (school or otherwise) and repurpose that skoolie! Well, that's a little difficult when you live smack dab in the middle of a busy capitol city with no yard (which will be remedied when we move again in the summer). It would be even more awesome if we could find a junkyard/pick and pull close by as well.

Right. So, what to focus on in the interim. A new dream/goal, if you will.

When we were in Texas, we bought a great truck. A Nissan Titan and that truck lasted FOREVER! 

Of course, two months before my husband's retirement, the transmission finally went and we decided it was time for a new truck.

                                   I will miss you, *cry*

We have been looking for a replacement vehicle since but it hasn't been a pressing concern as, again, smack dab in the middle of the city (with zero parking). 

As such, I have been browsing Cars.com constantly looking for something that I think will fit our eventual dreams/goals. Fortunately, not only do they have a great selection, there are lots of articles like this one to help research what would be the best vehicle for our dream/goals.

We're going to need a big truck if we are going to haul a 28 foot RV around the country. It's also nice to have a reliable vehicle, busy city with no parking or not.

The best thing I found on website is the auto loan calculator. Using my husband's retirement and disability pay as the primary income, as my income tends to be sporadic (yay freelancing!), I was able to see just how much we would pay for a nice used truck that can handle what we are thinking about. There are so many options to choose from on Cars.com so this really helps narrow down the choices. 

Now, I just have to decide if we are going to go with a diesel or not. This has become the hot topic debate within our household lately. 

This could all change if we decide to renovate a skoolie, obviously. Luckily, Cars.com has plenty of vehicles to look over as we make our decision.

After all, it's nice to have dreams and goals, right?