Journey to Future Freedom

Tag: Freedom

  • Alcohol….reasons I’m giving it up!For Good!

    I have been toying with this idea for at least the last ten years. I have known since our children were young that my relationship with alcohol would be described as dysfunctional.

    I don’t drink everyday and there have been periods of time over the years where I’m have not drunk for months or weeks but I’m always go back to it and once I pop out can’t stop.

    I grew up with an alcoholic father. It didn’t really affect my life hugely as he was not nasty or violent. He was just a drunk that had nothing. The kindest drunk I knew. When I was 21 he went into liver failure and ended up giving up alcohol. He received a new liver and managed 10 more years of life before dying of cancer. I’ve seen first hand the toll alcohol can take on the mind and the body.

    But back to me. My reasons. There are so many.

    My daughter hates me drinking and as she gets older it is starting to have an impact on our relationship.

    It is definitely affecting my health. In the past five years I have put on 15kg mostly in the form of calories from wine.

    It steals my motivation. Five years ago I was running half marathons and playing with the idea of running a full. Now I’d be lucky if I could run to the end of the road.

    It steals my time. I do things while drinking but not well. The time I spend drinking in the evenings could definitely be used doing other things. Running maybe.

    I’m literally flushing money down the toilet. It is so expensive. I hate to think how much money I have wasted over the years. Thousands!

    So it’s time for change. I know it won’t be easy but I set out this year to find freedom and this is definitely going to be freeing. I’m excited to see what it will look like

    “I officially NO LONGER DRINK ALCOHOL!”

  • A Shit Show of a start to the weekend…

    It’s our annual club weekend for the fishing club that we are in. I somehow landed myself the role of Secretary and Treasurer a number of years ago and as much as I have tried to give the job away no one wants it.

    The lead up started Thursday night with hubby working on the boat and me realising that we didn’t have enough clean washing to pack. Just typical Mum problems. While what felt like 5 loads were washing and drying I polished cups, cooked Thursday and Friday’s dinner and unloaded the Months worth of groceries that I forgot I had ordered to be delivered.

    Friday morning arrived way too fast and we thought we could plough through the days work and hopefully get away about 3ish. Haha the day turned out to be a shit show and we finally hit the road at 4.45 . Now it’s a two hour drive and our AGM was due to start at 7. Packed in the back of our ute were all the Club trophies. I spent the trip praying for no hold ups and we arrived with 5 minutes to spare.

    Hubby got to reverse our 6 metre boat into a tight gap with a crowd of onlookers. No pressure at all thankfully he nailed it with no swearing or damage involved. If you know you know.

    Saturday morning rolls around and it’s minus 2 degrees and freezing. Not a chance I’m going fishing in these temps so off the boys went and us girls stayed in the warm.

    As I am making a coffee I notice Hubby’s phone still on charge… FFS. Let’s hope it’s an uneventful boating trip and that they land some winning fish.

  • Meet the Frugalwoods & Why/

    This book spoke to me! I am currently reading it again after getting to the end on Friday. It basically told the story of what I want to achieve. Having a why as to where you are heading on your journey is so important. Sometimes I feel as though my goals are just not even realistic and so to read about others achieving it really helped me focus on yes. This is achievable. It won’t look like their journey did as the cost of living in NZ is completely different from where they were. It will be our journey.

    My husband has worked every weekend for the last three and juggled kids sports in between so he can try and be there. This morning he said, “I don’t want to go to work today”. I could hear in his voice how much he meant it and I thought this is why we are on this journey. He very rarely complains about having to work and is the hardest worker I know by far. I am so proud of everything he has built up with our business and how hard he has worked to get us here but we can’t continue to work at the pace we are doing something that we really don’t like doing.

    This is my why. This is what keeps me focused. It’s what keeps me saying “No” when the kids are nagging for takeaways or treats. Don’t worry they aren’t completely deprived. They get plenty of treats…takeaways not so much.

    When you have a strong why then it makes staying the course so much easier. Especially on those days when you question whether it’s all worth it.

    When I started this journey I had no idea where it was heading and therefore decided to learn as much as I possibly could. Read everything I could find. Take the information that spoke to me and discard what didn’t. The journey is slowly becoming clearer. At the beginning I knew there would be a financial aspect to it but I didn’t realise it would .be the glue that allows the freedom to all come together.

  • Financial Freedom

    What will this look like in the future? A future where I don’t have to rely on going to work every day at a set time in order to pay the bills and make ends meet. This week I read a book called, you guessed it “Financial Freedom” by Grant Sabatier.

    Wow- What an eye opening book. I thought that if I just saved really hard I would eventually get to where I needed to be but according to this book I have no hope – this thought led to a glass or two of wine. But once you get past realising that what you are currently doing is not working the book is full of the most amazing inspiration and it really makes investing in your retirement seem like something that anyone can do.

    While we have fairly solid Kiwi Saver funds that are on track to have we will need to retire at 65- who the hell wants to wait that long, who knows if we will make it that long! And sooo…my plan for this coming week is to open a managed fund. One that can build up money and wait for it I can access before I am 65!

    https://www.mightyape.co.nz/mn/buy/mighty-ape-financial-freedom-31779244/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=product_listing_ads&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22013289064&gbraid=0AAAAADqxfikaN9DuHYvjFC9oyDAMSb26O&gclid=CjwKCAjwi-DBBhA5EiwAXOHsGbG3MarHbKXd6nXcTRkkhzRnPikA7X6PtDDWGCg16_R_-At6FbkIERoCZuoQAvD_BwE

    https://www.audible.com.au/pd/Financial-Freedom-Audiobook/1984846132?source_code=SEMPP30DTRIAL4520414230009&ipRedirectOverride=true&noapp=1&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=298131605&gclid=CjwKCAjwi-DBBhA5EiwAXOHsGf0pgDu7v9vD4t10twVVrs3RnhGVMqlxllBkgex1ipLT-GtC8leaIxoCfGAQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

    https://www.audible.com.au/pd/Financial-Freedom-Audiobook/1984846132?source_code=SEMPP30DTRIAL4520414230009&ipRedirectOverride=true&noapp=1&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=298131605&gclid=CjwKCAjwi-DBBhA5EiwAXOHsGf0pgDu7v9vD4t10twVVrs3RnhGVMqlxllBkgex1ipLT-GtC8leaIxoCfGAQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

  • Constraints!

    After a few days pondering what freedom means to me my thoughts mostly keep coming back to the things that hold me back in life. My constraints, the opposite of freedom. I want to be free from the things that I feel hold me back.

    So what are my constraints…

    Alcohol- I drink far too often and I lost time, money and moments.

    Finance- while we are fairly comfortable I would like to have more financial freedom, especially in regard to semi retiring or early retirement.

    Time- I always feel like I am rushing. Rushing to get to the next activity, meeting. Never really enjoying the moment, always thinking about the next thing.

    Thoughts- seems weird to have come up with this as a constraint. But I realise I spend so much time thinking about certain things. Things that occupy far too much brain space. I often spend more time thinking about something than actually doing it. Those tasks that take 5 minutes but you actually spend far longer than that revisiting it in your head.

    So as we head into Winter here in New Zealand I am going to revisit these constraints and work on become free from them. Hmmm a Winter without alcohol, how much time and money I will save.