Journey to Future Freedom

Tag: life

  • It’s a birthday Week!

    It is birthday week. Miss 12 is turning 13. The house will officially be full of teens. We make a big deal of birthdays in our house. It is a privilege to get older as so many don’t. So the day is yours to choose how you want to celebrate within reason. If you have school then you are still going plus I think it’s great to see your friends.

    So what are we doing to celebrate. She has selected dinner at a local pub with family. Simple and easy.

    I’d like to say it ends there but no she wants a party and since we haven’t done a party for a few years we gave in. Ten girls and a scavenger hunt around the local district, oh and she wants it to be a surprise for her too so I need to plan the whole thing. Just Yay!

    So here I am at working writing out clues with little activities in between. I’m really delving into the part of my brain that was a teacher many years ago and reminding myself that, “I have got this!”

    Hubby asks what I am doing and as I remind him a look rolls over his face, he is working this Saturday. For crying out loud, how do I get myself into these situations? Well 10 girls and me in my 7 seater is just not going to work( Not to mention the two rear seats are unusable as the puppies have eaten through the seatbelts).

    A mayday call to my Mum has been made and she is now going to drive the three hours to help me out of the pickle I am in.

    Am I going to be able to pull this off? Who knows but there will definitely be the reward of wine at the end of it all.

  • 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.

  • 20% Planning 80% Execution

    I have always been a planner. I can make the numbers work out beautifully on paper or I can come up with itinerary that has the best intentions. However, I really fail on the execution!

    I have come over the past year to realise that the planning means jack shit if you don’t put it in practise and consistently.

    Let’s use saving money on takeaways as an example. It’s easy to cook every night for a week but then kids sports go later than planned, and one of us ends up working late and you find yourself thinking, “We will just stop for something on the way home.” It is such an easy trap to fall into. Then you think oh I’ll do better next month, but next month comes and the same thing happens.

    Well I put a stop to this!

    First thing I did was load the freezer with easy meals. You know the ones that are ready in 20 minutes, require very little cooking and best of all no thought! Tacos, Nachos, Soups, burger patties. This meant that I no longer had time as the excuse.

    The second thing I did, was point out that if we purchased takeaways then effectively one of us had worked late for “NOTHING” Lets say we spent $80 on takeaways, easily done for a family of four in NZ. Then the 2 hours working late had been completely in vain. Nothing more degrading than hubby walking in the door and me saying, “Welcome home, here’s dinner that you just paid for with the past two hours of working . It isn’t worth it!

    Gone are our days of takeaways- I think it’s been a good three months since we had them. Or so the kids keep telling me. Although I have noticed they have pretty much stopped asking. I prefer now to eat out on a special occasion where we can have one on one time together with no devices .

  • Ramblings…#1 because there are probably many to come.

    When I started this journey I had no Idea where it would take me or how quickly my thinking would escalate and dart all over the place. 

    There were so many aspects of change that I felt needed to undergo that I really didn’t know what to expect and nor where it would head.  I think that is what I am loving about the journey. 

    I actually don’t know what is ahead of me.  All I know is that I am chasing some version of freedom, yet to be determined or evolving and that each day I want to be a better version of myself.

    At this stage I feel as though I am mostly achieving this with slips ups along the way.  I think the difference is I am not aiming for perfection I am aiming for progress and I am really not concerned about the tiny blips I am just learning from them and continuing to plough forwards.

    I think the greatest aspect of freedom I have found so far is the concept of being at peace with myself.  Not overthinking, beating myself up, feeling as though I am never good enough. 

    Yes I still walked into a knee high washing pile in the laundry this morning and I had kids that couldn’t find this and that…probably because they were yet to be washed but it’s only washing.  And truth be said there are 3 other people in our house capable of doing it.

    In the past I would feel like a failure because I wasn’t running the house the way I felt it should be run but if I am honest they were the expectations I put on myself. So I am finding this new way of kinder thinking towards myself to be much better for my mental health and in many ways very freeing.