Question: What are my plans for the future?

JRBN wrote me an e-mail and said:

Hi there,

I would just like to say I love your blog. I love reading your posts and it somehow gives me lots of motivation in regards my financial life. Please keep up the good job. If you do not mind, I would love to know about what are your plans for the future, in terms of personal life, career. I mean, do you intend to get married and have a family or you intend to focus on your career, etc…

Also I would suggest to post some pictures of things that make part of your daily life, such as the city in which you live, the places where you used to go, evidently being anonymous.

Anyway, I wish you all the best. Take Care.

Thank you for the e-mail!

As for my future plans, of course you can’t predict everything, but I do have some sort of direction and timeline:

• Present – July 2010: work and save up money in Vancouver.
• Early 2010-ish: move in with BF.
• July 2010 – July 2011: travel the world.
• August-ish 2011: move back to my hometown with BF.

In my personal life, I do want to get married and settle down. Because BF can do his work from almost anywhere and he’ll be traveling a lot, we agreed that we would try to live where I’d feel most comfortable. And while there are some places on the Lower Mainland that I feel good in, ultimately I want to be back in my hometown. So that’s our plan as of right now.

I want to maintain a career (I don’t want to be a housewife). I want to find a job in my hometown when we come back from traveling that will provide me with a steady income, good benefits, and paid maternity leave. But I also think that down the road, I’ll want to go back to school. Probably for business or marketing or something along those lines. I’m happy with the work that I’m doing right now. It’s keeping me satisfied. But I think there’s something else I could be doing. I just don’t know what it is yet.

To be honest, I’ve wanted to do so many different things in my life. For the longest time I wanted to be an archaeologist, but the lifestyle an archaeologist leads isn’t exactly what I’d want for my life. I also really wanted to be a lawyer, but again the long hours you need to put in is something I’m just not willing to do.

I’d like to own my own business. Not a design house or a marketing firm, but a store that sells goods. I’d like to own an outdoors store, or some sort of sports specialty store for a niche market. I know it’s the opposite of what I’m doing right now, and I don’t really have a clear path or a way to get there, but I have a lot of time to think about it.

Or I could take my love of personal finance and somehow spin it into some sort of job as a money coach or financial planner. That would be a dream come true.

There are so many different things I could do that it makes me really excited for the future. And if I end up finding a great company and if I end up working in marketing for the rest of my life, that’s fine too.

As for having a family, I was always unsure about wanting kids. BF definitely wants a family, and I wouldn’t be with him if I didn’t want the same thing with him. But it’s so hard to say when that will happen. We both have so many goals that we want to achieve.

Anyway, I hope that answers some of your questions. I’ll try to take more pictures too!