10 years and a million miles away

Well, my last post didn't prompt any responses whatsoever...but since I plan to be at least relatively active in the PF Blogging community, I'd better whip something up for the latest carnival. Truthfully, I don't really know what I'm doing with this whole blogging thing...but maybe I'll pick it up along the way.

So, without further ado...

10 years from now, I will be living in a four bedroom, three bathroom house in Indiana with a large fenced in yard where my dogs and children can run around.

10 years from now, have just sold my current townhouse, after having lived in it for three years and rented it out for another five. After all, the best way to become wealthy is to leverage YOUR money and use SOMEONE ELSE'S to pay for it. ;-)

10 years from now, I will be managing an appartment complex (or tri-plex) that I bought with the profits from the sale of my current home in my spare time.

10 years from now, I will be four years away from collecting a military retirement check for the rest of my life.

10 years from now, I will have approximately $170,000 in my TSP account at the ripe old age of 38.

10 years from now, the Roth IRA I started as an emergency fund and for the sake of tax diversification will be worth about $20,000...or about 6 months worth of paychecks.

10 years from now, I will finally trade in the car I'm driving now for a hybrid replacement vehicle...and I'll buy it cash from my "Car Fund".

10 years from now, my ING Account will be a fully funded emergency fund as well, with a full 6 months of pay socked away.

10 years from now, my children will be age 7 (Rhys - boy) and 6 (Alana - girl).

10 years from now, I will have finished both my Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Business Management...and I will have learned how to play guitar too. ;-)

10 years from now, my children will have college funds in place for when they graduate high school.

10 years from now...I'll be 38. 10 years will pass whether I achieve these goals or not. Nothing can stop the passage of time. No matter whether you strive to fulfill your dreams for 10 years or spend the whole time complaining about how your dreams are impossible to reach, 10 years will pass.

Strive anyway.

Your goals may be big or small, and they may be out of reach today, tomorrow and the next day...but unless you take that first step towards them, they will never get any closer.

Dream anyway.

10 years or 10 days...a journey of a million miles begins with a single step. No matter how long the trip or how many roadblocks are in the way, you can get there.

Begin today.

~A Reading from the Tao of Scott

What I would do if I won the lottery

I was thinking about this today, and I think that this question has less to do with what I would spend the money on and more to do with how I would choose to live my life if money were no object.

I think that after I did all of the obligatory things (pay off debt, max out retirement contributions for the year, go on a spending spree, etc, etc) that I would take a lot of time for myself to enjoy life for awhile by playing video games and traveling...and then I would start teaching.

Not teaching for a paycheck (although that might happen anyway) but teaching for the sake of teaching. I want to educate young people on personal finance matters, and help them prepare for life after they leave the nest and enter the real world. I could be a great teacher, and there is quite simply a TON of things that I could teach young people that would be more useful to them in their everyday lives than say...basic chemistry or calculus.

The other option that I might consider doing is "fee based financial planner". I ENJOY managing money, creating budgets and calculating expected returns. It's fun for me. :-) If I didn't have to spend any time worrying about my own financial situation, then I think I would like to take the time to help other people with theirs.

The only reason that I'm not pursuing either of these careers right now is because being in the military doesn't allow me to change career paths like that, and because I would be very uncomfortable either creating a basic finance class or financial planning business without significant funds to rely on for basic bills. In other words, my financial security has not yet been secured enough to where I would feel comfortable taking that risk.

What about you? What would you do if money were no object? What would you occupy your time with if you didn't HAVE to have a job to pay the bills?