The big picture...

I'd like to retire in about 10 yrs (at age 45 ish) to a home outside of the city with no debt.

There. I've said it. That's the big broad sweeping goal. When I say 'retire' , I mean from my M-F 8:30 am - 5 pm wage slave job. I don't mean retire like play golf (too much boob in the way of swinging a club.. and oh the boredom) on a sunny tropical resort all winter sort of way. I want to be a stay at home mom to my cats. I want to pursue the creative pursuits that make my heart sing. I want to cope with people, or not, as I choose, not as their IT crises choose. (I work in full time front line IT support. I only get phoned by people with a problem. Oy stress.)

The how of getting there.. that's going to be the trick. As always, the devil's in the details and all that. *grin* We currently own a small home in the city, and the sale price of it is highly unlikely to fund the house of my dreams in the country. (Or it might.. you never know where housing prices are going to go around here in 5-8 yrs). Right! Back to baby steps. Retiring in 10 yrs is not going to happen without some baby steps along the way.

Paying off debt. Non morgage to start. We owe about $4200 to the line of credit. Our car lease (yeah yeah, I know I know.. it seemed like a good idea at the time) comes due in May and we intend to buy it out. We love our car. It suits our needs perfectly, its a good size, its pretty good on gas and we know exactly what's been done to it. (Good and bad. Stupid snowbank.) I need to contact the dealership and get a better total on how much that will be, but I've been guessing at 9 or 10K. So we owe, rough round numbers here.. 14200 dollars. The current budget has that getting paid off in just over 21 months or Sept 2009. I would like to start 2009 with that debt gone. On our current repayment schedule, we'll end 2008 with 6200 dollars still owing. Can I actually conjure 6200 dollars out of our spending and/or extra income in the next 13 months? That's an extra 477 dollars a month. To call this SMART might be a stretch. The A for attainable might be pushing it. I'll need to sit down a crunch some numbers and take a good hard look at the new budget. (Spouse recently changed companies without budging from his desk and exactly what benefits and deductions and and and are still settling in.) Heck, maybe we owe less on the car than I fear. Maybe we'll find that some of the more frugal life choices we've started making will pay off a little more than I expect. (Nothing earth shattering.. pay attention to coupons and sales more. Stop buying before the money runs out.)Maybe I'll get some sales on the etsy store I haven't finished setting up. (Now that /would/ be a trick!).

Gather Little by Little wanted to hear about other people's goals as part of the contest over at Cash Money Life.

So there we have it. Big picture, littler picture, somewhat ambitious. It'll be an adventure! Hopefully blogging about it will keep me on the straight and narrow.