Life Goals

A few Sundays ago after church, Alison and I went for a walk around Daybreak Lake. While we walked we had an interesting conversation. Our discussion focused on our personal finances and our future goals. The conversation brought to mind the Alicia Keys song, Not Even the King:

"Money

Some people are so poor, all that they've got is money

Oh, and diamonds

Some people waste their life counting their thousands

I don't care what they're offering

How much gold they bring

They can't afford what we've had

Not even the king

They can't afford what we've got

Not even the king"

I think it can be easy to get into the trap of accumulating wealth for the sake of accumulating wealth. Since I am in accounting I spend a significant portion of my time analyzing money and finances. Spending so much time focused on the numbers can make it seem like the numbers are all that matter. There are a lot of philosophies out there about how to manage and accumulate wealth. This song is a reminder that there is so much more to life than accumulating wealth.

Alison and I have been greatly blessed. Financially we have wanted for nothing. While I was attending school Alison had a great job and supported us. Since I have graduated we both have had gainful employment. We have had significant opportunities for professional advancement and our career trajectories are bright.

We have been blessed to have what we needed. While this has been a great blessing. I think we have had an even greater blessing. Very early in our marriage, we had experiences that taught us to prioritize memories, spending time together and experiences. Alison took a job where she traveled for a significant portion of the year. Being apart often was a challenge, but it helped us learn to prioritize each other during the times we were together. In a very real way spending so much time apart made our relationship stronger. Alison's work travel enabled us to increase our personal travel. Taking vacations became extremely important to us. Our favorite aspect of traveling together may be that when we travel we literally spend 24/7 together in a setting where we have no other competing priorities. The volume of Alison's work travel allowed us to accumulate reward points that made our personal trips less expensive. We also allocated a larger portion of our income to travel and lived a lifestyle that enabled us to take multiple vacations each year. Sure we could have gotten into a house more quickly or made different decisions, but if I could go back and do it all over again I would not change our decisions.

This is not to say that Alison and I are by any means fiscally irresponsible. Throughout our marriage, we have had short- and long-term goals. We discuss these goals and they evolve over time. We make saving for retirement a huge priority. We also each earned a master's degree from the University of Utah without ever having one cent of student debt. We live within our means.

While we have long-term goals we do not prioritize the future at the expense of the present. Alison and I have decided we will not spend our lives saying one day we will live our dreams. There are far too many things we want to do. We live in a house that we love today. We go to the places we want to go right now. We live the life we want to live. Money is valuable, but we have found that time is even more valuable. And time together and time with friends and family is priceless.

Over the past 6 years:

• We traveled to incredible places with family and friends
• We learned an unbelievable amount by visiting historical sites
• We returned to the areas I served my mission to visit people who had a profound impact on my life
• We have fallen in love time and time again
• We have built a life we love, in a house that we love, surrounded by people that we love.

This is how I would sum up our long-term goals: Say yes to life by loving everyone, investing in relationships, being positive, and always making time for a good adventure.