The comforter is warm and cozy and as I wake up to the sweet sounds of the Cowboy Junkies I look over to see the angel faces of both my children snuggled up beside me.
My children.
There is so much love and so much responsibility that go with those words. I often wonder how I possibly have kids when at times I still feel like a kid myself. I remember growing up thinking how very much my parents had it together in how they planned for everything. Planning for a trip, planning house moves, planning for their retirement and for our future. My dad especially focused diligently on maxing out his investment opportunities every year to see it through that they were covered as they got older. As they are finally in that stage of life, it’s paying off. Large. They don’t have to sacrifice the world to sustain their living. He had set it up beautifully so that they had a quality life full of travel and opportunity when they got to this life stage.
It makes me nervous. Coming from a different generation and philosophy, we don’t concentrate nearly as much as they do on financial matters. We are in far more debt. Our house is more expensive. The impact of interest rates from credit cards don’t seem to create the same concern that I saw with my folks. We are doing ok for saving for retirement but by no means are we maxing out each year. (And we have NO end goal as to when that is).
We are doing well on RESP contributions and because of Autism in our world, we are also adding contributions to RDSP’s to ensure the care of our child when he’s older. But we also hold the philosophies of “Come Before Winter” and “Tomorrow can easily become never”, which continually drives us to travel, seek experiences and have adventures that will create amazing memories for us and the kids more so than feeling financially safe as we get older.
We have a major #LifeReady moment we are starting to prepare for. It’s an idea of taking our kids on a world-wide trip. We want to teach them to be global citizens, help them understand and embrace all cultures and learn on the road. I am a dreamer, a live life to the fullest kind of gal whereas my husband is the responsible, collected one of the two of us. The only way we can get to this moment is to bring down our debt and meet at an agreed upon a level of financial preparedness and risk for both of us to be comfortable to go.
This program couldn’t have come at a better time in taking stock of where we are.
I took the Manulife Readiness Quiz and discovered I am in the 45% of Canadians that feel we are on our way to being financially ready but we still have a ways to go.
Think about taking the Manulife Readiness Quiz to see how financially #LifeReady you are.
AND…Be sure to join us October 28 at 9pm EST for our @Manulife #LifeReady Twitter Party to talk financial preparedness and see what you dream of being #LifeReady for. Must RSVP to win over $2500 in Cash prizes!
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