Preparing For My Future

 How do you prepare for the future? That is a question that I am sure a lot of people wonder but the life gets in the way and time is spent working, having a spouse and kids. Before you know it, many years have gone by and you have not prepared for the future you are now living. 

I got married at 19 years old. I got divorced at 40 years old. When I got married I have dreams of having a marriage that was "perfect", my own business, raising kids, living in the country, growing food in a huge garden and living a nice life. I dreamed of having money in the bank, taking nice vacations, going on date nights, spending weekends doing family things. 

Throughout my marriage I worked outside the house and I was also a stay at home mom. I did not mind either. While I still wanted all those things, they did not all turn out like I dreamt they would. Eventually a house was purchased but by the time that happened the marriage was not good and there was a lot of "going through the motions". I did what I could to make things better, I made changes within myself to be a better person, a better wife, a better mother. There were a lot of things working against me but at the times I did not realize that. 

I still have those dreams, they've changed slightly but I still have them. I am not sure that I will get married again but I will not say it will never happen. I still want to have my own business, I still want to have a house in the country and a garden, maybe not as big as when I was younger, but I still want that. 

So, how am I preparing for my future now? Short term future, financially I am working on getting ahead on my current bills so that each month is a little easier. I am preparing food for the freezer and stocking up on non-food things so I do not have to shop on a weekly basis. I shop sales when I can to keep costs down as much as possible. 

I am an organ donor. Another way I will be preparing for my future is to plan for the end of my life. I do not want to go any time soon but I also want to be prepared, for my children and grandchildren, when it happens. I will soon be working on setting up my cremation and purchasing urns for my ashes. What ever organs can be used I want them to go to someone else. 

Financially I am no where near where I would like to be with savings and retirement. I think my oldest daughter has made comments about putting me in a "mother-in-law" house in her yard...or a shed lol. She would be much nicer though because she knows I will help with her kids and spend time with them so she can do other things. I think I will be working on financial stability for awhile longer but hope that soon it starts to balance out. 

I would like to think that we have complete control over our future but being realistic, there are a lot factors that contribute to our future that is out of our control and we may have make changes to our plans. The way the world is being run affects us and can change our plans. The people we meet and interact with can change our plans. Our dreams may change, which can change our plans.  A key to getting through it is to work through the changes as best as we can and make adjustments to continue on the path we want to be on.