Our Goals and Aspirations

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Hello! Welcome to our humble blog. I’m your host, Joey, and I’ll be writing here from time to time with updates on our progress towards our ultimate goal of living a simple but satisfying life in the great state of Utah. Alex may also be around to share her insights into this new and exciting time in our lives.

I’d like to being with a brief outline of what we want to achieve, and when we want to achieve it. It’s a rather simple goal, but there are a lot of complexities necessary to achieve it fully. The goal is to be living in or around the Kanab area of Southern Utah by March of 2020. While the overall goal is easy to define, the little things are what is going to take the most effort. Anyone can just pack up and move somewhere else, but we’re planners, and we want to do this right. The biggest secondary goal is to be debt free.

I’ve been reading a lot on the Mr. Money Mustache website lately, and the suggestions and ideas he is sharing with the world just click with me. While we are currently living a very anti-Mustachian life, which I hope to change as much as possible in the coming months and years. I’ve immediately started riding my bike much more. We both drive to work still, as it’s about 8-12 miles away from home for me (depending on route), and twice that for Alex. That means we’re both acting like clowns and driving way too much. I also drive a stupidly large vehicle, a Chevrolet Silverado 1500. I thought it was the optimal choice to tow our two PWCs to the lake in addition to being able to move any lumber or other materials without having to resort to borrowing from someone else. It works for what we do, but it’s a stupid vehicle for daily commuting. I’d like to get to the point that I can ride my bike to work on most days, but so far my stamina disagrees with that. I’m up to riding at least 7 miles per day, but I get home sweaty and exhausted. That’s no condition to be at work, which is 95% uphill on the way to work. That will make the ride home easy, but that’s not really as important.

Combined, Alex and I have about $30,000 in debt. That includes my truck, her car, her student loans, and our Home Depot credit card where I’m still paying off our new energy efficient windows. That does not include our house, as it’s a necessity more than a luxury, and I’m less concerned, as we bought it at an optimal time in the housing market and there is plenty of equity if we decide to sell.

We’re working at putting the fire out so our scalps stop burning. The first step is to pay down some of our higher interest loans. That means the first to be paid off is the Scion xD. After that, the student loans, and finally my truck with its measly 1.75% interest rate. Once this is all paid off, we can start putting money away for savings. I’ve been managing a fairly large spreadsheet of all my debts and savings, and as long as we stay on track, we should be able to safely get ourselves to Utah with plenty of money in the bank.

And so the Journey begins.

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