When my wife and I were raising our kids, we often gave them wise advice about delayed gratification. You know, the speech about putting off some tempting activity now because it will be so much sweeter once they are grown up. It made perfect sense to me, but the kids saw it as just another attempt by their parents to ruin their lives!
Well, Patty and I are now experiencing some delayed gratification of our own. We've decided that we eventually want to relocate to another city, either closer to our kids (really our grandkids) or in a part of the country we want to live. In order to do so, we had to sell our home. Good luck with that in this economy, right? Well, after a year and a half on the market, the home finally sold- so what do we do now? Family and business concerns don't let us move just yet, so we're renting for the first time in about 35 years. What an experience! Just finding a place was a challenge, but we were blessed to find someone who had a home to sell but wasn't having much success, and when we inquired about renting the home, it seemed to be a nice solution for both of us. We get to rent short term, and they get some help with their mortgage while waiting for the housing market to rebound.
I can't say that we wanted to be renting a house at this stage in life, but in order to get what we really want, we're having to give up our home for just a little while. We have a definite plan of what we want to do with the next phase of our lives, and we're willing to do what we have to do now, to get the big payoff later.
That's the way a lot of our dreams, visions, and goals work out. We have to be willing to do some not so fun things now in order to get what we really want in the future. Unfortunately, too many of us are only focused on the immediate rewards, which are typically very short lived. How about you? What's in you long range plan that you want badly enough that you're willing work and wait for?
I love it, Pat.
Where are you thinking about moving? Charlotte is a beautiful place!
Posted by: Chip Scholz | July 19, 2009 at 08:44 PM