A good friend told me not long ago that what I needed was a plan, that a dream wasn't good enough. But it all starts with a dream, that imaginary thing you want badly and are willing to invest in. My friend's suggestion is well taken because the dream needs to have some framework, what he called "a plan." I laughed when he said that, told him that at 75 years of age there was little use in making plans. He said do it anyway, and with the expectation I'll live long enough to see it through. Get a five year plan and work on that, and if you're still alive at eighty, get another one. I could be 35 years of age and still be facing the same thing. Time is guaranteed to no one because chance and fate take care of that. My odds are better as a young man, but none of us should be caught counting down days.
My batting average with dreams is not good. I'd be lucky to have a .200 average, but I'm a good fielder and I run the bases well. I might not get the whole dream, but I sometimes get part of it. I once dreamed of living out west, somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. I didn't get that, but I got close enough to enjoy them for a long time. I dreamed of living in central Texas' hill country, and I got that . . . and it was a dumb dream that didn't pan out. Sometimes it's better to be denied the dream. But once here, I played the field pretty well and stole a few bases. I got a nice home, made some fine friends, and enjoyed the area where I lived. High costs of living dulled the dream, turned it into a start reality of always living on the edge.
But like MLK said, "I have a dream." Still, another dream, and even at this late stage of life. I've dreamed of no longer being a slave to high costs of living, of seeing most of my retirement money dumped into a well of corporate greed and government mismanagement. Imagine, if you will, giving up close to $25,000 a year just on utilities, insurance, and property taxes. Think about how far an income of sixty grand a year goes under that sort of pressure . . . when you're trying to pay for and maintain a home, drive decent vehicles, and keep the wolves away from the door. In January, annual property taxes will be due for another year, so you can kiss well over five thousand bucks goodbye. We'll end up owing federal income tax, and the state will take nearly 9 cents on the dollar for sales tax. It goes on and on.
And so, I dream of a place where most of that goes away, where I'd own a home outright where taxes are tiny compared to here, where we could live on far less than half the cost here. And, I have a plan of getting there, one that protects my wife in case I take the big dirt nap. I work on the plan almost daily, refining it, looking at various scenarios, and thereby building the dream as the plan takes shape. My friend was right. Get a plan and keep the dream alive. If my five year plan works, I'll be living deep in Mexico this time next year. And if I'm not there by then, the dream won't be dead . . . and neither will the plan. It will take death to kill them.
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