How to Design and Afford Your Dream Life – EP 223

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If being a millionaire is not your goal, it’s okay! Designing your dream life is what you want and not what you’re being told to achieve. Let’s design our dream life from our own hopes and desires while not running ourselves thin. In this first part of our ‘Radical Middle Series’, we also ran through some questions to ask ourselves in figuring out the life we have always dreamed of. 

Sometimes, we have to fail at things we do as failure isn't the end of it all. It just means “maybe I didn’t like this, maybe I’ll try harder.”

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  • Vacation! By the time you hear this, I will have just gotten back from vacation, I will be rested and rejuvenated and recovered from our virtual event and I will be ready to podcast again. Today, while we’re recording, I’m hanging on by a thread. A very thick thread, but a thread nonetheless. Vacations, save for them, take them, enjoy them.

What Is Lifestyle Design and 5 Steps to Living the Life of Your Dreams

Lifestyle design is a choice curated by you and for you. In this article, Jo Barnes shares her happy and fulfilling self-designed life with her family.

What Jen + Jill have to say:

The article emphasizes that lifestyle is a choice made by oneself. Jill quotes that it’s about choice, knowing “what you do, where you do it, who you do it with”. It is the opposite of being a victim of our own circumstances. Jill agrees one has to acknowledge their wants, create a plan and make it happen. Jen reminds us again of the importance of creating a budget and having difficult conversations to overcome.

There are tons of myths surrounding lifestyle design but Jill emphasizes that having a grandeur lifestyle (traveling the world, becoming a millionaire) does not necessarily mean it should be the dream life everyone should follow. Having a lifestyle design doesn’t mean you’re free from a life with difficulties.  Jen adds that being an employee is great and that you don’t need to build your own business and buck the system. 

7 Questions To Ask Yourself To Figure Out Your Dream Life

Finding your potential is a long battle yet it pushes us one step closer to living our dream life. This article from Life Goals Mag presents 7 questions to ask ourselves to define and explore what we want in life. 

What Jen + Jill have to say:

Jill reminds everyone that they’re not alone and are still uncertain in their life pathway. The questions on wanting to learn with no intention of having it as a business, people you admire, visualizing the life you want and your future, Jill appreciates these as a way to learn more about ourselves. 

Jen willingly shares her answer on what she enjoyed doing as a child and highlights the significance of saying yes and no as well as determining what you want and don’t want. 

What we enjoy doing as a child that we have or want to incorporate into our dream life

Jill enjoys bossing people around while Jen loves writing and learning.

Bill of The Week

Thank you for sharing your bill about paying off your car loan and allocating that money to pay down student loan debts. Also canceling subscriptions to save $200 total!! AND using your flexible spending account to pay for son’s preschool. 

Thanks so Much for Listening!

Thanks so much for listening! Many of you know we have a private community where we do monthly money challenges and offer accountability groups. We want to congratulate one of our members for a big win:

I’ve been MIA for a bit, but so much going on that I’ve only been checking posts periodically...

So, after 3-4 canceled or postponed meetings I finally had a chance to ask for a raise. I did get a raise, not as large as I wanted but they added 6 more hours to my schedule, so it’s worked out to about $500 a month.

Then several weeks later they asked if I’d be interested if they started a 401k. Not sure when that will happen, but up until now they haven’t offered anything.

My daughter graduated with her Master’s Degree and I helped her move into her first full size apartment that she doesn’t have to share with anyone.

And at my apartment, where it’s been very hard to get any repairs taken care of, they’ve decided to upgrade the entire complex, so new roofs, new paint, new mailboxes, plus the finally came in and replaced my bathroom sink and replaced a cabinet door in the kitchen. I’ve never been so happy over a cabinet door before! (It took 18 months to get the repairs!)

Here’s to continuing the trend towards getting the things I want and need!

Congrats Brenda! Thanks for listening and if you want to check out our monthly challenge community head to frugalfriendspodcast.com/club to see what challenge we have coming up next.

Keep leaving us reviews on iTunes or Stitcher, and sending the screenshot to reviews@frugalfriendspodcast.com. And don’t forget to share your favorite quote from the episode by using the hashtag #FrugalFriendsNote. 😉

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