Do You Have A Bucket List?

I really like the idea of a Bucket List — or a list of things, events, activities, experiences, goals, etc. that you would like to accomplish by a certain point in your life. I also loved the movie!

A Bucket List is much different than a to-do list; partially because it’s more long-term, but also because it’s more focused on accomplishing “life goals” and “experiences” versus just miscellaneous chores.

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I’m sure many of you have a bucket list of things you want to accomplish; either before you graduate from college, before you turn XX, before you retire, after you retire, before you buy a house, before you get “too old”, once the kids move out, etc. etc.

Dave and I have a few different Bucket Lists; but even before we got married, we had the “how many kids do you want” conversation as well as the “when do you want kids” conversation — and we made a Before Baby Bucket List.

Some of the items on our Before Baby Bucket List were financial goals, some were personal goals, some were business goals, and others were just totally for fun — but everything on the list was something we wanted to do or accomplish before we had kids.

And it’s interesting that even though we weren’t technically planning to have a baby right now, we’ve almost crossed everything off our Before Baby Bucket List!

Our Before Baby Bucket List:

1. Be married for at least 5 years — DONE {just squeaked this one in over the summer}

 2. NO other debt besides what’s left on our mortgage — DONE

3. Go on a nice vacation together {a.k.a not camping or visiting family members} — DONE

4. Finish renovating and sell our first house — DONE

5. Buy an old farmhouse — DONE

6. Finish the first round of renovations on our farmhouse — DONE

7. Grow my business to the point where I can make an income working from home — DONE

8. Dave finish his master’s degree — DONE {just finished this summer!}

9. Certain amount of money in savings, in retirement accounts, and in different investments — DONE

10. Host International students — DONE {although we weren’t necessarily planning to do this at the same time as having a baby!}

11. Organize and digitize all our photos from birth until now — DONE {I just finished and ordered the last book so, now we’re all ready to take lots of new baby pictures!}

12. Go on a cruise — we haven’t done this yet, but we’ll definitely keep it on our list!

13. Pay off our mortgage — OK so this was a lofty goal, especially since we recently bought a bigger house, but I dream big! Unfortunately, we haven’t crossed this one off… yet 🙂

Since our baby girl is expected to arrive any time, I’m simply thrilled to be able to look back on our Before Baby Bucket List and see that nearly everything is crossed off!

And before you go chalking this off to “good luck” or a “nice break”, I just want to reiterate how important I think WRITTEN lists are. The fact that we’ve had our Before Baby Bucket List written down for the past several years {and have looked at it often} is probably one of the reasons we were able to accomplish everything.

Even if it wasn’t totally conscious, I’m sure we’ve always had those goals in the back of our minds and sub- consciously made decisions each day, each week, each month, and each year, that helped us move just a little closer to those goals.

Now that we’re nearing the end of our “before baby” period in our lives, we’re finally taking some time to relax and live in the moment… it feels great!

Do you have a Bucket List? What’s on it?