Jenni first asked Diane and me to guest post on her blog within the first 24 hours of our arrival in Oregon mid May to celebrate her & Brian‘s vow renewal.
It’s now mid-July, and we’ve been back in Northern Ireland for one week after our two week trip somehow extended to almost nine weeks.
And like much of the year leading up to our US adventure, we’ve been left with brainmush : too much to process, too much to think about, too many memories, too many dreams…
Yet, not enough.
And…still no guest post written. Any time I tried to write, it was even more random than the random list posts I often inflict upon my own readers. So random it didn’t come close to making any sense.
Until today.
Investing a windfall
Every now and then, usually two or three times per month week day hour, I like to think about what I’d do if I had $X. X is usually more than a million, but sometimes it’s smaller, because I think small needs extra creativity to invest wisely (spot the accountant).
When we embarked on our MassLifeChange Plan™ in 2008, just about the only thing we knew for sure was that in the midst of everyone doing the opposite, God was telling us to declutter. We knew it would be painful, as amongst other things it would mean reducing our massive debt burden. In the 20 months since, we’ve reduced our debt by 95%, we’ve doubled the percentage of our income that we give away, and we’ve revamped our retirement savings plan (as I was saying, spot the accountant).
Oh yes…and we’ve also emigrated half way round the world. As you do.
In the midst of all this, we dreamed about being able to visit the new friends in the USA we’d made via blogging and Twitter during the time that the MLC Plan™ was in action, and while I had some ideas how that might happen, they really were just that – ideas to make dreams come true.
But emigrating is expensive; especially emigrating “with cat“ (which is kind of like being “with child”, but…not…), so it was looking like a dream for another time.
Then we were asked if we could make it to Oregon to take part in Brian & Jenni’s vow renewal. Gulp. How could we possibly say no??
So with no real notion how we were going to make it happen because the aforementioned ideas weren’t showing signs of becoming reality, we said yes. Then God proceeded to smirk as He watched me discover how it would happen : through my own lack of attention to detail.
What? Exactly. And if you know me, you’ll know lack of attention to detail is SO not me.
The MLC Plan™ worked so effectively that a debt I’d already finished paying off, kept getting paid off. For an extra year. We effectively found ourselves with a savings account; an unexpected windfall.
Whaaaat?
For a split second, my mind went through all the the things we could do with that money : slash our remaining debt, sponsor some more children, leave it as savings…
But none of those options were right. This money needed to be invested wisely. So we came and spent two weeks months in Oregon, and the return on that investment is incalculable and eternal.
How would you invest a windfall?
