The 10 year plan (Part 2: The Future)
I took a week off in Cyprus last week and that gave me time to think about future plans.
The whole point of a 10 year plan is to be able to define an end goal and to be able to break it down into chunks – where do I want to be in 5 years to hit that 10 year goal? Where do I need to be in 1 year? what decisions do I need to make today to be on track?
So I looked around and found that important parts tend to fall under a few different headings, which I will be stealing wholesale:
- Health
- Relationships
- Growing
- Giving
- Investment
- Business
(I also have a secret seventh point if you keep reading)
Health
So I have always been plus sized, ever since my teens, but as over the next decade I am going to be continuing to transition, I need to drop to an ‘ideal’ BMI of roughly 75Kg, and I need to quit smoking.
I could probably stand to get more time in on the treadmill and weights machines, as they will both help me towards those goals, so for my health, I need to develop more discipline and maybe re-read atomic habits.
The thing is that I don’t need to do these things slowly over 10 years, I need to do them this year and maintain for a decade.
Relationships
This year I celebrate 7 years with two of my partners. The first was in Feb, the second will be July. My goal is to still be in love in a decade, nice and simple.
But what about other relationships? Familial, friendly, etc are all just as important and these are the ones that I tend to let slide a lot more. I would very much like to be closer to my brothers in light of last year and my extended family too. The autism kind of gets in the way of me connecting with them, but I would like to be closer, so that’s my 10 year goal: connect to my family more.
Growing
For years, I have focused on absorbing new skills – Business Analysis, DevOps & Project Management being the obvious ones as of late – but I have some skills that I want to pick up over the next decade. 3D modelling in Blender (I have a new 3d printer and want the skills to be able to make stuff on it), Chocolate tempering (I have some ideas for some chocolates I want to make for my friends), Household skills like skimming walls, woodwork and so on for when I have my own flat, etc etc etc.
So this one is easy: I pledge to continue to grow and learn new things.
Giving
One of the things I regret about my lifestyle is that I don’t leave much time or energy for giving – I am *constantly* working, or running games, or running discord groups. I do donate money to a few good causes, such as Stonewall and the Good Law Project, but I don’t get involved myself as much as I could.
This was an area where my mother excelled – she was on the board of several charities including the YMCA, RUFC and a few others, and my plan here is to join a charity once I have my own home, and volunteer my time a bit.
Investment
Here’s the big one, right? Money.
So I have been looking at the figures and trying to decide whether renting and investing or buying is going to be more money efficient for me and thanks to a calculator I found online, I finally have an answer – If my current rent were to stay flat for the next 30 years, then buying a flat would leave me 600K better off.
This is of course a very basic calculator, doesn’t factor in things like replacing boilers, renovating, insurance, etc etc etc, but as rents seem to always rise while mortgage repayments fall in terms of real money, it may even be on the low side.
Given that my goal is to save £300K in investments as quickly as possible, by the 10 year mark, I want to have hit 100K. This is easily doable if I manage to squirrel away £100 a week (and increase as interest rates rise). Interestingly, if I continue that trend I would hit the 300k mark in 19 years, and if I continued for 35 years (Bringing me to 70), I would have £1.5 million to retire on (Assuming an average of 8% returns in the stock market, etc etc etc).
So with that being the goal, what do I need to do *this year*? My first goal is to find new work – more money means more savings. If I get a role where I can save £1000 a month, that shortens timelines significantly, which leads to…
Business
I have been looking for more contractor roles as of late. Inside and Outside IR35 Project manager roles primarily, but I have also been keeping an eye open for higher paying salaried roles, the kind of things that would appease the banks when it comes time to get a mortgage.
I know that at some point I want to start my own business, even if just a small coffee shop that opens at night, catering to people who have insomnia, students who are up late studying or are travelling through the city.
such a cliché millennial fantasy, right? But here’s the thing: I just described more work, and last week showed me that there is something that is missed off of every 10 year plan list…
Relaxation
One of my biggest failings is that I don’t give myself enough downtime – in the past 10 years, I have only taken 4 holidays, total. One with a partner to Spain, One with a partner to Venice, one with my extended polycule to Yorkshire, and the one last week to see the flat in Cyprus and my auntie Ann. Three partner holidays and one that was emotional work.
So one of the vows to myself is to take a holiday every year and actually go away somewhere. Either to Cyprus (because no need to pay for a hotel), or just somewhere new, on my own, either for a long weekend or for a week, with no plans.
And that’s it. Those are my goals for the next 10 years. Time to get working towards them.