a dream without a plan is just a wish
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Empire Bluff Trail, Michigan
How many times in your life have you watched a movie that was filmed in an amazing location, and sighed, "Wow, I'd love to go there someday!"? But then life gets in the way, and you don't actually get to realize your dream. Now here you are, years later, and you're no closer to getting that thing you wanted.
How do you feel when your child expresses a big dream? Do you want to help make their dreams come true, but maybe you're not sure where to start?
Dreams come in many shapes and sizes, but the psychology of why you are or aren't achieving these dreams is the same whether you want to vacation in Tahiti or score the new Tesla.
We are all guilty of dreaming about places we want to go, adventures we want to experience, special things we want to buy, and then never acting on them. But what keeps us from actually realizing these dreams?
Are some people just luckier than you are? Could be.
Are some people just richer? Maybe.
Do they get more time off? Possibly.
But what sets the doers apart from the non-doers isn't any of these things. It's actually something much simpler. And no matter how little money or time you have, you can do the things you want in life.
My Mom had a teacher friend that she worked with named Betsy. Betsy and her husband loved to travel. They loved it so much, they could never decide which destination to visit next. They traveled all over the world and saw some of the most amazing things.
She told me that they had a trip jar. Anytime they thought of a place they wanted to go, they would write it on a slip of paper and drop it into the jar. When it was time to begin planning a trip, they would shake up the jar and pull out a slip of paper. "Paris! How exciting!" Then they would research their destination, decide what they wanted to do, how long they wanted to stay, and establish how much they thought it would cost.
They would always budget a buffer. So if they thought a trip to Paris would cost $6,000 to include everything they wanted to do, they would budget $8,000, just in case. They would then look at their disposable income and figure out how many months it would take to save the money they needed for that trip.
No dream is too big, and no dreamer too small.
They would put the slip of paper on the fridge with the date and the amount they had to save each month. Sometimes they wouldn't take a trip for 2 or 3 years while they were saving for the next adventure. Every time they opened the fridge, they would see their goal right there, reminding them of the dream they were working towards.
Every month they would transfer the money into a separate account specifically for that trip. When the date would arrive and they had their money saved and their flight and hotel booked, they would take their grand adventure! If something went wrong while they were traveling, or they found something fun they wanted to do that they hadn't thought of before, they had that buffer money so they didn't have to deny themselves that extra amazing experience or worry about how they would manage to pay for something when it didn't go right.
When they would return from their trip, they would pull the next slip and begin the process all over again. Any unused funds from the previous trip would go towards the next trip, and so it went. This was how they were able to take incredible vacations on small teacher salaries.
I was absolutely enthralled by this concept and wished that would happen to me someday. But I never took the steps to actually achieve that dream.
Notice that I said, "I wished that would happen to me someday." Our dreams are just that; ours. My dreams belong to me and they are my responsibility. Your dreams belong to you, and they are your responsibility and no one else's. And that was the fundamental mistake that I made in my early adult years. I kept waiting for someone to make my dream come true, instead of doing the work to make them come true for myself.
In late 2019, I decided to create my own version of the trip jar for me and my kids. In my version of the trip jar, we actually have two jars. One is called the Small Dreams jar, and the other is the Big Dreams jar. My kids love that I used clear Mason jars so they can see the papers inside.
Our Dream Jars
Small Dreams are any trip, activity or experience under $200. This includes things like camping, Putt-Putt, Tie-dye T-shirts, rock climbing, museums, or a weekend or day-trip to a not-so-distant destination.
The Big Dreams jar has everything else. Week-long vacations, expensive excursions, and seemingly unattainable experiences. I told them to Dream Big! We put destinations in the jar like the Caribbean, North/South Dakota, Arches National Park, the Redwood forests in Northern California, Disney World! They dreamed of going to Europe, Africa and Australia too, but thanks to a certain pandemic, we decided to take those out of the jar for now and focus on safe, mostly outdoor, domestic travel.
The first slip they pulled in the fall of 2019 was a trip to Lake Michigan. We'd never been there before! We researched Airbnb houses, activities including kayaking and charter fishing, we budgeted a trip to get ice cream every single day, and plenty of money for tasty food too. I showed them the spreadsheet as we put it together; they were intimately involved in every step. We included the boring stuff like gas, groceries, and sunscreen as well, so that the trip budget was all-inclusive. We decided it would cost $2,500 for the week.
How we budgeted things
We agreed to save $3,500 to include our back-up buffer. With 8 months to save before our vacation time the next June, we calculated that we would need to put away $440 each month into a separate bank account. Once a month, over dinner, they would watch as I made the digital transfer into that account and marked it on my spreadsheet that we were one month closer to realizing this Big Dream.
In January, they watched me book the AirBnb. When COVID hit, we thanked our lucky stars that we had chosen a vacation that was largely away from people, and someplace we didn't have to fly to. In April, the owner of the AirBnb contacted me to ask if I still wanted the booking, and I said, "Yes!" In June, with $3,500 in the bank account, we set off on our adventure.
Empire Bluff Trail, Michigan
Every time something had to be paid, I discussed it with my kids. They watched me book the charter fishing boat, and the kayaking reservations. I kept all our receipts, including gas and groceries, and put them in the spreadsheet every couple of days to show them how we were doing in comparison to our budget. They loved being part of this mysterious world of knowing how much things cost, actively helping me manage the adventure, and knowing how we were doing against the goal we had set all those months ago.
The smallest child caught the largest fish! It was so big, she couldn’t even hold it up by herself!
Learning to embrace and enjoy delayed gratification can lead to more successes in life than almost any other skill.
Having my kids wait so many months to take their adventure taught them this lesson better than any “Mom” lecture. This is something that financial experts talk about all the time. Give a child a marshmallow and tell them if they can wait 10 minutes and not eat it, they'll get a second marshmallow as a prize for waiting. Some kids will eat the marshmallow right away. Some enjoy the idea of having two, so they'll wait the 10 minutes to earn their prize.
We want to teach our children to wait for the extra prize, and help them learn that it's absolutely worth it. The idea that a child can choose a reward later over a reward now is the first step in demonstrating that saving for retirement is worth giving up a toy now, or an impulsive treat at the check-out lane, or that new video game they're dying to get.
We just published a piece on saving early and often and how powerful it is to let time do the work to build your wealth. (You can read it here) The younger we start teaching our children and grandchildren, the better they'll fare in the long term with their savings and their ability to plan adventures, dreams, wants and wishes.
In this week's blog, we're also including a free printable Dreams Jar Tracker you can use with your family. Let your kids help you fill a jar with fun destinations and then pick one to start with. Let them fill in the "Jar Thermometer" as your vacation bucket in your bank account grows.
It doesn't have to be a separate bank account specifically, although it helps to have that separation so they can see the balance grow and grow. You can use Monopoly money in a jar to demonstrate these savings as well - or print play money from Google Images and use that instead. But whatever you do, make it tangible for them. Having something they can see, or physically count whenever they want to, will help them conceptualize what the money in the bank represents.
Make a child friendly vision board. Another idea I came up with is to print photos of the place you're going and the things you're going to see and post them all over the house in random places on the walls (Painter's tape is a safe way to do this without damaging the walls), so that the kids notice the photos when they walk around the house, and they have something visual to remind them that the small sacrifices they're making now are worth the prize at the end. This is a child-friendly version of a Vision Board that so many successful individuals create for themselves when they're working towards big goals. Those visual reminders are so powerful to help you stay on track.
Our Next Big Dream!
I'll leave you with two quotes, which I actually put on our Dreams jars and we read them together every time we add dreams or pick trips.
On the Big Dreams Jar, it says, "A dream without a plan is just a wish." Talk to your kids about the idea that, without planning, dreams will be just that, dreams. They will never become reality unless we break them down into tiny chunks that we can work on today.
On the Small Dreams Jar, it says. "Enjoy the small things in life, because one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things." These small, seemingly insignificant adventures, the things you do with consistency, are the ones your kids will remember more than any gift or toy you buy them. The time you dedicated to them on frequent occasions will stay with them and shape the way they spend time with their children when they become parents. The concept of Small Dreams also teaches our kids that things don’t have to be expensive to be epic.
Now it's time to put your dreams into action. Get yourself a Mason jar and start planning your dreams today!
Adventure awaits! Go out and find it!