Britton putting on tar paper at the cabin

Recently a commenter noticed an old post we had written about our goals in moving to Puerto Rico. We had just bought the property in 2011 and were planning the move. I thought I would show how well we have or have not achieved those stated goals which were:

–Pay off our short-term personal loans we used to purchase property
–Fix up the existing studio cabana
–Tear down the wooden house
–Build a couple of small cabanas on the property that we can rent out to people as another form of income.
–Build a larger house for us -we are thinking around 2,000 square feet which is approximately what our house in Greeley is
–Build a pool (optional) not a requirement
–Pay off at least one more rental property
–Save up enough money to buy a car, furniture, and living expenses for at least 1 year

Obviously we moved here far faster than the 5 years* we thought it would take and we updated the timeline to a Two-Year Plan, but it is interesting to see that we are still doing many of the things we listed in these goals of the 5 year plan. We came here undecided about the wood house and ultimately did take it down. The major difference as I see it is that it will be more than five years (from 2011) before we build a new concrete villa, but otherwise check out how closely the goals have come into being.

We have:
-Paid off the loans. Property is free and clear.
–Fixed up the studio cabana and lived in it now for nearly 2 years straight
–Taken down the wooden house
–More than half-way built a new cabin with all the reclaimed wood!
–Begun thinking of plans for a larger concrete house
–Begun planning where and how to build a pool and koi/duck pond
–Paid off another rental property before we came
–Saved up enough to buy a car, furniture, and living expenses for at least 1 year plus enough to build the cabin
–Got chickens and turkeys and built them coops
–Cleaned the property/cleared weedy trees brush
–Planted at least 50 new fruit trees plus ornamental palms, flowers, etc
–Created walking trails
–Begun discussing plans for a bridge

That’s the power of goal-setting. It helps to focus your energy and manifest it into reality! Think about what you want/need to bring into your life. Write it down. Make it S.M.A.R.T. Then take a step every day in that direction.

*I am so glad we moved here when we did. If not we would still have a year on our 5-year sentence -err- plan. We managed to save up enough to be able to do what we want and live “comfortably” knowing we had very little bills to pay and hardly anyone to answer to. It still took some time (since our initial dream before our honeymoon in 2005) and we had to give up some level of comfort (a nice new house), but we did it to a level we were comfortable with which was to be here and then we could make it what we want! But it is different for everyone. For instance, “comfortable” to us is much different than it is to other people (we can live with very little money/stuff).

I KNOW people think we are crazy living in this tiny studio without a stove and just a mini-fridge and I KNOW people think we are crazy bringing things by hand in the woods to our cabin. But it works for us and we were willing to do it because the trade off was so worth it. I am so happy to be living a self-directed, free-range life rather than the opposite. We might have been able to come with a little more money had we stayed working/saving longer but towards the end we were just counting the days  and so excited for this new adventure that even the two years was hard to wait for.

We saw this somewhere and it rang true to us