Birthdays for me are often times of reflection. It is a day to commemorate living one more year. Implicit in this are all the events leading up to this point. After considering how things have been, I can recognize trends that are surfacing, and plot a course for the future, making adjustments where needed.

Ten years ago, I was deep in debt, though modern times would consider having a mortgage just a part of life. For me, I had been chipping away at it, and taking a step back to look at all the chipping away that remained, sometimes it seemed insurmountable. It took me five and a half years to pay off the house, and by the end of 2018, I finally felt the elation of once again being a free man.

For the next three years, I was involved in my first relationship. Months in, I had already recognized that this was not the arrangement I wanted to start a family with, but due to the pandemic, things dragged on until Thanksgiving 2021, when things finally ended.

Then, in 2022, I started a new relationship, and would end up getting married by the end of the year. That was my goal for 2022. 2023 was a year of preparing the stage for the upcoming baby.

And now we're here. Baby Joseph was born and is now one year old. At this point, I look back, and consider where I'm headed. In the past ten years, I have paid off a house. However, for about four years now, I have been treading water, in a world of rising prices. I recognized this alarming trend a year ago and resolved to make the necessary changes.

At the time, I did not have a name for it, nor a time frame for how long the plan would run for. But, recently in a Minority Mindset YouTube video, the presenter coined the term, "a decade of sacrifice", and this describes my intentions perfectly.

I think it is a good time to start aggressively saving and investing. For the sake of my family.

Currently, I have $100k in savings, the result of my life savings and aggressive saving over the past year. In ten years, I expect to have $1 million. In the meantime, I plan to cut discretionary spending to get there. This is the course I'm plotting. After ten years, I'll reevaluate the situation.