Hey Reader,

I did something that blew my mind last Saturday.

Lately I've been using my Saturdays to think and plan with Claude and my double espresso long black.

Last week I actually mapped out the actual life I want to be living in three to five years. 🤯

I've been reading so much about money goals and being specific -- but I thought, hmmm... what do I really want?

What do I want to have?

What do I want to be doing?

Because in only 4 years, our daughter will be done with high school. What happens then? What will my life be like? SO many unknowns but I wanted to really look at my dreams and make them more tangible.

I got the idea from a Tony Robbins book I read years ago. He talks about how people say they want certain things without really looking at if that's what they want or even need. For example, so many of his clients or students told him they want to own a private jet. But what they actually want is three incredible trips a year and to fly private to do it. He said, when he drilled down on this with them and actually looked at what they wanted, and then did the math on chartering flights for three trips, the number is drastically different from buying and maintaining your own plane. Makes sense! Make specific goals and they become more tangible in the process.

Now, I'm not looking to buy a private jet 😂 But the point that stuck with me is that your dream life probably costs way less than you think — but you'll never know until you get specific.

So I got specific.

My husband and I have always wanted to live part of the year in other places — we've been talking about maybe renting an apartment in Mexico City for a month a year, walking to cafes and cute restaurants and walking the dog in the city dog parks. Would love to go to Europe once a year... what if it was business class, flying in style? Meals out that are an experience, like Michelin star (we just watched the Gordon Ramsay special on Netflix and were like OMG gotta eat at Lucky Cat someday in London!) A life where I actually spend money on the things I say I want instead of perpetually saving up for "someday."

Then I got into the business side, which is where it got really interesting.

What would my actual day look like if the business was running the way I want it to? How many clients would I be working with? What kind of work would I be doing at 9 AM on a Tuesday?

I even went down a rabbit hole thinking about how my daughter could be a involved in my business, too. She's a teenager, and I keep thinking about what the world is going to look like in four years when she'd theoretically be heading off to college. Here's the honest question I keep asking myself: in a world where AI is reshaping entire industries every six months, what exactly are we betting on when we write a six-figure check for a traditional four-year degree? I'm not anti-college-experience — the friendships, the independence, the exposure to new ideas. That stuff is real and it matters. But the ROI on the education itself? At this pace of change, I genuinely don't know if the model holds up.

I don't have answers to all of this yet. I'm thinking out loud. But I will tell you that the exercise itself — sitting down with actual numbers, actual timelines, actual questions about what I'm building and why — really opened my eyes.

Because here's what became clear: it's easy to treat money like this abstract future thing. When I say "I want to make $XX" it doesn't mean anything unless I connect it to what I'm doing? Where am I traveling? How much am I investing? What am I buying? Who am I paying? When I did that, I suddenly felt like my dreams and money goals had something to connect to.

Maybe you feel like that, too. This is the time in life where we get to create with all that knowledge and experience: what we want in our lives, what we don't want. And we know the good things we'd like to have more of in our lives... and we are ready to build for it.

So I'm curious:

If you got brutally specific about the life you want — the actual cost of it, the shape of your days, who's around you, what you're working on — what would that look like?

I'd love to hear what came up for you. Hit reply and tell me — I love to hear your goals. You don't have to share numbers, that can stay private. But what are you building in your Second Act, and for what? What do you want your life to look like? =

Tracy