Having a plan

Firstly, thank you for all the kind comments on yesterday's birthday post. It's been great to become part of a gang!
As this is the first post of a new year, it seems only appropriate that this (and tomorrow's) look at my plan for the years ahead. They're a bit wordy I'm afraid, but there was no other way!

As you know, I have a clear idea of where I want to be headed and when I want to get there. Recently however, I have had my doubts as to whether Mr D was quite in tune with my plan, so I decided we needed to convene a summit meeting to thrash out what we thought would work. I drew up a list of questions and whilst we were in Devon with fewer distractions, we sat in the sunporch with a cuppa and went through the topics. Initially Mr D was rather bemused as it seemed far too much like an appraisal meeting, but he went along with it. Overall, I think it has helped to raise a few issues that we perhaps hadn't realised needed raising and to iron out some of the sticking points.
This was the set of questions I used (after trawling through the Internet). The plan is subdivided into 8 sub headings, but they do overlap a lot  :-

1) Home -
Where, geographically, do you envisage this home being?
In what sort of area do you see your home? Eg. near a village, out in the sticks etc?
What do you think the house will look like on the inside and outside?
What is important for you to have in the home?
What do you think we should spend to achieve this home?
How we will we achieve this budget?

2) Career and work -
What do you want to do in terms of work?
How many hours do you want to work?
How much miminum income do we need?

3) Relationships and family -
How do we view our future together?
What to do we both want?
What will we do as individuals?
What will we do as a family?

4) Friends -
How will we maintain our present friendships?
How will we make new friends?
How important is this to you?

5) Health -
What will we do to improve/maintain our mental, physical and emotional wellbeing?

6) Character -
What strengths do we have as individuals and as a couple?
Where might our weaknesses lie?
What skills do we need to develop?

7) Hobbies and Activities -
What hobbies do we want to have both individually and as a couple?
How will we fit these into our lives?
What special event (s) would we want to put money aside for?

8) Finances -
How will we earn our money?
How will we save?
How should we invest any spare money?

Now you can see why he thought he was in an appraisal meeting! At least I didn't 'traffic light' last year's performance and set him targets for next year's :)

I have yet to type up the plan but two very interesting moments were when we were talking about how it would be when the children had all left home and also when we talked about our strengths and weaknesses. I'll write about those in the next post when I  type up our potential life plan to share with you. It was an interesting exercise actually and certainly showed up where we were very much together but also where the potential crisis points might lie - none insurmountable but good to know in advance nevertheless. I know it might seem excessively formal and probably too 'management' for some, but it gave us a framework for our discussions. Perhaps all couples should do one of these before setting up home together?
I bet you're intrigued as to what the plan is now! .....