(Re)Building the American Dream

When Missy and I got married in July 2007, we formed very specific goals and milestones for achieving those goals. They are not far-fetched, pie in the sky type daydreaming, just a simple plan for achieving the American Dream.

1) We needed a better family car. When we got married, Missy had 1 daughter and I had 2. She drove a Toyota RAV-4 that we called the "Go Cart" because of its size, and I had a Pontiac Grand Turd, err Am. These cars were fine for us at the time, but our new family of 5 could not go anywhere together. Within 2 weeks of getting married, my Grand Am was gone, replaced with a shiny new Ford Explorer. Problem solved, we no longer needed to borrow my ex-wife's minivan to take the family on trips, we just have to add gas every time the damn thing passes a gas station.

2) We needed a truck. I had a great Dodge Dakota truck that was destroyed in the Stoughton tornado way back in August 2005. I had to buy the Pontiac Grand Turd, err Am quickly because of that, I need a car quickly, and the Pontiac was available for the right price. My needs for a vehicle are not that high, I sort of prefer crappy old trucks, but did not want a POS. We traded the RAV-4 for a 2001 Ford F150 at Suburban Wheels of Madison. Problem solved. Actually 2 problems solved, I will never own a non-American made vehicle, but that is for another post.

3) We have to pay off our credit cards! Ok, they were my credit cards, but still they had to be paid off. The balance was over $11k and they were maxed out following the wedding and honeymoon in Mexico. I set up a plan and we did this in less than 5 months.

4) We pulled our credit reports from the 3 major companies, Experian, TransUnion and EquiFax. There was some old stuff we didn't even know about, things we had to take care of to get our credit scores up. Nothing too major, but combined was several thousand dollars we had to pay. We paid it.

5) We need a house. Before I was married, or even seriously dating Missy, I rented a 2 bedroom duplex. It's a real nice place, for a single guy or small family, but 5 of us is really pushing it. All 3 girls have to share a bedroom which means the kids room has a bunk bed and a regular bed in it, sort of cramped when you add the other stuff in there too. The single car garage is great for Missy, but I have to scrape snow and ice off my truck whenever I want to drive somewhere. The basement is unusable because it is filled with the leftover stuff from merging two households, my kitplane cannot even be reached, so that project sits dormant. The house is cluttered because we have too many people and too much stuff in too small an area. My home office is in our bedroom, and I work about 80 hours a week, about half of that while Missy is trying to sleep. The 1987 IBM M keyboard I refuse to give up does not help any. Like I said, we need a house.