2021 Goals Episode

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and seventy seven, which is airing Christmas week of twenty twenty And obviously holidays are looking a bit different this year, but New Year's rolls around as it always does, and so Sarah and I have been setting our goals. In this episode, we'll talk all about our goals for twenty twenty one and the whole goal setting process and how we feel about that as well. But first, Sarah, I mean, I know you guys are not, you know, celebrating Christmas religiously, but how is your Christmas break looking this year? Yeah, so we have two full weeks off as I'm sure most people do. And thankfully, unlike our spring break, they are the same two weeks for both sets of kids, for both kids, all three kids. So I'm working the first couple of days, so on the day this airs, it'll be my last day of work on the Tuesday that I'm off for the rest, and my husband is working the whole second week, so that means we have about like five days of family time together. I hope. I'm kind of like, let's see what happens, because I feel like my husband is going to have stuff, and well, we'll see what happens. But then the second week is definitely going to be what I'm calling camp Mommy, because my husband's going to be working, kids are going to be home. I remember last year, I was kind of in a terrible mood, and this was pre COVID, so didn't know what was coming. But for all sorts of reasons, yeah, end of twenty nineteen felt oddly disaster to me. And I was going to be home with the kids the whole time, and my husband was going to be working, and I was really dreading it. So I'm actually happy to say that this year, despite more constraints on what we can do, like not as easy to do, like play dates, for example. I'm feeling more optimistic, and I think part of that is just I'm in a better mood in general, and part of that is Genevieve is a little bit older. So my plan is to kind of like I might make like almost like an advent type calendar for that week for the kids to like uncover some activity at home. Oh, that sounds fun. I definitely want to plan like multiple outdoor outings, Like we just got a Zoom membership, so at least one trip to the zoo, maybe we'll go back to the Butterfly place, like there's a lot of good outdoor attractions. And remember, this is our good weather season that I've been looking forward to for months of sticky, rainy, nastiness. So I recognize that's different from part of the country, but for us, this is like, Yay, we can finally get outside and be comfortable. So we're going to try to make the most of that. I do plan on sticking to my normal kind of schedule and trying to do my workouts in the morning before the kids wake up. And I'm also going to be working on instituting a better quiet time situation, which will involve screens, especially for the older kids. But since Genevieve has dropped her nap, I feel like I need to sort of figure that timeframe out a little. Can she watch screens? Like is she able to focus on a movie or is she not very yet? She used to be kind of into that, but now it varies, like some days she'll be like, ooh, yes, I know, she won't watch like what the big kids are watching for the most part, but she might watch her own thing, but that's a little unreliable. And then sometimes she'll just abandon it and start wandering around and color color things her is her thing, Like I thought you were watching Milana and now you're drawing on my wall exactly exactly. So still working on that, but we'll get there. Yeah. I am not anti some screens, especially on vacation. I mean, get some fun holiday content, upload it on Netflix and let's relax. Yes, yeah, no, that sounds like a good plan. Maybe the morning you go to the zoo or the beach or the butterfly place, come home, have lunch, have the quiet time, then have a short you know, post quiet time outing or walk around somewhere you can make Yeah, but you got to make the driveway or something like that. Yeah, but it's gonna make it work. You're gonna make it work, camp Mommy, I love it. Well. We were going to go skiing with my husband's brother's family. All of us were renting a place in Colorado together and doing skiing, and that has now been moved to Christmas break for twenty twenty one. The place we rented from was willing to move us to the next year. I think it probably would have been okay. I mean, skiing is almost all outdoors anyway, and like you wouldn't have been on the lift with only your family. But you know, it's it's fine, It's not a I wouldn't have been skiing anyways. I'm not exactly heartbroken about this trip, not how because I would have just been in the house with Henry the whole time. But you know, other people are more disappointed about it. So we'll probably you know, we we do up Christmas a lot here. We will make cookies, We have a bunch of stuff on our holiday fun list, and we'll probably do more of those things as we get into the Christmas time, and we'll wrap unwrap lots of presents, play with the toys. We may do our COVID tests and then go visit the family we would have gone skiing with, and you know, so we'll see how that plays out. That's that's currently our backup option. Awesome. Yeah, I think we also may are hoping for hoping loosely for skiing in winter of twenty twenty one as well. So yeah, you'll have to let me know where you go, although I guess it'll be too late for you to tell me how it was good with family because you'll be going at the same time anyway. Yeah, so Alex will be over older, it'll be it'll be easier, and Henry'll be older too. Henry, but well, yeah, I don't think he'll ski still next Christmas, but maybe he gets I don't know, or you know, covid'll be over. Maybe I can put him in like the ski daycare. That'll be fun. And then I'll just exactly which would have been able to do this year, although I have all right, I have my thoughts on ski daycares, and we've we've had a few rather nasty viral germ related events coming out of those. Because you're you know, the parents are like putting their kids in, like they don't want to miss their ski vacation. So the kid has like an illness, they're not going to not put them in, Whereas your normal daycare you go to all the time, like you feel an obligation to the other families. Maybe that's over reading this situation well. And I also wonder if there's some component of like bringing in bugs from all different places means like like I could see that being. Yeah, I've actually you're not the first person I've heard that from, So yeah, I can see that our list of illnesses is long coming out of those places. All right, let's with that mind that in mind, let's go to our goals for twenty one. You have more than I do. All right, let's let's first talk. Were you inspired to set goals for twenty okay, and why why not? Yeah? It's very unlike me, right, I don't. I mean, I think it's just like there's too much uncertainty. I think I feel, you know, everyone feels sort of let down about how some of our twenty twenty goals became impossible. So I think there's sort of a little bit of like, you know, it didn't work out last year, So why would I, you know, want to put my hopes up for things this year? Because who knows what's going to happen. Although you know you've put it out before, there's never any certainty. You can't really count on anything. We don't know you know, what's up ahead, So that shouldn't necessarily be a reason. I don't know. I really drag my feet on this, and I gave myself a lot of time, Like I was like, you know, this day, I don't have anything scheduled, and it's been two hours just like thinking about what I'd like to do. And even though I gave myself that time I would find something else. I find nothing else to do, just dive right back into my novel. I got a lot of reading done. But yeah, and not my novel that I'm writing, my novel that I'm just reading from the library. So I don't know, Yeah, it was. I think this has been common because I've had a lot of requests for best laid plans. They're like, can you please talk about goal setting? I'm really struggling, and I'm like, well, once I figured out for myself, I will share everything with you all. But it has been a little bit more challenging this season, and it does not seem like it's just been us. Yeah. I think there's different ways you can look at goal setting too. I mean some I think some of the best goals are process goals, So there are things that are more within your control. Then it's the difference between saying I want to lose ten pounds and saying I want to eat five servings of vegetables a day and exercise for thirty minutes a day. Right, the latter one is far more in your control than whether the scale says a certain thing, And by following the process, you know the odds are decent you will eventually get to what you're going but even if you don't, you will have made sort of progress on improving your health, which is usually part of the underlying bit of the outcome goal. So I am a fan of putting things in terms of process whenever possible. So maybe people might find that more appealing as they think about twenty twenty one goal setting that don't look at outcomes so much as smaller things that are more daily, weekly habits that you are ultimately in charge of. Yeah, I really like that. I think that I personally struggle with the process goals for yearly because I already have so many ongoing process goals that I feel trepidation about late more process goals on top of my like fairly ambitious process goals that I think are still very valid. But maybe maybe I'm just overthinking it. Maybe it's like my twenty one should be like, continue the current process goals that are working for you, Like maybe that's enough. Yeah, well, certainly, I mean, you know, you're not starting from scratch here. I mean, you already have a lot of good habits in place, And I think that that's something that a lot of people could consider as they are setting their goals too, that they might, you know, take the occasion to celebrate the habits that they already have. Like you don't have to set a goal to floss because you're already flossing. Like you don't have to set a goal to exercise, because you're already exercising. You don't have to set a goal to drink less because you're already consuming very minimal alcohol as it is. And so all of these things are goals that other people might find incredibly challenging, and you don't because you've already built them into your life. So if you compare yourself with the right thing, maybe like go me, I've already hit what many people would consider to be a great amount of goals already. Yeah, there's there's probably an element to that. And it's not like, you know, flossing has become easy, but it's not like all of my other things have become as easy. So they can just also just I can a celebrate my project progress, but also just define them perhaps as continuing goals, like I still want to read almost every day, and I still want to do my dueling go and I still want to meditate, and you know, et cetera, et cetera. So you're right, I think probably recycling goals is okay, And we don't always have to be original about our goals either. Yeah, all right, Well with that in mind, now we can actually dive into some of our actual goals. Why don't we start with your professional ones. We could do professal and then like personal going back. Yes, and I'm going to like summarize mine because I have like nine, so I'll just say hare we share notes beforehand. Sarah has a much longer list of professional goals than I. Do. She has a much longer list of goals general. So that should tell you right there that despite her saying she was less ambitious for goals in twenty twenty one, I don't think that's actually true. Well, before we delve into Sarah's goals, let's take a quick ad break. Okay, we are back and we are going to delve into some goals here. Okay, so my professional goals, I made several of them, and they are all really not dependent on being able to go anyone where or do anything in person. So that's good. One is too, is I think very realistic because we kind of already have a template for it. But as I mentioned, we're launching this coaching program for residents, and we'd like it to also be a research study. I as part of my job as program director, it's kind of imperative that I publish every once in a while so I show that I'm being academic. So I will admit out loud that it's not that I am super passionate about publishing things, but I feel like I do need to do it every once in a while, so i'd like to do it this year, and I feel like that project will be really fun. And another project which I think might be really great to do with a resident and it's such low hanging fruit that I just want to put it on my list is we have seen a rise in diabetes diagnoses during this pandemic, like significant and even just publishing like numbers, which really isn't that hard. Well, I say it's not that hard. It's always hard. There's always like fifteen thousand barriers and things. But I think we could do it, and I would like to work on that for this year, and I would love it if I could present at least one of them in a professional sphere within the year. So that might just be a poster because a paper could take a little bit longer. But yeah, so getting some research done I need to work on sort of. Another side of my job is that I'm a member of what it's called the Wellness Committee. I'm actually the chair of the Wellness Committee. We need to do more, so I just a brainstorm and get more of a sense of what people want from this and just want to feel like I've made progress. This is a new role for me that started mid year and twenty twenty obviously mid pandemic. It was a little difficult, but I feel like now we're done with reeling and can move on with trying to grow there. I want to continue to work on upping my games, my terminology that I use in terms of teaching and engaging our residents. It's I think I'm good at it. I want to be really great at it. I want to go to at least one meeting, but it can be virtual, so that should be due amazing conference type meeting yes, yes, yes, not like betting you'll go to a meeting tomorrow. Yes, I'll probably go to one today. No, but no like a multi day either. I kind of want to go to the diabetes meeting that's in the summer or some meeting for GM. And yes, there are a lot of virtual offerings that could be options for that, and I plan to use time blog planning on at least some of my unstructured days to help get some of these things accomplished. Awesome, Well, that'll make for a good year. So my major professional goal for the year is to finish the manuscript for Tranquility by Tuesday. This is my next book, my next nonfiction book, I guess, and the key thing to me is it's not due until October first, which feels like just such a luxuriously long amount of time to write a book. So I'm kind of hoping to enjoy that writing process and not feel so much time pressure. I am currently running the pilot phase of the study for that I will reopen it in January or February for the next round of it if we have listeners who'd like to participate. It's a nine week process, well roughly ten by the time we're done with everything. But you know where you try out different time management rules in your life and report on how they're going, and we do some initial questions and questions at the end, and that will be the fodder for the book. But yeah, I'm going to do that real version of the survey in twenty twenty one and then write the manuscript and turn it in by October, hopefully following my own time management rules while I am doing so. And then my one other professional goal is to do more free writing. I think you know, my word for twenty twenty one, if we're gonna have a word, is fun. But I want to I want to write for fun. I do so much writing that is based on my professional requirements, and that's great. I mean, I feel so lucky that I get to write for a living and earn a good living doing it. But it can be sometimes like, well is that what the market wants or not? Well, I'm going to write more stuff that who knows if it's what the market wants. I'll do more just for me, more sort of fiction poetry that I'm not showing anyone necessarily, And also do more stuff on my blog because that's where I can put stuff out for an audience, but I don't have to run it by anyone else or think about what you know the readership wants. It can just be for whatever I want to put out there. So stuff that maybe aggressively not marketable. As I rediscovered the joy of my job and stave off some sort of midlife crisis, I vote for more fiction. As a fan of the Courtland Boys. Well, maybe you have to read the one I wrote about was the Norwegian Secret to Enjoying Winter. I will, yeah, send it to me one. Yes, we have mixed results. I sent it to a few test readers. Some people really liked it and some people hated it, So we'll see where you fall in that camp. No, I'm seriously, guys, if you haven't read The Courtland Boys, it is. It is a very fun read, and I'm not kidding like the characters, I still think about them sometimes, especially the guy who got stuck in his plot point. Anyway, okay, all rights, family girls. I want to you know, I failed at Mommy Days this year, which is I mean, it wasn't really my fault, but they didn't happen. But next year they are definitely gonna happen. And actually we have kind of a nice built in structure for because my kids' spring breaks do not align, which is sad but true. So that does work well because during Annabel's spring break, I'm going to take a day or two off and just have Annabel Days, and then during the little kid's spring break, I am going to dedicate one day to Genevieve's first Mommy Day and in the day for Cameron. So I'm pretty excited for that. Am I supposed to do all of these? Yeah? Yeah, I want to keep ticking walks with the kids. Annabel is already like she loves doing it. Cameron, I need to figure out ways to get more one on one time with him because he's old enough for that to work. I mean, I do think like there's something about like he likes hanging out with Josh because they have more maybe naturally common interests of like sports and stuff. So maybe it's okay, but I still want to spend quality time with him. I need to potty train Genevieve. Well, we am all. I'm sure that that will happen in twenty twenty one. That will be. It may even happen by the end of twenty twenty. I mean, oh god, it really should. And I will say, like some of my other kids got right up to that third birthday and then they trained very quickly. But I don't know. She's actually like really smart and she's just like I can but I don't want to kind of a thing, and so it's more of a I felt like the other two wanted to, and I'm not getting that vibe from her. But We're gonna keep working on it. She's actually okay at school most of the time, but at home doesn't even make an effort, despite small colored of her choice potties available on each floor of our house. Anyway, Number four is some you know, we haven't really doing like date nights the way we used to because we don't have multiple caregivers that we're using, but ar Nanni will take the kids for like a Friday night, and I want to like plan those in for like every quintile with Josh because they're so nice. It's nice to have an overnight and go out for dinner and like sleep in a little bit, and it's just so nice. So I want to do that. I want to finish my estate planning stuff, which we started in like twenty seventeen or something, maybe twenty eighteen, because I think it was post Genevieve, and then just continue to work on our savings goals we did in twenty twenty, not surprisingly because there wasn't very much to spend on that we like to do, but I want to keep most of the momentum going even as things become more available. Yeah, like vacations, excellent list. So my big family goal is to renovate the new house, move in and sell the current one, so basically moving all of us from this house to our new one and then have it be our family home, make it feel like our family home. And you know, I think that should obviously happen in the next year, but it's just a huge, big thing and so if I keep telling myself that that is my major goal for the year, then I think I will feel better about the time that it is going to require. So that's that's the major one. That's actually really major. It is it is just I mean, there's so many moving parts, and it's you know, the expense of doing it, and you know, thinking about how we I mean, since we have the opportunity to renovate it, thinking about how we use a house, like what is our sort of family structure of how we spend time. You know, there's interesting questions involved in that, and some of the renovations we're doing definitely take that into account. So yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to it as a project, I mean, and I also hope to get through it with my sanity, my marriage and so forth intact. But it is, you know, it is the goal for twenty twenty one. Do you think you'll have it like done by the end of the year, like decorated everything? I want to I definitely want to be a great Yeah. I mean, there's some smaller projects that won't necessarily be done. Like you know, there's there's a pool and there's like a little pool house by the pool and that will not be renovated, like that is not on the top of the list of priority, not a priority. But yeah, the other parts I hope to have done for sure. Well that can wait until summer of twenty twenty two. Yes, exactly, well, exactly awesome, all right, what's our next category? It looks like it is oh self right, okay, itself right, that's always our our Roubut yeah, pretty much, although myself and I feel like it's kind of built into my relationship. That's okay. I want to do one day off where I try to schedule nothing. It's very hard to do this actually because every time I do it, it's like, oh, that's the day I'll get my hair done or whatever. But I'm going to really try again to have one day as a sacred personal retreat day perk wintile. So that's five per year. Wow. Sounds like a lot, but it's I mean it's you know, there's three hundred and sixty five days, So can I Can I have five of them? I don't know. Maybe, And you know, on that day, I just want to like hang out with myself and just do my own thing, take like a personal outing, like maybe to the beach or a museum or something. Once COVID is not an issue, that would be my massage opportunity that kind of a thing. So I'm hoping to do each quantel So I'm going to try to like schedule that ahead of time and leave it as sacred. I'm just going to keep working on my very stringent phone habits, which I sometimes fail out. By the way, I'm not perfect, but I'm like getting better and better, and I just think that's I don't know, kind of a lifelong endeavor for me, because I just find my use of my time and life so much better when I am not sucked into my phone. I'm going to continue my I don't have streaks because streaks kind of stress me out, but mostly days of headspace and duo lingo. I want to invite at least three new parents for play days out play dates outside, so that's kind of a self and relationship goals, to try to meet more people and just make more like parent friends. I want to get outside most days, and I want to organize our house. I'm going to restart the Organized through sixty five program, which is I really like And Lisa actually warns you that you never. She's a founder and she was a guest on this podcast, and she warns you that you don't usually get through your first try, and I did not, but I got like halfway through. So yeah, I'm gonna try again in January, and I'm excited. You choose like three hundred and sixty five different small areas to organize. That's it's not three hundred it's actually one hundred days. It's called one hundred day programs, so you can do it. Like I think there's three starts. There's like a January first start, like a Memorial Day start, and Labor Day start. And I did the Memorial Day start, but I actually was also doing like a really I was doing the add obsession at the same time, these really long workouts and I think they were at odds with each other because it kind of made me tired and like that would have been the time that I would have been organizing. So anyway, but kay, you start in the middle, Like if you do the January start, can you then start where you left off? Because I assume that there's an order hood, but I don't. I think that she wants you to actually start there's like there is an order and as you might imagine, areas that you once organized may still need love again, like it's not done. I think Mari Condo that they stay done. Well. Lisa Woodruff and Marie con I know, are not exactly the same. They certainly have some similarities. But no, I don't think Lisa actually tries to promise you that it's going to be all done. I think she promises you it will be like a lot better. But her thing is usually you need like three full rounds to get to a good place. And I kind of see that, and each day is not crazy. So yeah, I guess that's a self goal and a home goal all wrapped up into one. All right, well, that sounds great. My only self goal is really I put have more fun, you know, doing so with the older kids. It's always fun to do things with the older kids. I feel like they get less time of course, do solo fun things, you know, fun events with Michael, with friends. And then as for like a health goal, I guess I just want to move more and try to eat a little healthier. I just do not want to devote the mental energy to my weight or anything like that. At this point, I feel like my mental energy is taken up with getting enough sleep and managing life with five children and a business and such and the house. So I will focus very much on process goals there that trying to have more days where I get my ten thousand steps, more servings of vegetables, that sort of thing, and just call it a day. There. Process goals for that, I totally agree, because what's the point of anything else anyway? Exactly? But you can't kind of call it all right, well, oh you still have a blog and pod category. Yeah, because I don't count those in my work category. I mean they are work because I do earn money from them, and it's kind of money that I could be earning from work if I was a full fte So I don't know. They're a gray area, but I keep them separate. I want to improve my organization of questions we get for the podcasts, and I get questions for bestaid plans and questions for best of both worlds, and they're like in my email and like a gross like I just I want to have them all nicely and neatly organized so I can see what I've already answered. It just makes episode planning so much easier, so that shouldn't be that hard. I'm going to do it in Apple notes. It's going to be great. And then I want to I don't know, I want to put together like an outline and some play with the idea of my little instead of doing like a big, actual real book. Like I can write an ebook, and I can probably write it really fast from a lot of bog blog posts that I already have. So I'm going to work on putting that together because then I could, you know, just make it into APDF and offer it for purchase for like a low amount on my blog, and it would just be kind of satisfying and fun to have a lot of my methods and advice in one place. So I called it best of BLP, but I that's not really the name. It's a great, great idea. Can't wait to read it? All? Right? Well, should we do the Q and A or the Love of the Week first? I get confused about which order we I don't know. Let's do the Love of the Week. Okay, what's yours? Well? I really like recording this podcast, I gotta say. I you know, we've been having some technical difficulties this morning, but I always love to see it coming up on my calendar that we have a recording moment morning that we get to you know, talk about fun things like goals and plans, and you know that people might actually want to listen to this. So the recording sessions are my love of the week. Aw I love them too, and I even love prepping for them, which is kind of fun, and sometimes I put that off, but then I still am very happy to do it, like when we're writing out notes to each other and stuff. It's it's fun. That is great, and I'm very grateful that people listen to us and keep this alive and thank you all. But my love of the week is a book. Ah. Sorry. So, in addition to checking out The Courtland Boys, which I mentioned earlier, a novel that I truly enjoyed this past month was called This Tender Land by William Kennedy Kraeger k R E U G E R. Krueger. It is set in the depression in the Midwest, and it's kids who are orphaned like running around all over the place with various adventures, lots of people getting shot and killed, and it's total soap opera, but it's not dark in the well, it's kind of dark, but it's I don't know, I just I like, I don't usually tear books that are historical like this necessarily, but I like devoured over four hundred pages in like three or four days, So highly recommend. I don't think I can deal with shooting or or fans right now, so maybe I'll do that later in life when I'm sleeping. There's no pandemic in it, but yes, it does have some like violence. Yes, all right, So our question this week, Sarah put out a call for questions. We got a few asking about college. How are we handling college for our kids? I mean caveat here that there's no right answered. Also, our kids aren't in college yet, so this may completely change. The oldest among us is thirteen, so we're still many years off from college and dealing with that expense. So, Sarah, how are you dealing with the saving planning for college or the finances associated with that. Yeah, so we do plan to pay for our kids college educations in full, not necessary barely post college, like if they choose to go to medical school or something like that. I'm just you know, there's got to be a limit somewhere. Yes, three med school toitions and three colleges is like literally millions of dollars. And I'm not, you know, quite ready for that, but you know it is going to be if my children all choose to go to a private college. I you know, I don't know if you guys have looked at costs lately, like it could easily be one hundred thousand dollars per year per kid. And so I'm not saying that's a realistic or doable goal or that everyone should have that goal. But if you do have that goal, you should have your eyes open to what it actually looks like and think about what the savings would look like. I also think you have to be very careful not to say for college instead of retirement. You have to be making sure that you have planned for you know, if you do plan to retire, then you want to make sure that is taken care of first, because you know, want to pay for your kids college and then turn to them and say, hey, we spend all our retirement money on college, and now can we live in your house? I mean, unless that is what you want to do. Again, just going in with your eyes open. So we do plan to pay for our kids college. My parents paid for my private college as well as my sisters, even though they you know, they had good jobs, but it was definitely like a big deal for them to do that. And my husband was also lucky enough to have that covered. So I think we also just feel like we want to pay that forward in a way. And there recently to be said for like paying it forward, because because we don't have loans that we're still paying off, we can devote that money for, you know, our five twenty eyes. And so logistically, what we've chosen to do is we our state has like a prepaid program for the public college, which is not very expensive, so we do that. But in addition to doing that, because you know, they may want to go somewhere and more expensive, we just contribute an amount to our five twenty nines for each kid every single month, and it just auto comes out of our bank account. It's like a reasonable amount for us, you know, It's it's not that you feel it, but it's not like crazy. And I would anticipate that, you know, someday when our childcare costs go down, that we would ramp it up. Although it's a mistake to put off if you know that you're going to be doing that because obviously that money has years to grow, you know, assuming that there's still growth of the market. So five twenty nine's for those who haven't looked into it yet. They do get to grow tax free and then be pulled out for qualifying educational expenses. So you can take use of that compounding by starting nice and early. And then if you start when your kids a baby, it will have eighteen years to that money you put in the beginning has eighteen years to grow up. So we do that. We make it very automatic so we don't have to think about it. We also do our states prepaid program look into each state. We just did Florida, but you do not have to do your own state, like I know New York and Utah are both very popular because there's different plans and funds available, and then you actually get to choose, like you're usually in most states, you sign up for it and then you can actually choose which type of fun and how you want to allocate it, and make sure you look at what the fees are because if you do some like aggressively managed fund, they may have high fees. And I am all for this is becoming a financial podcast and I'm so, but I have done fair amount of research. You should definitely do your own. But that is how we plan to pay for the large expense that is college. Just for our listeners listening to you say the prepaid. That doesn't mean, though, that your kids have to go to the University of Florida. Correct. So all the cash value of like what UF costs in those years could be applied to any educational institution. But if they did choose to go there, then it's like, oh, we're done, and then they could save the rest of their five twenty nine money for postgraduate endeavors or things like that. Yeah, excellent. Like Sarah, I also intend to pay for college for my kids. I appreciate not having loans afterwards. I know great many people do have student loans and it changes the experience of your first few years out of school quite a bit. And so I am very much that is my intention to do. We have five twenty nines for the kids, And Sarah said, yeah, we were made a conscious choice to try to contribute as much as we could in the early years, knowing that that's the money that will then grow. That it grows quite a bit by the time the kid turns eighteen, there will also be you can sort of think of the money you're spending on childcare if you I mean, we'll still be spending money on childcare when our first kid goes off to college. But like other people may not have that if you don't have five children spread out over thirteen years. Maybe if you have two children who are like three years apart, which would be a more normal experience, at some point, you won't be having to pay for the full time childcare. If you can kind of mentally think of that money, you know, being allocated toward college savings, you would still probably have quite a few years for it to grow sort of your you know, by the time your oldest child is like nine, maybe you're not having to pay for full time child care anymore. That still gives you nine years of growth, which is less than eighteen, but it is still a reasonable amount of time. So yeah, now that's what we are doing. You'd also, I would tell you we don't have to save all of it ahead of time, because you're not planning to. We don't. Presumably you will also be working during those years one hundred percent, and so you can pay some out of savings and some out of current income too. Yes, yeah, and we actually, like in full disclosure, I don't think we'll have all of it like we could, but I don't want to short change retirement, so I do plan on paying some of those costs as they happen. If you have kids where you know you're going to have overlapping years and it might be nice to have, you know, a nice cushion because you know, Annabelle and Cameron could be in college at the same time for two years if they do things kind of the normal, and that's that's uh wow, that's significant. So yeah, but we will be working and presumably with some growth in our careers, so you know it, it should be doable. I also do not think you need to go to private college to be a success, and I don't want anyone to glean that. I just want to be able to offer that to my kids, you know, as like a totally random example, like we have many of the residents that I trained did not and they are like matching at fantastic fellowships and they're going to have whatever career they want and it wouldn't have gone any differently if they had gone to some other place. So I think depending on what you want to go into, it's certainly not a necessity. Yeah. And in fact, if you are planning to go to graduate schools, sometimes you are actually better off coming from a different college, Like if you are at the top of your class at a large state university, that shows a different thing than you know, being at the same sort of private institution types that you're then trying to go to for grad school. So something to keep in mind. My husband actually made money going to college, So it's always a possibility that you won't get stuck with huge bills. Maybe you can, you know, plan for their being huge bills, but sometimes there's not. He went to Texas A and M and got a full scholarship to go there, and so yeah, he made money on the process. That is amazing. Yeah, and clearly it did not stop him from having a career that he succeeded in and succeeds in and enjoys. So there you go. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We have been talking about our goals for twenty twenty one and the goal setting process. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.