Plans and dreams (and debts)

Appliance
A few days ago, I wrote about needing opinions about washing machine. I took all of your opinions into consideration and today we bought our own Miele washing machine. Miele is definitely not cheap but taken into account its quality and durability and warranty (20 years!), we decided that it's worth the buck. I'm not the type who thinks of using appliances in short terms, like 5 years. I prefer to use my appliances/electronics to death and buy new ones for replacement. We don't have a dryer yet but we'll see how it goes with the new place having all day sun. We don't have a dishwasher yet too. We think we can put it off for a while and just handwash for now. We don't use a lot of utensils and china for 2 people anyway. When we get a dishwasher though, we'll get the double type.

Mortgage
Sigh. What can I say about mortgage? If I think about it, it is a bit overwhelming to know we have such amount on debt. On top of that, there's the annual rates and home improvements. I wish we didn't have J's student loans cuz that would free us $600/month. Imagine putting that towards our mortgage and cutting down our paying time to 11 years. With a very weak NZ$ at the moment, paying it is just doing our budget more damage than it's worth.

Home improvement plans
There are plenty of things we want to do with the house. We want to change the layout, we want to add a porch at the back of the house, we want to add a garage, we want to put a second floor but this one is considered as a dream in our list. We created a list of home improvement plans and divided into

• pre-move, 
• short term (within a year), 
• medium term (2-5 years), 
• long term (5+ years), 
• and dreams.

At the same time, we are being realistic and smart about all this planning. One, we would like to implement changes that support our long-term goals. For example, we plan to modify the bathroom and toilet, but we'll make sure it aligns with the layout-change plan. This means we might choose to put off the bath/toilet change until we're sure that the layout-change plan would have them in the same spot.

Being an adult
I think so often about what it will be like at 35 - where will I be? Will our house have some improvements by then? How much have we paid on our mortgage by then? What about J's student loans? What about my child's education fund? I get antsy to accomplish many things and making sure we have adequate (at least) funds to cover our old days. Being an adult can be fun, in the sense that I now can do something about the things I want to do. I'm 31 now. I hope that by the time I'm 41 I'd be set for life. I hope at that age I have great retirement fund, my child's education is almost set, J's student loan is paid, and our house is nearly ours (if not ours yet!).

Your dreams
What are your goals or dreams that you want to realize 10 years from now? Please share! :)