Who has ever set a goal and exactly hit the target despite not fully believing you could get there? We have a crazy testimony of doing this while camping at our favourite coastal spot in December 2010 and manifesting our dream holiday home nearby.
We had paid off our PPOR (Home loan) and could really hit our straps to save for our holiday home. We looked back over the previous year of spending and forecast what we could save per month without a mortgage. Every so often we would add in the actual savings amount as can be seen in the graph below. We had share loans, investment loans and 3 young kids (6, 3 & 1yo). So it is very hard to predict expenses. It didn’t matter! We prayed (you can devote to the universe if you prefer) – if this was God’s will then please allow it to happen. I (Cam) wanted just a little beach shack but Trish had much bigger dreams. Trish prayed asking for an amazing house with views that could house two families and could be used to bless people.
We went through homes the next day ‘pretending’ we could afford these amazing homes! We felt like frauds! Over the next four years when we would head down there for a surf we would also check out homes casually. As we got closer to our goal we started to look at lots of homes in the 3 selected areas. Had to have surf beach in walking distance and great views. We got really excited about a few in the winter of 2014 and some very strange things happened. We liked a house very close to where we ended up, however got a bad gut feel about the home despite being within range and ticking all the boxes. It turns out the house’s builder was delisted and there were some major flaws (listen to your gut!).
We finally found the perfect home listed online and arranged an inspection, as usual, we went down there a bit early so we could admire the beach. As we were slowly driving around the coastal road I spotted another home for sale which looked amazing and it had a real estate agent standing in the driveway, ready to do an open for inspection. Trish said she’d seen this house online and it was well out of our range. Ok, let’s check it out anyway! We went through the beautiful house and were absolutely gobsmacked – it had the best water views we had ever seen and more than enough room for two families (as per our wish list), it was an amazing home. Our 5 year old yelled out, “Can we get this one?” as we were walking through. I held my finger to my lips and whispered “poker face” and she looked blankly back at me. The agent explained it was going for auction the following weekend, but we didn’t give it too much thought as we knew it was out of our price range.
A few weeks later I was negotiating an offer on the other home we’d originally come to inspect when the same agent of the amazing home tried to call me at the exact same time (weird). I returned his call and explained that I had just put an offer in on another, less expensive home. He said the amazing home was passed in at auction and asked if we were interested in making an offer on it. I explained that our top offer would be several hundred thousand below what they wanted. However, I said that if you can put in a written offer for that amount, we would take it for that price (knowing agents are obliged to put all offers to vendors – a tactic we had used before). He agreed and we hastily made a time to look at it again the following day, this time with actual “buyers” eyes!
Our OFFER was accepted!!!! As it was a weekend, we took $1,000 out of the bank for an instant deposit with the plan to wire the 10% on Monday. We then drove home and rang the bank to check if they would lend us the money as we only had pre-approval for a lower amount (don’t try this at home!). We went to bed Saturday night in a bit of a daze of excitement and nerves, but I woke up at 3am in a state of shock – WHAT DID WE JUST DO?! I marched around the lonely dark home for 4 hours stressing out. At 8am I rang a trusted mentor who talked me through it and said it will be the best thing we will do if the banks will lend us the money. Security wasn’t an issue as we had a paid off home and two other IPs. Servicing was tight as they only looked at my wage (Trish had a small side hustle income which they disregarded).
We knew we had 3 days cooling off. That Sunday I went back to our spreadsheet and thought I would add up how much money we had. Our accounts were complex with two IP loans, offsets, credit cards, etc. As I added up the amounts it turned out to be exactly the same amount to the dollar ($216,000!) that we had forecast back in December 2010! We knew this was definitely a sign and it removed my stress instantly.
Needless to say the loan approval was hard, but got there in the final hour before settlement!
It’s now nearly 9 years later and we have actually made amazing income from the home via AirBnB while still having plenty of family holidays there (and lots of upkeep). The home has at least doubled in value too.
We can’t recommend manifesting your own FIRE goals enough!
“What gets tracked, gets measured. What gets measured, gets managed. What gets managed, is improved.” ― Eddie Gear
We manifest all our fire goals, travel plans for the next 5 years, FIRE Number, Net Worth, cash flow including family milestones (kids’ weddings), etc. It’s nice to have a goal and a plan.
