A time of sudden change has found its way into my life, the kinds of changes that only take place once in a very great while.

Many times these periods have come unrecognized, slipping by like sand through the fingers, opportunities all but lost. How many people in this county have looked back at the time of Lowe’s Hardware’s first expansion to its No. 2 store in Sparta and thought, “If I had only bought a few shares of stock back then, I’d be rich now.”

There are others, many of whom I have personal knowledge, who did not turn away from that opportunity and now are very wealthy. Many a local man started off working in a menial job and bought up stock to retire as millionaires.

This opportunity for me isn’t one of that magnitude, but it is an opportunity of the rarest form. I am planning to liquidate two pieces of property that I have been holding for a number of years in an attempt to consolidate my assets.

What does that mean? Well, I want to sell some land that I’m not using right now. That will eliminate some of my headaches in trying to drive back and forth to take care of property that is about 45 minutes away and will also meet another part of my more secret agenda. My goal is to try to get completely out of debt within the next two years. That means I could sell off enough land and other assets to pay for my home and owe for nothing other than the electric and telephone bills every month. One of my good friends has just such a situation and seems to be able to do pretty much whatever he chooses.

That is my hope as well, to be free to figure out what I want to do next without factoring in debts and other such responsibilities. When you have debts, you have, in effect, bondage to those whom you owe. Of course, that bondage in modern times doesn’t usually translate to shackles and chains the way it once did, but it is still confining.

While there is hope on the horizon with the potential sale of one property looming and ever-present possibilities for the other, the real question is, will it ever come to pass? It seems sad to me that such a mundane dream should even be a dream at all.

There are so many things out there that can lure us away from our goals; I need this, I want that. Instead, I have been trying to focus on being thankful for what I have.

I recently considered trading vehicles, but I couldn’t come to terms with the dealer. In a very big way, that was probably a blessing of sorts. The temptations are many, but the paychecks are few. One friend recently told me, “I’ll never be out of debt.” It was said in such a matter-of-fact tone that it was just taken for granted. It was almost like she was saying, “I have to sleep every day to be healthy.”

I hope to never profess that I cannot survive without debts. I want to be able to live within my means and, for once, have entire paychecks that are not already bequeathed to someone else before I receive them. Most of the time, my money has been spent before I ever saw the check — sometimes it was spent years before.

While things are improving, I still have to pay several thousand dollars a year in interest for loans and such, money that I begrudge paying out every time I write a check.

I suppose that might sound like I don’t appreciate the folks who loaned me the money to buy my house. Quite the contrary. Without their help, the sudden opportunity to buy the home I am living in would have quickly passed me by.

However, in the future, I aspire to have the cash to take advantage of those opportunities without the bank’s assistance. In fact, maybe I can start charging them interest more often. They aren’t worried; I might not live long enough to recoup the money that banks, collectively, have charged me.

But whose fault is that? Sadly, there are few fingers to point and they all point at me. I wish there had been more education offered to me about debt, checking accounts, credit cards, loans, major purchasing and negotiating when I was a younger man. The way it works now, the lessons must come the hard way. I’m just thankful that I have been willing, and capable, of learning. Perhaps I should be even more thankful for the opportunity to do something about it.

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