Money!! Money!! Money!!!
Sunday, October 12th, 2008
We have been forced to pull our heads out of our travel planning to concentrate on fitting a new kitchen - to our house which needs everything doing to it. Tiling, appliances, flooring - you name it! Not a good mix to buy a wreck when you are planning to leave it anyway and don’t want to be spending money (unless to do with the travel trip itself). Alas, a small fortune has gone in the blink of an eye it seems which breaks our hearts as we need for travel. The spend presents a risk to us generally as this is the second time we have had dip into our piggy bank. Can’t happen again and we hope to be able to re-save it between now and then but how hard it is to save the money up again! With the travel planning alone - there are many things still to organise which invariably involves cash before we actually get on the road so any non-travel spends (like new kitchen) impact greatly on our travel plan - we want to be building up our savings, not spending money right now. Amazing how easy it is to spend and how extra hard it seems to be able to save! especially with children involved. There is serious financial crisis going on all over the world it seems and we wonder how the outcome will impact us when it comes to our leaving. Will we have enough money to support our trip? Will our jobs be safe until we go? Will we need a loan? Will we be able to rent/sell our house without a loss involved? Are there any other areas where we need to spend unforeseen cash (or bury our heads and pretend we don’t have to, as we have done where our kitchen is concerned) - yes! is probably the most likely answer. We are hoping these things will have been a silly, distant worry for us once we get on the road. How lucky those who have escaped and are already undergoing long-term travelling. On the upside - if all else fails, we’ll have a lovely kitchen to look at! But that’s not going to happen - will start looking to see what we can sell on eBay for a start.
October 13th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Hi Anne
I am sure that things will turn out well - dont give up on the dream!
Sharon x
October 13th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Thank you sweetie! How much do you reckon we’d get for the kids? Just kidding! get it - kidding - ha! We’re still going - even if it means we just make it to Southampton. Seriously, lack of enough funding to do our ‘dream’ trip will just mean having to refine and budget harder - but we will make it - we are sure of it!
November 13th, 2008 at 10:49 am
I come bearing some hopeful news and a full stomach after eating my hat. Our car has gone completely kapput (big end gone) in Thailand after 6 weeks of waiting for them to fix other problems. We’re leaving the car hear to get fixed/new engine and going onto Australia and hiring a 4wd for 2 months which is cheaper than us shipping the car (that’s not obviously the good news). There is toyotas galore here and dealers/service centres everywhere but they dont’t have our land cruiser here at all. We would have been better off with a land rover especially with the parts as we’ve had 5 shipments of overseas parts at a massive cost. No the hopeful news is that we met a UK family (Dwight and Tessie Wood and their 18 year old daughter and 5 year old son(http://www.freshwaterfilter.blogspot.com/) who overtook us and have reached their destination (Singapore) and they were travelling in a £300 Citreon ZX with modified halford trailer so ignore what I said before!!! Ok so it didnt do the roads of kazakhstan but they really did travel cheaply and very well so well worth getting in touch. Will give you a much more positive angle on your budget I promise. They are really lovely people and have helped us loads. Keep your pecker up.