Sunday, March 18, 2012

And Now, An Even Bigger Challenge...

First, in an effort to brighten up my blog a bit, here are some nice spring flowers (from a couple of years ago at my old house, no spring blooming bulbs here in Las Vegas unfortunately).
Hubby is feeling better so we got out for a bit today which was a good thing.  And then I sprang my latest plan on him (which threatens to send him back to his sick bed because he knows what happens when I get an idea in my head...yikes!).  So here it is:
I really, really want to do a "grand tour" type of vacation in the fall.  After some consideration (and copious amounts of time on Orbitz and Travelocity) I think it should go something like this:

  • August 15-31: Connecticut to visit the family and check out the family graveyard in Massachusetts (found out about this doing genealogy on my grandmother's side of the family).
  • September 1-21: Fly from New York to London.  During this time visit England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland (and visit lots of places I found in my genealogy research in each of these countries).
  • September 21: Take a cruise from London to Ft Lauderdale passing by Spain and Portugal (since this is a re positioning cruise it will only cost $600 each!).
  • October 5: Arrive in Ft Lauderdale.  I fly out the next day to Japan; hubby will go and visit his sister in Florida for a couple of weeks.
  • October 6-16: I will visit my friends in Japan.
  • October 16: Hubby and I will meet up in Manila; me coming from Japan, hubby from Miami.
  • October 17: We fly to Davao, a city in the southern part of the Philippines to visit family and friends.
  • November 15: We fly to Manila and visit friends there for a few days.
  • November 20: We fly back to Las Vegas.
The grand total for such a trip will be around $30,000 (!!!); about $7500 for the cruise and air tickets and the rest for spending money (hotel, food, plus the money hubby spends on his entire family when we are in the Philippines).  For a couple of flights we can use air miles which will save us money and I was even thinking about doing a house trade while we are in the UK so we would have free lodging there which would also save money (ditto for the time we are in the Philippines).  
Obviously $30,000 is a LOT of money, which I realize, but then again, I think anything can be possible if you want it bad enough and are willing to work for it.  Which means I need to earn about $5000 a month for the next six months in order to pull this off because I told hubby that we wouldn't take money for this trip out of our savings (he is always worried about dipping into our savings).
Now my challenge is to figure out how to earn about $5000 a month for the next five months (and obviously some sort of residual income after that so my earnings don't come to a screeching halt at the end of August).  Holy cow that's a lot of money!!  I'll let you know what I come up with!

8 comments:

  1. hi there, just found your blog from Jolie's (Shaking the money tree). Love it!! I have been to vegas five times, and I just love it there. I think if I had to move to the USA somewhere, thats where I would go. Looking forward to reading more about you!
    rose

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  2. Wow! I am so jealous ... And inspired. I cut my dream trips down instead of bringing my money raising abilities up to meet them. I may have to rethink that.

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  3. Very exciting!!! It's sounds like a trip of a life time!

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  4. This is an INCREDIBLE goal--I love, love, loooove it!! Best of luck to you!

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  5. I think that is a bit extravagant. $30,000 could be so much better used, IMHO

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  6. What a great goal. I've got to seriously ramp up my income streams for a couple trips myself, but not on the level you are looking at. will you try to make that all by writing?

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  7. Rose--Thanks!
    Gille--I am trying to figure a way to make a lot of money in a relatively short period of time then share it with all of you so you can all try it! I'll let you know how that goes.
    SRL--Over the past couple years the hubby and I have been doing longer and longer vacation--fun on the one hand, and a lot of work on the other!
    Haooy Homeowner--Thanks!
    Bard--I'll let you know if I can find a way to make this huge amount of money and share the details (p.s. I WISH I could earn it all by writing!)
    Anon--$30,000 is a huge amount of money but spending it all on a vacation kind of points to where we are in our life now. All of the kids are grown and we are way past the nesting stage (we sold our house and nearly everything we owned a year and a half ago and I NEVER want to go back to a big consumer lifestyle). Also, hubby is now in his 60s and I realize that such travel will not be possible for many more years so we want to do this while he is still healthy and able to. Obviously for others $30k would be much better spent elsewhere!

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  8. Good for you then. I am in my early 40's, one kid to uni in 2 years, 1 in middle school so no chance od anything like that...go while you can :)

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