You're singing my song bro... I don't regret it at all...

I borrowed £7000 and put 10 months of payments in a separate account to pay it back. I planned to be away for six months and have a four month buffer. It makes TERRIBLE financial sense but sometimes there are more important things in a certain time and place of your life than financial planning.

Not necessarily... You never know what's around the corner.

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

Too True,

If you want to do something, do it now. If you are in a position to borrow money, do it. You won't get it much cheaper than the current rates. If you can't, then scrape something together as best you can.

I have a friend (not that old chestnut) who won't spend a bloody penny; he's saving for a rainy day. We live in England; it rains pretty much every day for God’s sake.
I hope I'm wrong but I suspect he'll just end up doing nothing with his life and leaving his kids a bit of money.

I had mortality brought home to me last week. My neighbour asked me to break into his house when he came back from an early shift because his wife had bolted the door and wasn’t answering the bell. I grabbed a ladder, climbed through an upstairs window and found her stone-cold-dead in her bed. She was only 65 and had felt “a little out of sorts” the night before. She’d had a heart-attack in her sleep; not a bad way to go but I’d hope for a few more than 65 years. He’s due to retire in October, they’ve just sold their house to downsize and have booked a long holiday.

Don’t count on doing your “dream trip” a few years down the line, do it now, or you might not get the chance.

So as not to be all doom and gloom, I know a few old boys who are in their 70s and 80s and trail-ride at least once a week. They also regularly (two or three times a year) do trips to France, Spain, Romania etc in a couple of cars and a van full of bikes; Serows, Beta Alps and TTRs, etc.
Maybe there is some hope for the rest of us.

Well said.

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

Ted, mate, you are early thirties and, as far as I can tell, fit and well.

May I make a suggestion here, trying to be helpful, not critical? - tell me to piss off if you wish, but............. and I say this as someone who truly understands your wanderlust and need for adventure, as well as your apparent loathing for a career..............

.......... you need to get a wiggle on and do something useful career-wise or you will miss the boat. You are a very intelligent chap, obviously resourceful and driven, but, if I may say so, you seem directionless. So my advice is, pick a high end profession - doesn't matter which one as you could do any of them - get qualified and then find a job that either gives you a lot of travel and adventure (more exist like that than people think) or one which pays the most and maximize your income to free time ratio.

You should consider:

1. Law
2. Medicine
3. Accountancy
4. IT security
5. Finance
6. Engineering Health and Safety

Also look at the armed forces - you are probably a bit old, but you never know. You are at risk of missing the boat entirely here; of course, that may be what you want. If so, fair enough, to each his own, but as an outsider observer, that seems a shame.

That's good advice and very relevant for some or even most people.

Thanks !!

I have a slightly different outlook though. The way I see it, the average person spends about 70% of their waking life AT WORK.. That seems like a HUUGE waste of the time we have on this planet doing something that we don't want to be doing. There are some out there who love their jobs and good for them. The vast majority don't though. I'm going to start a poll on that..

It's unnatural to be working in an office, shuffling paper or tapping endlessly away at a keyboard just waiting for the next payday. I've been there and I hated it. I've worked lots of different jobs and I've always felt like a brick in the wall. Not for me.

I've worked some very well paid jobs too but they were soulless and gave me no satisfaction. Those jobs in your list would probably have me tearing my hair out within a few days. I would literally rather be low income and life happy.

Yup.. I am pretty direction less, but for the whole it keeps my life interesting and adventurous. I'm rarely bored and I'm not destitute. I'm not a rich man but I have everything I need.

Last weekend I was working for a mate as a builder, this week I'm landscaping for some family and inbetween I restore bikes and service cars etc etc.

Nope, I'm never going to get a morgage or a fat loan like this but apart from not being RICH, I'm pretty happy..

Will I ever afford my RTW trip... HMMMMMM !! I don't know. That's why I started this thead. For ideas !!

I am saving though... Slowly !! Ebay helps too

I really appreciate your sentiment and advice. It just doesn't fit my personality. I think I'm a bit ADHD

Since I posted this thread I've enrolled at College doing welding. That's a career I can apply to my bike tech quals and considering I have a FREE fully fitted out workshop, It's something I can hopefully make money doing HERE AND ABROAD. It's a good skill to travel with, so I hear...

I'm my own boss these days... Lifes too short to take orders or make money for someone else.

As for today. I've done a few hours gardening, made a bonfire and sat around it drinking tea. I've serviced a car and now I've got my feet up looking at the hubb. Earnt £100 and worked four hours..

It's not a bad life eh

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

You are right, of course, that the only thing that really matters, is to be happy.

More power to ya - ride on.

Whatever you do - keep off the Ritalin!!


I learnt (fwiw) from the very many sales people I worked with (I was never one), that it's a numbers game. Generate as many leads as you can, chase them and convert them. If there's no sale in a short time, move on to the next lead.
Salesmen who spent months 'negotiating' a 'hot' lead never seemed to sell much.

So:

My view is, if you carry on making hundreds of different contacts through hundreds of different jobs like this, by the law of averages (and the numbers game) you'll find a contact, maybe sooner rather than later, that will have exactly the opportunity you're looking for.
The key thing will be to recognise that opportunity when it arrives. I should think you'd be pretty good at that.

But, I've never been in your situation - only ever worked for one employer (but very many different brilliant jobs over the years and o'seas travelling as well). And learnt to a great degree - it's not what you know, it's who you know and how many.

Very best of luck - ride on!

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TTR250 - London to Cape Town

So your sat there, a deadline to meet the boss leaning on you, your stressed out and burnt out,the wife and kids all depend on you for there house,car,smart phones and every concevible gadget from a laptop to a 50 inch tv, all of which are absolutely essential. You work every hour to make some cash yet you have a debt that scares the sh*t out of you, then you stare out of your office window and think about that big world out there and dream of adventure,freedom and travel, and wonder how you ever got here. Who is this guy ? it was me, not now though 2 jobs quit (3 if you count the wife) 5 months traveling last winter and more of the same this year. I still work, but only part time and during the summer, yes we don't have the income we used to have but we manage and we are much happier with life now. As stated in a previous post it's all about being happy with your lot in life. What about the kids ? turns out they were not as dependant as we thought and to our supprise were very supportive of our plans to abandon them, (both adults by the way) result ! It's not about the money, It's about living. Rant over

I like this rant martyboy.

I doesn't take much to realise that we actually need very little.

I recently had to pack almost all my possessions into storage, my vehicles in a friends garage, and move interstate.

I have a roof, my computer, phone and some clothes - but because I quit my job to move here temporarily I have heaps of spare time and I've just been bushwalking and MTB-ing and surfing.

I come home and don't even really want to look at the computer, and sometimes I forget I own a cellphone.

We are so addicted to the shit we own - to steal from Chuck Palahniuk - that our shit ends up owning us.

We don't really need any of it but we get so caught up in the fact that we have it that we have a false sense of dependance.

Ted, geez mate, you sound like a multi skilled bloke!!! I wish I had your skills! Why are you worried about getting by on the road? You can fix stuff, you can weld stuff, you can garden, you can build. Just keep an eye out for people on the road you meet who might need a handyman for a couple of $.

Hi Ted,

Similar position to you - done all sorts of jobs over the past ten years and travelled extensively. Seems to be the catch 22 of either: working all the time, making loads of cash but only being able to spend it on things like fancy cars and smartphones, or being skint and having freedom but not enough to cash to pay for it!

Have you ever thought of English teaching? It's not the best paid job in the world but it is very flexible and if you work in countries with strong economies like S.Korea, Europe, Chile etc, the money is decent - certainly enough to save up with. You can do a CELTA course in Budapest for 750.00 quid and you're set to go after that. Teaching can be very rewarding and out of all the office/9-5 sort of jobs I've done, I definitely found it the most enjoyable.

Aside from that, Couchsurfing / Help-X are good but like you say, they don't pay! Website building / graphic design is another job that's good on the road but personally doesn't interest me in the slightest. The only other job I can think of that is pretty cool and involves travelling would be diving or photography. I'm a photographer but actually making any money from it is unfortunately very difficult since the advent of digital cameras and the web!

Good luck!!

Join the Royal Navy... Travel, Pay, etc... 5 years minimum service, easy to save, make new friends etc, then bugger off with the money for a bit on the Tiger

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2025 Planning.....

I don't know if online stock trading has been mentioned already. I found that you need about a year to get the hang of it and it can nicely add to your income with little work. You really need to play with it for a long time on a demo account first as you can loose a lot if you are not careful. When I started it I used to sit in front of the monitor for hours and stressing myself with intraday trading, scalping. Then I realized that I can make a reasonable amount by investing longer term. For example I bought Apple and Google last September and just sold them last month, earned 3800 euros in the process... now that's not a lot in almost a year but it paid for my bills and petrol here in Hungary. Plus I had all the time to earn some money here and there again.

I know another biker here who does the same thing but like me he has other sources of income as well. It's just another option.

Funny you should say that... I've met two people who travel indefinitely by working the stock markets and trading commodities. It seems quite intensive though. Not sure if I have the personality for it. They seem to spend a lot of time looking at graphs and other boring things lol

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

So long as you are talking about trading stock and not foreign exchange trading.

Read the wiki article here about that but Forex trading is a zero sum game. Foreign exchange fraud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The average individual foreign-exchange-trading victim loses about $15,000, according to CFTC records" - Wall Street Journal.

Forex is essentially gambling.


One other thing to be aware of - You may seem to be making money on the trial account, but the problem with this is that when you are playing with fake trades, your trade has no effect on the market, because technically in the demo account the computer just takes the last sale price in the market. However in real life, when you put your offer in to the market it has an effect on the market, which can be both positive or negative, so the problem with a demo account is that it can never truly reflect real trading. So even with stock trading, just because you are making money in the demo account, may not necessarily transfer to real life.

However, I don't know how well this would really suit. I mean you need a certain amount of startup capital to make money trading. If Ted had the $20k to go and start day trading, he would probably just be out spending it on the adventure he wants to go on

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www.thegreatgallivant.com - video blog of my current year long trip around Europe on the F650GS Twin

I don't think it's boring but it needs attention like any other work. It's better than sitting in an office earning money for someone else anyways.