Still do, now i'm grown up...and I still want to be a Millionare!!
But I will get there eventually...just watch me!
I have been well on my way a couple of times, but the Sweet
Sensation of ultimate self-generating, self satisfying success
has so far eluded me.
I have had several opportunities, in several enterprises over the
years, with the potential to buy me anything my heart desired,
but in each case I have stuffed it up! Not in the way you may think,
but I'll come back to that further on.
Oh, I have had some trappings from the fruits of my labours,
With lots of unquestionable assistance from my darling Wife of many Years, Jenny, who by the way managed to also give birth to,
and raise 3 offspring. (The children are grown up now of course,
and will make a fascinating blog article another day.)
Referring back to the trappings, it included a great house on a private road in a very upmarket neighbourhood which we renovated and
put our stamp on it.
I had a Jaguar, one of 2 I have owned. I loved driving those cars, I never got sick of them.
Our daughter Lynne had a pony, and everything in life was at peace.
Then I got restless...Which brings us to the reason that I am not yet
a Millionaire.
So I was at home nursing a broken foot, thanks to a Sunday soccer match!
I am not known for hanging around the house watching TV or reading,
so having indulged myself Monday, On Tuesday I decided to continue
with replacing the gutters on the front of the house above the verandah, which I could lay on to work, still reaching the job in hand,
and therefore staying off of my broken hoof. (Its okay, I'm not going to say I fell off of the ladder or anything like that, although have you ever climbed a ladder hopping from one rung to the next on one leg?) (It was a single story house by the way!)
I did some work and come back down for lunch.
I was in a bad mood. I swear to you that this is how it happened and is completely true!
Out of the blue I said to Jen, I want to move....Now Jen loved that house, so did I, We had fruit trees in the garden, and a gate in the back hedge that led to a wood complete with pheasants. You would have to be stupid to even think of moving, So I was completely stunned when she agreed....
But I thought that I had to follow through on my proposal, (Me and my big mouth) I thought that If I put a high price on our lovely home It wouldn't sell, but I would be able to get some idea of its current value, (We had only lived there 2 years) To cut to the chase, I got up from the table and phoned the realter there and then. We made an appointment for him to come and list that very afternoon at 3.
He arrived at three, had a good look around, measured rooms, and made his notes and we sat down to have a cup of coffee while we
worked on the price that we were going to list it at, with a bit of local knowledge from the salesman.
Bear in mind at this point, that we had spent a great deal of time and money on renovations up to now and so it was important that we at least covered the cost of materials used. Plus electricians and plumbers etc. The rest I did myself, but you don't usually cover your own labour do you. You should, but its one of those weird laws of D.I.Y you never seem to get paid yourself. (Maybe thats why i'm not a millionaire yet! lol.
Anyway back to the memories.
The price I thought of, taking everything into account, (Don't forget that I didn't really Want to sell) so I doubled!! what we had paid for the house expecting the salesman to fall about laughing.
But being experienced in dealing with madmen... he agreed , and we signed the agreement.
That was Tuesday afternoon, On Thursday, TWO days later...the house had sold!! At OUR price!!
Was that the worse move that I had ever made? You bet, I have regetted and cursed that broken foot ever since. (I have to pass the blame onto something)
What has this rambling discourse to do with travel? ...I hear you
ask... I am glad that you asked.
I have always had the travel bug. As a boy I grew up near the sea, I would fish off of the local jetty, and without really realizing what or why, I would find myself gazing at the horizon and day dreaming about faraway places.. as young people do.
So we decided we would do a bit of travelling. short term, nothing too fancy, there were 5 of us to pay for. And make sure that we left enough money to buy a house with an adjoining business, or a business with a house. So we made sure that we had our stake for when we returned... and went off to fly around the world!
We purchased five round the world airline tickets, (No budget choices back then) plus pre-booked all the hotels and transfers.
We were going for 6 weeks, with some open enders if we wanted to extend, and could afford it.
(Did I tell you that we are Australians?)
So we headed off to London via Singapore, couple of nights.
Imagine our delight when in the first morning in London we got out of bed to about a foot of snow! Now we do have snow in Aussie, (we even have Alps) But not in our home state of South Australia.
So out youngest Son Leigh had never seen snow in his life! So he
couldn't beleive his luck.
Next we flew to Boston Mass. more snow, over the border to Canada
(New Brunswick, not far in) to visit old Family friends of my parents. Lots of Snow! Back to Boston, then to Chicago, change to hire car, and drive to Michigan to visit cousin. Delightfull visit, lots of snow, we didn't mind though, it was a novelty to us. We knew what to expect travelling in January. Those folks in the north live with that situation and it doesn't seem to phase them. Back to Chicago, Fly to
San Francisco and learned the meaning of that old joke about SFC,
#The coldest winter I ever spent...was the Summer I spent in San Francisco! # It was great!
You could easily spend a month in San Francisco and not run out of sites to visit. Starting with the famous Trams, a ride on them to the Piers, seafood, sidewalk novelty stalls, a trip to Alcatraz, all the things that I had dreamed of as a boy. The giant Redwoods, The famous Golden Gate bridge, expecting to see 'Dirty Harry' come around the corner. We even had dinner in a restaurant ,Hoolahans, that had featured in one of Clint Eastwoods movies. We had not planned that, we just happened to visit that establishment that night.
Dinner in Chinatown was another highlite.
From San Francisco we drove to Yosimite, an incredible exerience!
Stayed a couple nights, Great food, great views of mountains and a river.rushing past nearby. We would sit outside on the verandah surrounded by snow, drinking duty free brandys (Only Jen and I, lol)
to see how long we could last! (About half a bottle I think...I'm such a liar!)
From there down to Los Angles, Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, Seen my idol Frank Sinatra & Nancy, We were very lucky to find them both in Las Vegas at that time, Jens Idol Tom Jones!!
Plus, again with the cheap great food!
And the variety shows.
If you never go to anywhere else, try to visit Las Vegas, nothing else is quite like it.
Back to LA. and fly from LA to Hong Kong. Wow what a place, at the time it was still a British colony, but you would never have thoght it.
It was the Orient through and through. Huge food markets, a huge market that sold just about everything. We succumbed to an onyx chess set and a 12 setting canteen of cutlery, because it was so cheap. And we wanted them!
We visited Macau on the Hydrofoil from Hong Kong, just for the day.
One of my memories of that day was a soccer game played on a full size pitch.. with not a blade of grass on it! But the local players were obviously used to it.
From Hong Kong we flew to Singapore and then home to Australia.
We were very lucky, and a great finish to our World Trip, when the airline gave us a free upgrade to business class, so it was a wonderful end to a wonderful vacation. PS As the plane took of I went dropped off to sleep, and woke up as we were coming in to land in Melbourne!
I wanted to share that with you all, because that is probably the reason why I am not a Millionaire yet. Which brings me back to the beginning. Everytime we start on our way to a self funding lifestyle,
we decide to put matters on the backburner whilst we go on a cruise or visit our eldest Son Grant who lives in Sydney, works for the government, and divides his time all over the World... Sound Familiar?
So I think it is safe to say that we work to TRAVEL!
And why not, we only get one crack at this life, and I do not think we were meant to stay in one place. Do You?
You are probably thinking to yourself, 'Yeah, its easy for him to talk, I will never have that kind of money' YES YOU WILL.
If you want it bad enough it is in your power to GET it!
I am going to give you a couple of addresses that you are almost guaranteed to succeed, I say almost because it depends on you!
Once these programs are in place they are on 'AutoPilot'! earning you money while you sleep. All you have to do if you want riches, is 'Plug it In' and tweak for a couple of hours a day. The first one I am going to give you sets up a FREE website with 5 streams of income, on AutoPilot! and then sends you instructions on what to do EVERYDAY.
What more do you want, It cannot get easier than that!
To earn money from home in order to travel,
GO HERE:- http://www.TraderMaxx.info
Check out what you get for FREE, and join our team right away.
You will soon be soaring into the wide blue sky!
Find budget Holidays HERE:-
http://www.backpackingaroundtheglobe.com
PS I will include other money making at home sites in my next Blog.
Your very best friend, Mike Whittingham
