Friday, February 27, 2009

Moving on up to the east side to a deluxe apartment in the sky


That's right folks for the first time in our lives, we are moving east of Yonge Street. For you non-locals, let me explain. Ask any Torontonian; this is a big deal. If you grow up on one side of Yonge Street chances are, baring any extenuating circumstances, you stay on that side of Yonge Street. No idea why but it's the truth. But after 35 years, west of Yonge I'm making the move east. Sure it's only for 17 days but it's still a pretty big deal.

In order to get here, we had to purge our apartment of 1024 cds, 843 books, 165 dvds, 42 playstation games, and all our furniture. We did it. But through a combination of craigslist, donations to goodwill and the furniturebank.org we did it. And all our remaining worldy possessions now reside in a 5x10 storage unit. We made almost $3000 from our sales. And there were a few tears shed as we packed up.

But that means that tomorrow when we check into our temporary far east deluxe apartment in the sky, we'll truly be starting over with just the packs on our back.

So where are we now?

location: Toronto
departure: March 17, 2009
savings: $49,540
return fund: £7,455

4 comments:

Cheryl said...

well? how is it???

liz and adrian said...

The hotel is actually nicer than I expected. Not fancy but better than any holiday inn or best western i've stayed in.

The only thing that sucks is that the hotel internet access is $20/day and I'm having problems connecting to the $30/month one_zone from our hotel room, meaning that at the moment I can only get online at starbucks around the corner.

Anonymous said...

Congrats! You are almost leaving! I am planning an RTW myself. I have just read all your postings from the beginning. They are great, only constructive criticism I have is put "next" and "previous" on each one, to make it easier to read your whole story. I am still wondering how you saved so mucc money in such a short time, did you sell your organs or your cars? ;-) Best of luck! I will be following you! Btw, even though I now live in Europe, I am from Honduras, so if you need to spend some time in the capital on your way somewhere, let me know. I can hook you up with accomodation and entertainment.

liz and adrian said...

Thanks trababe. I'm glad you're enjoying the blog. I hope we can keep it entertaining while on the road.

Sorry about the back and forward buttons - I'll see what I can do about that in the template. My www skills are well, non-existent, so be patient.

How did we save the money? I think the answer is simply hardcore budgeting - really.

Two years ago, I looked at our spending habits and realized that we were still living in the same apartment with the same expenses as we did 7 years before but making more money. Yet we weren't saving much more. So I stripped our budget back what it was 7 years previously. It was a really tight one and meant a very limited fun budget - in fact my of my old co-workers enjoyed mocking my thriftiness. But it was only for 2 years and it meant that we were able to sock a lot of money away for this once in a lifetime trip. If you want something bad enough you'll find a way.