Well, it’s finally almost time to get on an airplane and fly for 8 hours to London England. This is probably the biggest adventure I’ve ever gone on in my life. It’s the first time I’ve been out of the country and I have to admit, I’m a little nervous.
This will definitely hurt the finances a bit. Luckily we are taking the hits in phases. We bought and paid for the tickets in March. That was a monthly credit card statement that I wasn’t thrilled to pay off at the end of the month, but the thought of paying interest on any of that money, outweighed the pain.
So, now it’s just a matter of what we spend when we get over there. It will be my wife, two year old daughter, and I. The good news is that, since my wife is from England, we’ll be staying with family while we are there. That is going to be a HUGE savings. I was talking to someone at work and they are also going over and will be paying upwards of $300 per night while they are there. That’s just for a hotel room. So, needless to say, we are happy about the lodging.
My mother in law, (yes the one that currently lives in New Orleans, or at least has a house there. (She hasn’t been to the house since the hurricane.)), is already in England. She’ll be there to help us out with our daughter and our hope is that my wife and I will be able to spend a night or two back in London by ourselves. We’ll be staying on the east coast of England, but we also have relatives back in London that we may be able to stay with. We also have some friends and family up NORTH in the York area, so that’s a possible trip too.
I plan to take some notes about the cost of various things in England. I’m very interested to see what it costs to live there. I’ve heard different stories about England that gives me the impression it’s very expensive to live there. I’m amazed at the amount of taxation they have. I’m not looking forward to short, luke warm showers, and I’m also anticipating the houses to be much smaller. My father in law has said that in order to live like my wife and I do here in the U.S., I’d have to be a neurosurgeon in England to have our home, cars and standard of living. Well, I’m way too dumb to be any kind of surgeon, so I don’t anticipate moving to England. I don’t think I could get used to it.
So, look forward to some interesting posts in early October about what it’s like to live, work, and SAVE money in England. I’m taking the laptop and will blog if I get a chance there, but I get the sense that even WIFI is not easy to find for free there. We’ll see.
If anyone has any advice about “must see” places, or can shed any light on what to expect there, please leave me a post!!