My Quandary
In the blink of an eye my travel funds for the upcoming year have been reduced by 50% or possibly more. A poor financial decision on my part is responsible and I accepted the risk knowing that I could lose my ass and I did. I’ve toyed with day trading for several years now. I’ve had up days and down days, regardless, I usually maintain quite a bit of confidence in my ability to generate at least a little bit of income from the practice. One of the fundamentals of day trading is to never hold a position overnight – and especially never hold a margin position overnight. I did and my capital balance suffered dearly for it.
On to the quandary. I haven’t actually taken a close look at the final impact that the market forces had on my bottom line, but I truly believe I will have enough left over to still take a year off and travel. 
If I were to go ahead with traveling it would be a compromised version of my earlier plans. My original plan was centered nearly entirely around skiing. After my departure from the South Pole I am going to Hawaii for about four weeks. After that, I was to spend the northern hemisphere ski season in Jackson Hole – the best skiing on the face of the earth. Lift-served skiing in Jackson Hole ends the first week in April. It was then that I was planning on making my exodus to Argentina. The southern autumn months were to be spent touring around Argentinian Patagonia with the southern winter being spent skiing at Cerro Catedral near San Carlos de Bariloche.
Living in Jackson Hole is an expensive proposition. Real estate prices there are astronomically high and over the past decade or so it has often been said that the millionaires are being run off by the billionaires. Nonetheless, there does exist a counter-culture of ski bums cum short-order cooks – so it is possible, but not easy, to spend a winter in Jackson Hole, it’s just that the shoestring has to be a bit fatter, and it has to fit through a smaller hole than you would normally expect. Another consideration is the cost of skiing. Once the rent is paid, if you want to be a ski bum, there’s the added expense of gear and of lift tickets – though many of the less affluent hike for their turns – the corporations haven’t figured out a way to charge for this yet. I hope the point has been made that without a significant budget, skiing for a year is out of the question.
When I woke up to my massive margin call and realized that I wouldn’t be taking that year-long ski holiday, my first thoughts turned to seeking out a new contract to return to the South Pole for another winter to earn back the investment capital which I had lost. Such a move would allow me approximately 12 weeks off – wow, seeing that written down I almost feel guilty for wanting more time off – I can’t imagine that many of my contemporaries back in the states get anywhere near that amount of time off… During my time off I figure I could get a bit of skiing in..and there’s the trip to Hawaii that is pretty definitely going to happen, so the time off will include some travel and some skiing, again, probably more than people who have full time jobs – shoot, still more time off than a school teacher gets.
Another option would be to seek a contract position in Iraq. If it’s really only all about the money then there’s no reason I shouldn’t pursue this avenue. Somehow or another I happened to fall into a career path which gave me highly sought after skills in war zones. This, in turn, has also driven up stateside wages for people in my craft – point is, I could sign up for a one-year contract and increase my gross pay by a little bit but my net would be far greater owing to the tax free status. An advantage to this scenario is that I could conceivably spend the entire ski season in Jackson Hole. Disadvantages are that while the yearly salary is quite high, the hourly is quite low. I.E. one is expected to work 84 hours per week for this money – my “hourly” rate in Antarctica is quite a bit higher. Other disadvantages of note are that if I chose this route, I would totally miss the window of opportunity for next winter at Pole and a job in Iraq is a complete unknown, which in addition to being a disadvantage, is also a source of excitement.
The third option that I see would be to go ahead and take the time off and spend it traveling in South America. In this scenario I would hang around the States long enough to spend the holidays with family and then use FF miles to reduce my expense for getting to South America. Once on continent I would try to find culturally rich places to spend weeks at a time in – again reducing my expenses while (hopefully) enhancing my cultural experiences. I have put down a 50% deposit on lodging in Bariloche, where, if I went with this plan I would go ahead and use that lodging, but try to get it for different dates than I had originally planned.
Enter the girlfriend factor. Try as I might to keep my job/financial decisions separate from my love life, the two are most definitely very tightly intertwined. I’ve spent nearly nine months now geographically isolated from my girlfriend and I fear that further separation could do irreparable harm to the relationship. It would be easy enough for her to come along on a winter at Pole if she so desired, but that’s her decision to make and she’s not sure whether or not she wants the title of “Polie” – for her, that’s a scary unknown and would mean giving up the comfortable knowns in her life – though she also recognizes the opportunity as a source of excitement.
The “go ahead and travel” option might be really good for me as it would take me out of my comfort zone. It might also be good for this site as I could put a different spin on the place – something along the lines of the reader could follow my budget and that always seems to be a huge question amongst would-be-travelers. They all want to know how much to budget…might be sort of fun. The downside is that with such reduced capital, I find myself without the residual income from it…what should I do? See the poll to the right to help me figure it out.
Will @ September 30, 2008
Comments (3)
Skiing in the states is an expensive option unless you can be a guide.
Your budget would certainly go farther south of the border but you’d have less skiing – Tough one – good luck!
Sorry to hear about the financial loss. I tried betting on currencies once b/c the dollar sucks and little did I know you couldn’t buy and hold…one night i decided to keep it overnight and the company called the margin at the end of the day and I got wiped clean.
I say go home to the g/f then go travel….avoid Iraq…
Getting wiped out margin trading all the way from the South Pole certainly blows. You’re not alone. My own dreams of early retirement are certainly undergoing a whole lot of revision right now, I can tell you that. Honestly, knowing you a little bit, i can’t imagine it is ever “all only about the money.” I’m sure at one level you’re feeling like you spent more than a year freezing your ‘nads off, and for what? But I wouldn’t suddenly go chasing dollars to plug the hole. I’m basically with Matt, there in the previous comment. No to Iraq, head home and hang out with the babe and make sure you don’t lose that much more important good thing, and then do whatever traveling is realistic on the remaining stash. If it helps, Argentina is WAY cheaper than Jackson Hole!