It took me a few years to get into the swing of living on hubby's income. There were two credit cards to pay off and bad habits to break so I was very interested when on A Current Affair one night I saw Fiona Lippey on the launch of the Simple Savings website. (See my header for the web address.) Everything she talked about rang bells with me and I decided to check it out. At first I didn't want to pay the (back then) $34 membership but curiousity got the better of me in the end and I joined up. Within 2 years I had cut my grocery spend in half and had learned lots of other ways to cut the bills. Then I won $200 in one of the Simple Savings competitions and also won a few months free membership and suddenly my savings were starting to grow.

I stopped and looked at our new budget and new spending habits and for the first time I began to realise that travelling wasn't so impossible after all. I sat down and thought about all the places I wanted to see. I had lived most of my life in England but hadn't seen a lot of it, so that was one priority. France and italy came to mind, too, but the main draws were the Caribbean and (don't laugh!) Antarctica. I have dreams of icebergs and glaciers. Extremes, I know.

My late father-in-law used to tell me a tale of his trip to Jamaica. He had forged his date of birth and joined the merchant navy in his teens. The way he spoke about the island and its people had me dreaming again. Those stories had put the Caribbean firmly back on my itinerary.

Then my long-held desire to see Antarctica peaked about 7 years ago when a friend of ours made a 2 month long expedition. His videos held me in absolute awe. I came home that evening telling my hubby that was where I was going to go as soon as I had saved up the $10,000 I would need. He was not amused but didn't really take me seriously.

I had some decisions to make. Where to go first, and when...