It is not easy to plan for something 5 years in advance. When I told family and friends in 2005 that we were going on this big holiday in 2010 they looked at me vaguely. Even my husband didn't take me seriously at first. In fact, when I talked about it and mentioned the projected costs he became worried I was overstepping the mark. But I ignored this and plodded on with my once a month shopping, petrol savings, shopping around for cheaper utilities providers and insurance policies. Anything that would increase the level of our savings. The growth was slow and sometimes wore me down. But I kept at it and over the next few years began to see some progress. I already had an itinerary in my head and knew what I was expecting from all this but then life began to get in the way.

Hubby's physical condition was not helping my plans. His busy working day doing manual labour was now beginning to affect his health. He was experiencing a lot of pain in his achilles tendon, his neck and in the tendons in his forearms. Our GP was prescribing more and more ant-inflammatories and other drugs to help him continue to work. I slowly began to see that it would be very difficult for him to continue to work full time until he reached retirement age. I knew I needed to work on a new plan, one that would enable my husband to retire at 60, in 2010. It was not going to be easy, I was giving myself only 2 or 3 years to pay off a mortgage that was scheduled to finish in 8. For a scary few months it looked as though my holiday plans might go all aglay as the poet once said, but I was having none of it. I could do both, I was sure I could. No-one else was though. Looked as though I was on my own with this...