[at-l] Financing trips

[jbullar1 at twcny.rr.com (Jim Bullard)]

At 03:43 AM 12/28/2004 -0500, David Jessop wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I've wondered, as a matter of curiosity, how people go about financing
>their trips? Certainly there is the normal job approach: have the trip
>in mind a long time before going and then save little by little. What
>about people who do trip after trip? Are these people who work six
>months out of the year or are doing their trips on retirement funds or
>what? What are some good ways to make money for trips? Since I came
>back to the States in September, I worked at a miserable data entry
>position here in New York and barely was making enough to finance my
>upcoming Florida Trail trip. I also have worked as a freelance
>translator on the side and was very fortunate that a few 1st rate jobs
>came through in Nov-Dec and this allowed me to quite my horrid job and
>work on those, while securing enough funds for this upcoming
>adventure. I feel really blessed about that. At the same time, I
>wonder what employment options there are for people who want to be on
>the trails as much as possible but need to finance their trips? Any
>thoughts on this? Just a matter of curiosity....
>
>David
>http://www.trailjournals.com/djessop

Pretty much the same way you finance anything you want badly enough to 
figure out how to do it. Save up, reduce expenses, sell stuff you no longer 
need or want as badly as you want whatever you are trying to finance. A few 
people start a fund raiser for some cause. "I'm hiking for [fill in the 
cause here] and need donations." Run around giving speeches about the cause 
and collecting money with the aim of collecting enough to finance the hike 
plus money for the cause. At least 2 AT journal books ("Walking the Dream" 
and "A Walk for Sunshine") are about hikes that were done for causes. If 
you have very good writing skills you might try arranging with a local 
newspaper to send home feature pieces written on the trail.

I have to go out after New Years and try to find what may turn out to be a 
"horrid job" for a few months. My pension pays all my fixed expenses but I 
have a *potential* opportunity to spend 3 weeks on the Colorado River in 
April as a member of a private rafting trip. A friend of mine holds the 
permit and thinks that some of the participants may drop out so he asked if 
I wanted to be on the "backup list". YES!!! If that doesn't pan out I can 
always spend the money hiking the AT for several weeks.