See Jane Get Rich

I have moved back to DC from my Home State and I have been very busy cleaning, donating things to Goodwill and listing some furniture on Craigslist.  The Big Move that I am referring to is the end of my lease in July.  Right now, I am living in a 1 bed room apartment and after I graduate I will likely end up sharing a house or apartment with other people.  So,  I need to get rid/sell things so I am able to downsize. 

• State #1 Bar Exam : July 27-28, 2010
• State #2 Bar Exam: July 28 and 29, 2010
• Apt. Lease Ends: July 31, 2010

I have a big decision to make about whether or not I want to extend my lease by one month so that I would move out at the end of August instead of July.  Do I really want to take the hardest exam of my life and then come back and move out of my apartment?  If I can avoid paying one extra month’s rent then I definitely do. 

It also depends on what exactly I will do in August.  Traditionally, law student’s do a post-bar trip after the bar exam.  I haven’t decided if I will and if so, where I will go.  If  I take a trip then I need to be out of the apartment so I can use the August rent for the trip.

There are things that take up space, you don’t use it but nevertheless it is hard to get rid of.  The perfect example is yearbooks.  I threw out my middle school yearbooks.  But the high school yearbooks were more difficult.  I ended up tearing out the pages from my high school year books that I wanted to keep and putting the rest in recycling.

Last night I came across a really good article on NY Times about the practice of exchanging work to travel the world with sailors.   Sometimes I come across articles and websites that make me go “Whoa, this is awesome!” and this is one of those “Whoa” articles. 

According to Sailing the Caribbean, the Frugal Way, a great way to travel the Caribbean (and the world) is to search for sailors looking for crew members.  In exchange for your work you get to sail around the Caribbean for free.  There is no need to have experience sailing because you can work as a deckhand or a cook.   There are sailors out there who will take unskilled people and teach them the basics about sailing.  If you can’t find one of these then an alternative will be to work and pay a small fee to the boat as the author Matt Gross did.  He paid $55 a day to work a few hours for the boat S.V. Illusion and had a great low-cost vacation.  Another option in addition to the S.V. Illusion is the  Karaka.  The Karaka’s  shared expenses total about $150 a week.
Read the rest of this entry »