10 million facebook points from your 'round the world' photo albums
Do you have a passion for photography and can you do something in that field or are these just holiday snaps? £15K can set you up as a wedding/portrait/commercial/paparazzi photographer.
I do think with £15k you could make some good positive changes (as well as some negative changes: coke and hooker habit?)
With about a 1/4 of that Mrs Mugsy and I chucked in our engineering consultancy jobs in the UK, she took a plane, I took a self drive hired 7.5 tonne truck and moved our life,including 1 1/2 year old son to France. Mrs Mugsy has a similar job in France, and I work freelance for my old company, either from home (near the alps!) or away on international projects. We won. We still think 'this is to good to be true'. We are in a financial situation which we could never imagine being in the UK. And in a few years time I'm thinking of retraining as a European Mountain Leader, taking people out into the hills.
I like your thinking, and wish you the best.
Not enough money to make a huge difference really. A years retraining or a damn good adventure or a good chunk towards a deposit on a house.
I'd probably go for a adventure before settling down in the OPS position - actually that is what I did.
Re-train in somethign that allows you to work as a contractor? More moeny and as much (although unpaid) holliday as you want?
thanks for the replies! really interested in the true life stories of people making a change to their own lives. i'm gonna be readin sneakily at work today with not much chance to reply but to answer a few comments;
pacific crest trail is on the to-do list!
i have worked as a photographer in the past doing a lot of freelance stuff for car and bike magazines. i'd rather keep it as a hobby to be honest as it was a constant pain never knowing where the next job was coming from.
What do you want to do? 
You don't need £15,000 to change your life. Just courage and resolve.
Any day is a good day to start. All your past is just that, the past, you can't change it. Your future is something you can do something about.
Each day you are making the decision to continue the same old, or start in a new direction.
Just do it.
i have worked as a photographer in the past doing a lot of freelance stuff for car and bike magazines. i'd rather keep it as a hobby to be honest as it was a constant pain never knowing where the next job was coming from.
Maybe I'm way off the mark here, but judging by your previous posts where you sound a bit diffident, did you ever really give it a proper go? Sounds like you must have some talent if you were getting published regularly.
I think you're right with your decision on photography. You can have the best kit in the world, and 15 grand would buy a fair bit, but if you haven't got an amazing subject specific portfolio and contacts it'll be a struggle. Like you said the downside is the uncertainty of the next paying job. The advent of the digital camera has spawned an awful lot of smudgers and the market is saturated, it has also seen a reduction in fees(Booo!) Don't let that pile of negative and twisted bile put you off though!
Take your time in making a decision, have a good thorough look around, speak to people who are in careers you quite fancy, just do plenty of research. Don't complete a degree in Bionics to realise out you actually want to be Ray Mears.
You'll get there.
Maybe I'm way off the mark here, but judging by your previous posts where you sound a bit diffident, did you ever really give it a proper go? Sounds like you must have some talent if you were getting published regularly.
diffident no not really. i've got a lot of experience in website and graphic design, a bit of writing, a lot of photography. but finding full time employment doing any of that is bloody hard. so while i've done some work that i really enjoyed i've always been relying on the income from various part time jobs.
at the minute my job is tolerable and for the past couple of years i've lacked any interest in anything 'arty farty' and started to wish i'd learned something more practical and useful.
i started this thread purely to bounce some crazy ideas around. some realistic, some fantastical. i'm waiting for inspiration to strike. it's just been taking its time.
use the 15k and get the **** out of this country! put a deposit on a house in NZ or the Alps.
Ah! Just twigged who you are! £15K party please, replete with ladies of the night and copious amounts of good cognac 
Ah! Just twigged who you are! £15K party please, replete with ladies of the night and copious amounts of good cognac
took you long enough!
i like the house in the alps idea. i'm going exploring in the easter holidays around northern italy and a bit of riding int he alps. i plan to check out job opportunities while i'm there. who knows what will catch my eye. actually i'm booked up with switchbacks in december.i might not come back. the way the UK is at the minute i might be better off weathering the storm in a shack in the spanish hills.
Get Yerself SAP Certified and earn over £100k pa, then marry the teacher and live happily ever after.
that looks cool! once i was done playing in the mountains and with my wallet 9 grand lighter what the hell would i do with those kinds of qualifications?
I've recently had a similar, er, dilemma as the result of an entirely unexpected inheritance from a relative - the late Major Noteeth RE, God bless him.
I've spent so long living like a thrift store bum, I didn't know what to think... so I just stuck it in the bank. As long as I have ready access to trails/woods/a library, I don't need to spend it... just yet.
Couple of handguns and a plane ticket. Robbery,fly off somewhere cheap and get yer burd to come meet ya.or Retrain to go offshore. One of the few options left with (god forbid) a career path. Time off to ride as well. Only problem with that is its rubbish.
the way the UK is at the minute i might be better off weathering the storm in a shack in the spanish hills.
Spain's loads worse off than the UK, so unless your plan is to simply live off your 15K doing nothing I'd stick to visiting here on holiday...
I'd spend the money on an OU degree, something which could lead into a career in something. Although if your photography was good enough to make ends meet, I'd go with that as a first option - it'd be a lot more rewarding than an office job in the long run. (Grass is always greener, and all that - I'm stuck in the office job...)
"a man is a success if he gets up in and morning and goes to bed at night and inbetween does the things that make him happy" Bob Dylan
Tomm my boy, ive lived that very quote to the hilt and sometimes beyond. Im 35 and only just coming to the end of my first year of whats been called by some a real job or real work. Before now, I always just followed my dreams, raced full time, travelled,partyed hard and worked as and when required to keep the dream alive. Im not a bum or hippy type, I just have lived my life at a pace that has suited me, yet Ive still managed to get my own gaff, motor, mrs and all that other stuff,that mates and folks have been worried about missing the so called boat, on. But most of all my boy, ive got no regrets.
Live it, or forever end up wondering what could have been ...........
I was out of work for about 3 months and begining to wonder if I was ever going work again, with the lack of jobs and about 20 people applying for one job,
I had exactley 15,000 in savings so i took the plunge and bought a milk round belive it or not, best job I have ever had TBH if you like working out side
so yes it really did change my life, I was in a really dead end job, not happy at all, and now its a lot better
Watching this with interest as strangly enough I've been offered 16K today for redundancy, am very tempted I must say.
A friend did something like this a few years back. He was a motorbike courier in sunny Norn Iron and was a victim of a couple of RTAs. Insurance brought him about 8k - enough money to take himself off to Oz and the US to be trained as a deep sea diver and ROV operator. Now lives in Florida and works 3 months a year, racing bikes in his (ample) spare time.
A friend did something like this a few years back. He was a motorbike courier in sunny Norn Iron and was a victim of a couple of RTAs. Insurance brought him about 8k - enough money to take himself off to Oz and the US to be trained as a deep sea diver and ROV operator. Now lives in Florida and works 3 months a year, racing bikes in his (ample) spare time.
THIS is what i'm talking about.
i know 15 grand is a tiny sum of money to some lucky people but i should have called the thread "if you only had 15 grand and wanted to change your life as much as possible how would you do it?"
i'm definitely leaning towards training of some sort that i would never usually be able to afford that might get me into some niche industry. helicopter pilot is already scratched off the list, prices are mental.
Rope access? NEBOSH?
I could buy some plywood and Danish oil and beeswax!
I don't need to spend it... just yet.
Ooh, look, Noteeth, look what Elf has got what you want....
You want them, don't you? 
Yes, you do....
I started out doing the degree (engineering) -> blue chip, management potential, route, but after a couple of years got fed up and left to go windsurfing. Then I tried starting a business and did a few years of low paid but fun/lifestyle work.
At that point I was in my late 20s and in a similar situation to you - i.e. unemployable by anyone I'd consider working for.
So I took out a career development loan and went back to uni to do an MA in public relations in order to make myself more employable in a field I was more interested in.
I then started at the bottom in a PR agency, became a manager and then went to work for a client managing their agencies.
Probably cost me less than your £15K in order to get the qualification and live for a year whilst I did it.
I'm sure I could have done "very well" for myself. HOWEVER...
... after a few years of that I got fed up again, went freelance, started a photo business and spent a lot of time looking after my kids and doing up houses.
Of course it helps that I married a *teacher* who has a steady job that smoothes out the peaks an troughs of our finances (and who doesn't seem to mind me doing things in an unorthodox fashion).
Anyway, the point of this ramble is that yes, £15K is easily enough to set your life off in a different direction. However, you may find that you're just not cut out to do that and you'll end up reverting to type.
But "rapidly approaching 30" is nothing to worry about anyway.
Really it's up to you. You just have to decide what you want to do with your life and get on with it as best you can, but in my opinion you are best off doing stuff you are interested in rather than chasing money.
Not something I would recommend for anyone (!) but the surgery the NHS are funding in the New Year is £15.5k to fund privately. It will change my life - no doubt about that.
Rachel
Rachel -= not sure its a good solution for the original poster but you never know
Well, you know, try anything once 
I bought a failing business off a bloke for a lot less than £15k, turned it around and now do very nicely thanks.
Changed my life, i'm the boss now.
I'm in the opposite position, just turned 30, been working in the oil and gas industry for 12 years, company job, fair bit of equity in a house, beautiful GF, DINKY, 30 weeks off work a year.
Even though I'm on a smooth bit of the treadmill, there is still a part of me that want to knock it all on the head an do get a Canadian working Holiday visa for 12 months.
but yeah, a proportion of that 15k could be spent getting the right qualifications for an Offshore Job where you can have the same lifestyle as you have now 50% of the time plus enough income to live pretty comfortably. with the rest I'd say a house deposit is the way to go.
My missus and I are selling our solar powered converted live aboard lifeboat. It's still a project, but 15k would pay for the remaining work and then some. It'll be up on ebay again soon.
It certainly changed our lives, shame other things did too. We're landlubbers again.
The thing about 15k is it about your life or both you and your partner, what does she want out of life? Fifteen grand don't go far if suddenly you are three.
Personally I'd take the advice of the guy that said down under, there's more opportunity, higher wages better living standard less **** up economy, this country I fear is well screwed for many years to come, even if you do make it comfortable, what's to like? Crap weather, overcrowded, terrible inequality, badly governed, no place to commit a young family to.
You didn't say what your qualifications are or what your current job is, totally agree with the photography, i spent a wasted bit of life and at a time when you really did need skill to become one, didn't really look back once i'd set my course on what i really wanted.
Anyway do something, don't waste or squander the potential it offers you, use it to get out..
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