Hi Yougurtz, just addressing a piece of your post

As of now I sometimes work more than 20 hours a day, 7 days a week, until I have collapsed even, and I am still thousands of dollars away from making my deadline for August-September, 2014. If I don’t do it this summer, I have to wait for next summer, because it can’t be during the colder months.

I know how exciting it is to pick the coolest place in the world to visit. I admire your tenacity, but I worry about how much time (20hrs/day) you are spending to meet your goal. You may be able to pull this off for a while, but it is very difficult to sustain, even if you are the perfect specimen.

Have you thought about expanding your goal to accomplish your trip from one to two years? I assumed you calculated the costs based on accomplishing your goal in one year and how much work it would take to get there. Crunch the numbers if you use a two year target date. My guess is you could back off on work and enjoy your life today. You may be able to save a little more so you can stay longer or upgrade your ticket to business or first class. Long trips in the back of the bus are horrible, you are cramped in like sardines, screaming kids, no leg/arm room, and you might have to buy you in-flight McDonalds at $20. In Business Class you sometimes get the sleeping pods/cocoons with movies and video games, good food and booze all free. First class is even better. If one of your goals is photography once you get to your destination, you could spend a little money studying/practicing techniques, you might want to invest in a second camera so you have one with a close up lens, the other a distance lens.

My bet is if you back off just a little, you will have a trip you will never forget.

Do you remember the Hare and the Turtle story? The hare takes off like a bat out of hell, but gets easily distracted and instead of picking a direct route to the finish line, the hare visits everyone and everything. The turtle, knowing that he is slow by nature, knew he had to be methodical, one foot after the other. The turtle refused to get distracted, stuck to his plan and wins the race.

I have no doubt if you give your planning and savings efforts a little more time, you will have a far better experience. Hell you might even look on match.com for the location you want to go do, develop a long distance pen pal and when you get there you'll have your own private tour guide.

Just a thought from someone who has done the 20hrs/day and when I got to the vacation location I spent the first four days catching up on my sleep.