Wv Travel Expense: Fill & Download for Free

I was a member of WorldVentures for several years. First, I will tell you that I had never had more fun, met so many great people and developed greater personal awareness in myself and my relationships.If you are considering joining WorldVentures to make money, you will be VERY hard pressed to be successful. As is clearly stated in their Income Statement, only a small percentage (22.244%) of members make any money and an even much smaller percentage ( about 4%) even make $500 a year. About 0.01% of their members make even $20,000 a year (care to buy a lottery ticket instead?)..BEFORE expenses. During that time you will be spending lots of your time and money in local travel, meetings, membership events and…possibly even a vacation or two….IF you are lucky. You will be greatly encouraged to join at the higher levels of membership as you need to “buy the product to be the product to sell the product”. So, your annual membership costs alone will be over $1,000 in the first year.If you are interested in traveling, they do have some great vacation values. Many of the values can be matched or similar trips even beat the WV packages. The real plus, is when you go on many of these trips you will be with other members which creates a sort of instant bond and you will most likely have a better time because of it.Is it a pyramid? In a way every job is. Is it a scam? It depends on the message you are buying into. Will you make money (net after expenses and time)? In all likelihood, no.Can you receive great personal training, meet wonderful people and possibly have the time of your life? Yeah, that is a real possibility.Over our five years of membership we spent thousands of dollars in dues, fees and expenses. We traveled to different parts of the country for training events and actually went on ONE super deal vacation cruise. We had an absolute blast on the cruise and developed several friendships that we maintain to this day. Some of the training events can literally be life changing.So, think of it as joining a club. A sort of fraternal club. You can’t be effective in the Rotary, Knights of Columbus, Elks, or whichever unless you invest a lot of time and money. You can change your life, or the life of others. You can meet fantastic people…and a few you won’t like, but you’ll get over them. BUT, you don’t join these clubs to make money. You might if you are lucky, persevering, and work every angle for all you can, but in most cases, you won’t make money. If that idea intrigues you, consider joining. If that is not “what you signed up for”, then you will be disappointed.If you want to be independent, set your own hours and make a ton of money, start your own business, it does not really matter which one. Then join the local Chamber of Commerce, Rotary or BNI/LeTip group. Your odds are better.

In 1994 I moved from Huntington, WV (pop. ~60k) to San Francisco, CA, where I lived until mid 2011, when my wife and I moved to an apartment on the south side of Lake Merrit in Oakland.I lived in several neighborhoods in SF, but primarily in SOMA (9 years in a place off Folsom between 7th and 8th) and Twin Peaks/Forest Hill (7 years in an apartment at the intersection of Portola and Woodside). Those two neighborhoods are night and day, by the way.My wife is an Oakland native. One of the reasons we moved here was to reduce the travel time required to visit her parents (who live in Montclair).I'll start with this part of the question first: Do I go back to San Francisco a lot?Several times a week - but it's for work. I might find five or six social reasons to return to the city each month but I usually just stay late from work rather than come home and then go back.Was it worth the move? Absolutely. And in this part of the answer you'll see what I enjoy.Our place in Oakland is smaller than the space we left in SF, but that really isn't an issue (the old place had a weird lay out and lots of "unusable" space).Our current apartment has a deck that you could land a fighter jet on and a giant tree overhanging it. We have a garden on it that we can grow tomatoes and sunflowers in. We've space for a lemon tree, two palm trees, two tables, eight chairs, etc., etc. I've had smaller apartments than our deck.Our rent is 2/3rds what it was in the city.In SF, my commute was a 10 minute walk through the fog down to Forest Hill station and then a 15 minute ride on the train to Montgomery station. It's MUNI, so the stress of the train breaking down in the tunnel was fairly high.In Oakland, my commute is a 12 minute walk in the sun along Lake Merritt to BART and then a 12 minute train ride to Montgomery station.In SF, we had a grocery across the street. It was a Molly Stone's, so crazy expensive - but high quality. In Oakland, we have easy access to a Lucky (walking) and then a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's (driving, 5 minutes).On Saturdays there is a farmer's market on the lake, across from a movie theater, an awesome bar (Heart and Dagger) and a Lanesplitter's pizza.We walk to serious food. For instance, Sidebar has the best hamburgers in the Bay Area.My religion can best be described as "Militant Apollo Fundamentalist". I am a sun worshipper. It's crazy how sunny Oakland is. It can be chilly and overcast in San Francisco and 12 minutes later I'm in Oakland and it's sunny and 10 degrees warmer. That's typical, mind you: the 10 degree difference.We like to go to Tahoe. Starting from Oakland rather than San Francisco easily cuts thirty minutes to an hour off the trip (in both directions).I find that I talk to strangers more often in Oakland. No one is "too cool".Was it worth making the move?Absolutely.Don't move here, though. We've got enough people.

Just about everywhere, your expectations get set by what you’ve experienced before. I was born and raised in Southern California (LA county), and moved to Northern California (SF Bay) about a dozen years ago. Northern California is more expensive and the temperatures are cooler, but I find more things I like to do in Southern California. It doesn’t seem hard to live here if you’ve done it all your life.On the other hand, having lived here I can’t imagine living anywhere else—and I’ve traveled quite a bit.When I was growing up, snow was a convenience. In the winter, if you wanted to “go to the snow” you did. You just drove up the mountains for a couple of hours. Otherwise, you jumped in the swimming pool or went to the beach, or went for a bike ride, or whatever you felt like doing that day. Why would anyone live in a place where they couldn’t get away from the snow all winter? We do have winter sports here, and three NHL hockey teams that went to the Stanley Cup playoffs this season, btw.I personally love the water. I’ve never lived more than an hour from the ocean. Why would I want to? I can swim and play in the waves (sadly, I don’t surf) all year long. Sometimes the water is cold, but there are other beaches where it’s warmer. It must be very sad to live somewhere that you’ll never ever see an ocean. I’m currently 30 minutes from the Pacific and 300 meters from the San Francisco Bay. I have a salt water dock in my back yard, and go kayaking whenever I want. How could I move away from that?When I go “home” to LA, I like to do touristy things now, like movie studio tours. Paramount has some really good ones, and I’m going to try Warner Bros next time. Universal Studios is mostly a theme park these days, but I might try it again some time.Speaking of theme parks, of course we have Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Legoland, and Great America, as well as a handful of Six Flags parks like Magic Mountain. I don’t think any other state has quite as many or as much variety, although of course there are good ones here and there (like Cedar Park).Personally, I’m an avid hiker and backpacker. I’ve been a Scout leader since 2006, and I enjoy the countless places to hike and camp here. I live near the Redwoods now, and I find this fascinating since my childhood forests were all pine forests. I can hike locally or in the High Sierra, and I’ve even hiked and camped Donner Pass. [Don’t mess with me. The Breen family all survived the Donner Party expedition. ;-) ] I don’t think I could live someplace with no mountains. No disrespect to West Virginia, but the highest point in WV is only 4,863 feet (Spruce Knob), while the San Gabriel mountains where I grew up have two peaks over 10,000 feet. How could I give that up?Real estate prices here are undoubtedly high. Possibly the highest in the nation. But as others have pointed out, so are the wages. In some places here the minimum wage is $15 per hour, which is TWICE the national minimum wage. And prices and wages keep increasing, too. My wife’s parents moved to Houston from Northern California around 1992, and they’ve been trying to move back since 2000. The trouble is, housing prices in other places don’t rise as fast as they do here, so every year they get further and further behind. A 1500 square foot condo in my town costs more than double what my mother in law can get for her 3500 square foot house in Houston. So if you sell your real estate here and move, you’re probably never coming back.I hope by now you get the idea. If you’re coming from outside, it might seem hard to live in California. But from the perspective of someone born here who loves it, it would be impossible to live anywhere else.P.S. I didn’t mention Napa/Sonoma, San Diego, or dozens of other places. My fingers got tired from typing. ;-)