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If you lived a bit leaner now, your cash assets would grow more quickly, but you also need to figure into the picture the cost of a trip or two. That's gonna take a bite out of whatever you've tucked aside. Trip expense is largely determined by how much hand holding you need when abroad, you mentioned you are ex-military, if you traveled extensely while in the military you would probably be okay for solo trips. In any case, figure a grand for travel, (+ or-), and $30-50 dollars per day lodging, depending on how well you like to stay in hotels, or do you prefer an apartment and do some of your own cooking. Additionally, count on at least $100 per day for walking around money for dates and meals. You can do the math as well as I, but toting it all up, the average guy will fork over about $3,100 minimum, for a two week excursion. This is doing it solo, using an agency will run $250 - 300 a day plus airfare and date money, so that trip will set you back upwards of $4,500+ for two weeks.
If you find the girl of your dreams, count on some additional expenses for phone calls, little gifts and such, just to keep her interested while you try to grow and develop the relationship. And you will, no doubt be making another trip or two before all is said and done, so multiply the above numbers by however many trips you think you'll need to make to close the deal.
There are also additional costs/fees for filing the paperwork for her visa, as well as her airfare across the pond once you've nailed all the other stuff down. I would suggest you think in terms on at least two trips, for a total of $6,200 - 9,000, plus her paperwork/visa costs at about $200 or so, then her airfare will run another thousand, so on the conservative side you are looking at about $10,000 just to get her here. And that's doing it in just two trips.
There have been guys who've done it cheaper and they can show you how they did it, but from my experience, $10K per year looks like a fair guesstimate.
But I'd say it's all doable on a $45K annual salary, you just don't have a lot of fat in the budget to trim at the moment. You will have to be watching your pennies carefully to do this without incurring a big debt down the road.
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You can almost cut your airfare costs in half if you travel during the off season (Fall, Winter early Spring) You should plan on at least two trips, but the time between trips in much dependent upon your successfulness of the first trip. I think the guys are a little high on their estimates. I am sure that you could pull off a one week trip for $1,500 or so. You also have to consider where you will be traveling in the FSU looking for Russian mail order brides. Moscow is very expensive as are some of the larger cities, whereas the smaller cities are much cheaper
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Okay, I am going to try out a kinder, gentler Clue Bat. Maybe a light tap here and there. We'll see if it works. Hmm. I'd kill the credit cards, post haste. You might consider a home-equity loan, b/c the interest rate on that will be deductible, rather than credit card interest, which is not, although there will be some loan fees, I am sure. At least look into it.
Of course, this assumes you will not F-up and lose your house. (I have no idea what your job situation is, and you seem to not have much of an rainy-day fund built up).
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