Desiree introduces herself

I was born 3rd May 1960 in Windhoek South West Africa now known as Namibia. I grew up in Namibia on a small holding just outside Windhoek. I’m the youngest of 3. I have a sister and brother considerably older than me. I loathed school and was happy when my school days ended. I trained as a travel agent but as there was little work in that field in Windhoek at the time, my father employed me as his PA. Talk about chucking me in the deep end. I loved it. My father Des Mathews was a very prominent businessman in Namibia – chairman and later secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, he founded the Association of Mining Companies, was a director of Barclays bank
and later on chairman. Founded the local building society and also had his own trust company where he handled insolvent and deceased estates, was company secretary to a host of mining companies and gave financial advice to foreign dignitaries etc. I learned a lot working for him and grew up in a
very business oriented world. My father took no risks and he’d have
approved of your course and its approach to trading. I inherited his caution.

I married in 1981 and moved with my husband Peter to South Africa for the next 5 years. During that time I had 2 children. Tanya now 27 and married in Portland Oregon, and Iain 23 who’s just completed his Masters in advanced Mechanical Engineering.

In 1986 we moved back to Namibia and managed a 110 000 acre private game reserve. We had 10 chalets for guests and our boss was a surgeon in
Switzerland who wanted his little share of Africa. We had an interesting life there. We raised countless orphaned and captive bred animals from cheetah, leopard, lynx, numerous antelope, you name it. Many started life
off in our home, in a tiny box next to my bed so I could feed them every 4 hours. Living so far in the sticks and with loads of servants at hand I had plenty of time to spend with the animals. My children much to my regret had
to attend boarding school and as the schools in Africa left a lot to be desired and to give them a good education and one that would be recognised world wide we had no option but to send them away to boarding school abroad. They attended high school and college in St Louis Missouri. Tanya got her BA majoring in graphic design and Iain picked up degrees in Math and Physics.

With the kids at boarding school I had more time on my hands and between helping my husband raise the animals, run a self catering outfit I felt I needed to broaden my education as Namibia’s future was iffy. I studied Graphology the science of handwriting analysis and then continued on to forensic document examination. As that didn’t bring much work and was more a qualification to nurture my love of forensics I decided I had to learn something concrete and enrolled in a college in Cape Town and studied web design via correspondence. This came in handy as in 2000 our boss handed the game reserve over to another outfit and we had to leave. We moved to Scotland. My husband became factor on an estate and I took over the management of their holiday houses. I started my own business designing websites and have been doing that ever since. 

Trading has always been of great interest of mine but I couldn’t do it in Africa. Moving over to the UK that idea was shelved for the time being although my husbands’ cousin gave me books on how to go about it. Forex always appealed to me more. 

In 2004 I divorced and moved to Perth Scotland. I continued letting out the holiday homes and running my own web design business which in the meantime has grown as my fiancé Leigh Ross has joined me. He does the marketing, I the design work. 

As Leigh is a pilot and lives in the USA, I split each month by spending two weeks in the UK and the other two in Pennsylvania. In the UK I start trading from 9am and in the US 5am. With jet lag that can be as early as 3:30am. It’s taken a bit of getting used to but I love it so much I don’t mind getting up early to trade.

August 2008 things changed drastically when I found Johns course on Forex for beginners. I’d been working 10 to 14 hour days 7 days a week and got fed up having to put my personal life on hold while I made a living. I wanted to trade and I felt confident I could earn a living trading and spend valuable time with my family. My children are keen on trading as well. With today’s economic climate jobs are scarce and my son has student loans to pay off so while he’s looking for work he’s learning to trade and a brilliant way to start paying off his college loans. Tanya my daughter is keen and Leigh has started trading as well. Trading has done wonders for my family and given us all a new and potentially lucrative new interest.

I started this email when it was dark. It’s now light and I see the ground has a dusting of snow. Regards Desiree