Hello, my name is Greg and I'm a sailor

[sailor]

Hello, my name is Greg and I'm a sailor.
I'm on a 12-step program:
1. I sail in January
2. I sail in February
....

On a more serious note I'm really glad that I found this forum.
Thanks for all the good advice you left on this board.
I'm 33, DW is the same age. We like traveling, sailing, LBYM, and have hopes about FI & ER.
DW would like to ER @37, I'm targetting probably more realistic early forties for me.

[Spanky]

Welcome! Good sailing.

[MooreBonds]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sailor Hello, my name is Greg and I'm a sailor. .... I'm 33, DW is the same age. We like traveling, sailing, LBYM, and have hopes about FI & ER. DW would like to ER @37, I'm targetting probably more realistic early forties for me.

Welcome Greg. I'm 28 and currently single, hoping to yell FIRE by my early 40s as well. What does your wife do to keep herself busy while you're on your 12 step program? Have the two of you started dreaming/discussing/planning what you will do with the second half of your life free from indentured servantdom yet, or is it one of those "we're just working as hard as we can to get there, and we'll be more than happy to figure it out once we get there"? And don't forget - while you might love traveling, etc., there could be a lot more free time when you're not traveling than you realize (unless you're gunning for the perpetual traveler thing).

Good luck!

Peter

[sailor]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter76 Welcome Greg. I'm 28 and currently single, hoping to yell FIRE by my early 40s as well. What does your wife do to keep herself busy while you're on your 12 step program?

The beauty of it is that we are on this program together

Quote:

Have the two of you started dreaming/discussing/planning what you will do with the second half of your life free from indentured servantdom yet, or is it one of those "we're just working as hard as we can to get there, and we'll be more than happy to figure it out once we get there"?

We talked together about it many times - there is definitely no shortage of things to do. We both have long lists of things to do, hobbies, places to visit. No sweat.

We are also not working as hard as we can - I think we are aiming for balance between present (while working) and future (while in ER) life. I'm sure we could save more to retire earlier, but we don't have enough motivation to do it.

Quote:

And don't forget - while you might love traveling, etc., there could be a lot more free time when you're not traveling than you realize (unless you're gunning for the perpetual traveler thing).

I wouldn't mind being a PT for a while (maybe two, maybe five years, probably on a sailboat), but DW would like to have a home base.
Actually travelling is probably our biggest expense delaying ER ($12k yearly travelling budget and we typically come close to this number)
And also we really like seeing other places and cultures - 33 countries so far, still looong list of them to go visit.

Quote:

Good luck!

Thanks, we can use some

[dory36]

By far, I've met more E-R people on the water than anywhere else.

Fair winds!

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Well then, does the water make ya wanna quit or does quitting make you wanna go to the water.

Or is there a full-on synergy?

[dory36]

Yes

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Thanks so much for the succinct clarification, oh waterlogged one.

[dory36]

Maybe it is that sailors get used to doing their own thing and ignoring those left on shore.

Or they get out there and never want to return.

It might also be that it seems to cost somewhere between $8,000 and $12,000 a year to live pretty well in that lifestyle.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

A sense of un-rootedness? That just a slip of the anchor might result in you residing elsewhere?

[brewer12345]

Greg, if you haven't seen it yet, check out tendervittles.net

- brewer, who loves the idea, but gets seasick pretty easily.

[dory36]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grand Banks A sense of un-rootedness?* That just a slip of the anchor might result in you residing elsewhere?

I loved it when some merchant asked for my home zip code while I was at the cash register, and I usually said I was homeless.

[sailor]

Quote:

Originally Posted by brewer12345 Greg, if you haven't seen it yet, check out tendervittles.net

brewer,
Thanks for the link - I've seen their site before.
I've been wondering if they were able to stick to their $18k per year budget.
Another cat cruising couple has been bold enough to post their expenses and it looks like they are going over at least twice this amount:
www.bumfuzzle.com/Budget.htm

My DW will declare us FI, when we have $50k per year income (in 2005 dollars), so I'm guessing that with 4% SWR we need $1.2M invested.

sailor

[MRGALT2U]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sailor brewer, Thanks for the link - I've seen their site before. I've been wondering if they were able to stick to their $18k per year budget. Another cat cruising couple has been bold enough to post their expenses and it looks like they are going over at least twice this amount: www.bumfuzzle.com/Budget.htm My DW will declare us FI, when we have $50k per year income (in 2005 dollars), so I'm guessing that with 4% SWR we need $1.2M invested. sailor

Hi sailor! (Boy, real sailors hear that a lot)

We're doing just fine on half of what your DW needs for FI, and would do just fine on 18K per year also. It's all in getting your
perspective adjusted. For example, there are many folks right here in the USA who are doing just fine on 18K (or less) per year.
They wouldn't understand what all the fuss was about.

JG

[dory36]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sailor brewer, Thanks for the link - I've seen their site before. I've been wondering if they were able to stick to their $18k per year budget. Another cat cruising couple has been bold enough to post their expenses and it looks like they are going over at least twice this amount: www.bumfuzzle.com/Budget.htm My DW will declare us FI, when we have $50k per year income (in 2005 dollars), so I'm guessing that with 4% SWR we need $1.2M invested. sailor

That link didn't work for me, although the URL seems valid. Site might be down?

While we were cruising (3 years), we knew an awful lot of folks who were on $1000/month budgets, and a few who were in the $250/month range.

Trying to reconstruct this from memory, I think our budget was something like:

* 750 - Boat insurance
4000 - Food on board
2000 - Food on shore (usually happy hour food and drink with other boaters)
2000 - Repairs & annual bottom painting (it was a wood boat, or it would be lower)
1000 - Marina and mooring fees (pretty high by most cruisers' standards)
1800 - Diesel fuel at $1.75/gal (also pretty high - but we couldn't sail)
* 300 - Mail forwarding service
* 600 - Cell phone (which included internet access)
1000 - laundry, other misc

The biggest avoidable costs were marina and mooring -- most cruisers go to marinas only to get fuel. But we stayed at Vero Beach for a couple months each year, and their moorings cost $8/day. We also pulled into a dock for a month each summer, in the Chesapeake or thereabouts, to do annual maintenance.

(For non-boaters: marinas rent you their dock for $50/night, generally, and for that, you get a pole to tie your boat to, and a loss of privacy. You supply your own bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, electricity, water, etc. Dropping your anchor a mile away costs you . . . zero. So typically, full time cruisers will almost never stay at a marina except when doing repairs.)

We didn't paint our own bottom -- we could have saved $1000, but those chemicals are pretty toxic, and we didn't have the protective gear.

I think these are all pretty reasonable and typical boater expenses. Health insurance will depend on your situation, and I omitted it here.

Dory36, reminiscing...

[sailor]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MRGALT2U We're doing just fine on half of what your DW needs for FI, and would do just fine on 18K per year also. It's all in getting your perspective adjusted. For example, there are many folks right here in the USA who are doing just fine on 18K (or less) per year.

John,
I'm sure we could live on less and we could be "just fine" probably around your level of expenses (we live in Georgia where housing is inexpensible), but 50k per year would take us to Financial Independence level :-)

[sailor]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dory36 That link didn't work for me, although the URL seems valid. Site might be down?

You are right - site seems to be down - in the mean time you could try web archive or google cache:
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache...ient=firefox-a


dory, thanks for sharing your budget - how many years ago was it?
I'm asking because in FL I've seen marinas charging you over $2 per foot and sometimes $15 per mooring. Prices on the water are definitely going up faster than CPI

[unclemick]

Touching on the mental part - age 49 - 62 has been cheap and frugal - at 62 by the end of this year we (two SS availible) will be north of 50k or 70k/yr if we start taking 3% out of IRA.

Now if you could work a miracle and offer another 12 years of cheap ER like the first 12 at 49-62 vs a 62 plus years at the higher amount - I'd do younger and cheaper in a heartbeat.

[dory36]

We moved ashore about a year ago, so our info is fairly current.

As with about 98/100 of cruisers, we pretty much stayed at marinas only when we needed repairs. Moorings ranged from 8-12/day, but we only used those when the location was well worth it, as with Vero Beach. *Otherwise, dropping the hook in a protected and convenient (if we wanted convenience instead of tranquil pivacy) anchorage was the rule. I don't think we ever needed to use a marina or mooring.

The vast majority of places were free. A couple of months at Miami, weeks in the Keys (Islamorada), a week in Marco Island, a week Sarasota, another month at St Petersburg, a couple of weeks in St Augustine, days in Fernandina, days in Daytona, weeks in Cocoa and Melbourne, weeks in Cape Coral, and days in innumerable nameless coves all up and down the east and west coasts of Forida cost perhaps a total of $10 for fuel for the dinghy and $75 for many local all-day (or longer) bus passes to just about anywhere we could think of to go. *Usually, if a shore visit was planned, we'd anchor in a protected spot where we could dinghy to some place within easy walking distance of whatever we needed to get to.

Typical situation: Beaufort SC marina was $1.50 a foot or so, but anchoring 500 yards away was free, and they provided a free municipal dinghy dock right next to the municipal marina. I stopped in the marina one night in perhaps 8 trips past there -- and that was to repair a ruptured water line. The otner trips, I always anchored. *Boats suitable for cruising are inherently self-sufficient, so why waste money at a marina? *We only used moorings when the local rules required it. That was true, from DC to St Petersburg, only in Vero Beach ($8/day, recently up to $10), Key West ($12/day or $120/month), and Naples (about $8/day, I forget). Everywhere else, there were ample free anchorages everywhere from the armpit of Florida to the mouth of the Potomac and up to Washington, which was our normal path. But many friends, still at it, are still seeing the same thing all the way up to the coast of Maine, as of this morning.

Perhaps 3-4 places that we stopped at between DC and Miami charged as much as $5/day to land your dinghy, and there were no free places nearby. But the places that did that, such as St Augustine, Washington DC, and perhaps others that I bypassed, also offered use of their showers, laundromat, etc.

Some places were simply wonderful. Beaufort NC's maritime museum provided a free courtesy car to cruisers who anchored nearby, making grocery runs a breeze. Vero Beach, N. Myrtle Beach, and several others provided free busses from the waterfront to shopping areas.

Most cruisers used and contributed to Skipper Bob's anchorage guide (http://skipperbob.home.att.net/publications.htm) to identify the best places to drop the hook.



Dory36

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Dory -

Ever have any problems with 'miscreants' aka 'modern pirates'?