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View Poll Results: How do you finance your cruising?
I finance day to day / port to port. 4 7.14%
I have a FT or PT business. 6 10.71%
I get regular employment wherever I go. 1 1.79%
I saved money to do this and will return to land life. 17 30.36%
I'm just your typical retiree who gets their check. 20 35.71%
I'm a rich basturd who doesn't worry about cash. 8 14.29%
Voters: 56. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 13-03-2014, 05:18   #61
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

a64pilot-it sounds like you will have access to several sources of retirement funds. My wife and I are in a somewhat similar situation and have been crunching numbers for weeks, so we know that there are many factors to consider.

We have been working with our financial advisor to develop our strategy. My wife is 6 year younger than I am, and I'm 64. Here are a few of the considerations:
-You don't have to wait until you are 65 to start SSI. The benefit is larger if you wait. There are spousal benefits to consider also. It's easy to calculate (not) when to start: all you have to do is know your date of death and the rate of return you can get in the market.
-Your 401k funds are 100% taxable when you withdraw them. I believe you can start withdrawing those funds at age 59.5
-If you are buying insurance thru the ACA, you may qualify of a subsidy based on a reduced (retirement) income. For us, this is a HUGE benefit. However, there is a "cliff" built into the subsidy tables; if you go off it, there is a BIG penalty.
-The tax affects of various strategies for funding retirement are complicated.

Good luck, but I too advise going NOW. (We leave in 9 weeks....)
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Old 13-03-2014, 05:39   #62
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

I answered #4 in the poll.

We are in our mid forties and previously spent a bunch of time and most of our savings chasing a different dream that didn't work out, so a couple years ago we paid cash for a fixer-upper we're fixing up while living aboard and saving with the goal of getting lost for a year or two in the Caribbean. We'll figure the rest out later. No debt, always paid cash except for real estate.
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Old 13-03-2014, 07:21   #63
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

54 and still working, I was kind hoping for the windfall. But i wont be holding my breath.
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Old 13-03-2014, 07:51   #64
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

Quote:
Originally Posted by sailorboy1 View Post
The poll results don't seem to match comments posted in the various budget threads. In those threads lots of people say they don't know their budget, or that even having a budget is a waste of time because it can not be determined. From this it appears a lot more people fall into the "rich bastard" category than is being admitted.
Look, for a lot of people talking budget numbers with strangers on the internet is like airing family laundry about the crazy aunt in the basement or the drunk uncle in public. When talking about how poeple have funded or are funding their cruise people feel more comfortable giving generalities rather than specifics...but don't think for a moment that the $500/mo cruiser doesn't know his budget just as well as the $5000/mo cruisers.

There are probabally a dozzen cruiser blog I know of that post their monthly expenses down to a $1 Taco and are also quite open about how they fund the dream. Those are the places you should be looking for this type of informaiton because along with the raw numbers you will be able to read their blog and get a pretty good feeling of their cruising approach, which is the most important thing to relating their budget to YOU. If the cruisers are posting about how they dumpsterdive for boat repair parts you can take that into account when looking at their budget numbers. Or are they doing land travel trips to day spas?

Heck, in the current political environment, why would people open themselves up as "having money" when the popular trend is to hate and blame those evil bastards as not paying their fair share, or screwing the little guy, when in fact all the "evil rich" have done is bust their ass, work hard and EARN their money? It's a dangerous road the Country is taking when the popular thing to do is hate and blame the rich or the evil 1%-ers. That type of thing has a world history of not working out too well, not just for the evil rich bastards, but ironically for the poor even more so.
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Old 13-03-2014, 08:26   #65
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

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Since I was 30 years old we've usually cruised for 1-1.5 years then worked for 1-1.5 years. That's 23 years ago and it still seems to work for us. We have always been really frugal, meaning never owned a new car etc. Haven't paid anyone any interest in 28 years. If we can't afford it we don't buy it.
I don't see how that works.... If I leave this job, I would never find one that pays this well with the benifits. My wife is unemployed and can not find the work that she had before. I would have to drop my pay and go back to slinging hammers to nails, and I'm getting to old to keep that up for very long.
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Old 13-03-2014, 08:47   #66
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

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I don't see how that works.... If I leave this job, I would never find one that pays this well with the benifits. My wife is unemployed and can not find the work that she had before. I would have to drop my pay and go back to slinging hammers to nails, and I'm getting to old to keep that up for very long.

I'm a professional hammer slinger so we are able to make do. We actually build a spec house and sell it while in Galveston to finance our irresponsible lifestyle. Only backfired once during the drop in the market. Took awhile longer to sell than usual.


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Old 13-03-2014, 08:55   #67
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

To smj:

thanks for the reply and the clarification:
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Old 13-03-2014, 09:34   #68
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

I sailed the ICW and Bahamas during the eighties, now, retired and married, we plan to do it again. From reading the CF forum I expect to cruise through a different society but with the same underlying discipline of the sea.

One can always find reasons for staying as well as shoving off - all reasonable. My personal fear is grounding out on my Dinty Moore cans. So, whatever we call it, we will shove off and do it.

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Old 13-03-2014, 09:58   #69
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

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Originally Posted by Mt2Salt View Post
I don't see how that works.... If I leave this job, I would never find one that pays this well with the benifits. My wife is unemployed and can not find the work that she had before. I would have to drop my pay and go back to slinging hammers to nails, and I'm getting to old to keep that up for very long.
Yes, thats a good reason why I am looking at this survey. Seems to be clusters of life groups:

young, maybe right out of college who take some time off to cheap around.

A bit older in their 30's who take a break to go cursing but plan to come back for a while at least.

Retirees w savings or an income - military or other.

What you don't see is people say in their 40s-50's who take time off to cruise and plan to come back and work again (because its hard to get that old high paying job after either being in th e market or because they are bias'd against). Or people this age group can't because of life commitments such as older parents to take care of, helping kids through college etc.
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Old 13-03-2014, 10:01   #70
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

I voted number 5 for us but we don't really fit as we're not 'typical retirees'. I retired at 41 with an immediate military pension and my husband at 43 with no pension. We've been cruising on my pension for 5.5 years now. It can be difficult but is doable. We have no further income due until we are 67 (unless the UK government move the goal posts again) when our state pension will be payable. We're planning to keep cruising as long as we can keep affording it.
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Old 13-03-2014, 10:10   #71
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

The long term cruise is just 5 years away now, we save what we can and admittingly do work port to port, there's always someone that needs a hand or help doing something that will happily pay inn cash, food, spare parts which I do use from time to time for other boats.
My youngest is 14 so when he gets off to collage that leaves us a winter to head south and enjoy the warmer weather then migrating back north.
I am selling this year and buying bigger 33ft is our target, and then doing the fixing and re styling over the next few years like the one I am selling.
I have no mortgage on my home so will be using that to help finance the missing cash from the sale of my current boat to the new one and work on paying it off. at 2.5% interest it would be foolish to buy any other way.
This gives us five years to outfit the new boat, tweek it how we like and prepare to cruise the winters i warmer climes, if we decide to not go north but head off somewhere else then we can, we can sell off everything at that point and fall off the grid. there are really just to many options in front to make any real concrete decisions.
the one we both agree on is heading south for winter
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Old 13-03-2014, 10:12   #72
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

plenty of people retire early. A typical retiree I would classify as someone who gets a check from some source of retirement fund or investment. Age isn't a requirement. Wish I was so lucky!
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Old 13-03-2014, 10:18   #73
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

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plenty of people retire early. A typical retiree I would classify as someone who gets a check from some source of retirement fund or investment. Age isn't a requirement. Wish I was so lucky!
As someone said in an earlier post, it's all about the choices we make earlier in life!
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Old 13-03-2014, 10:38   #74
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

A few classify themselves as retired as they are not currently working, when they find a job, they come out of retirement. It's semantics, but I think sounds better than being unemployed.
It may even be easier to find a job if your retired as opposed to unemployed?
Then there are those of us that have retired once, but continue to work as the first retirement won't support them.
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Old 13-03-2014, 11:23   #75
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Re: Financing Your Cruise

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Originally Posted by SaltyMonkey View Post
Yes, thats a good reason why I am looking at this survey. Seems to be clusters of life groups:

young, maybe right out of college who take some time off to cheap around.

A bit older in their 30's who take a break to go cursing but plan to come back for a while at least.

Retirees w savings or an income - military or other.

What you don't see is people say in their 40s-50's who take time off to cruise and plan to come back and work again (because its hard to get that old high paying job after either being in th e market or because they are bias'd against). Or people this age group can't because of life commitments such as older parents to take care of, helping kids through college etc.
There are also those of us who just up and quit our 9-5 jobs in their 40's-50's and do not plan to go back to work because we just can't stomach the thought of going back to that unhealthy and stressful lifestyle.

As for money from investments, that occurs whether you are working or not, so is not a description of being "retired".

The category that is missing is the one describing people who did not "retire", are not "rich", do not have steady dependable income, are making sacrifices in some aspects of life to experience other aspects, are taking some financial risks requiring constant adjustment of lifestyle to fit finances, but do not have to return to work barring a catastrophic financial event.

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