Month 20 Expenses of Cruising and Living on the Boat

[kmacdonald]

Originally Posted by hamburking

Don't forget to fill your pockets with sweetener/sugar packets, and ketchup/mustard packets. That's a whole soup meal back on the boat! I like to go out to a diner for breakfast now and then to restock my pb and jam packets.

I'm writing this trying to be funny, but as I write it I realize I actually do these things...and now I'm sad.

A primer to a future Patreon account no doubt.

[hamburking]

Originally Posted by kmacdonald

A primer to a future Patreon account no doubt.

Patreon can be a great source of income...if you look good in a bikini.

[sailorboy1]

BTW turns out it was only $12 to use the dinghy dock, showers, laundry. So that's another $8 toward the heart attack breakfast we went and had.

[kmacdonald]

Originally Posted by hamburking

Patreon can be a great source of income...if you look good in a bikini.

Since we're talking finances here, it's a lot cheaper renting one of those than marrying one.

[Nariel]

Hi SB,

Thank you for posting. I've been keeping an eye on your posts over the past year as we have been planning and working on our transition. Now that the boat is bought, we go to "hard core" boat budget tracking on 6/1. (things have been a little looser the past few months with travel for shopping, survey, etc).

I was curious if you would be willing to share your template spreadsheet. I have one from land life that I can adapt, but am curious how you categorize and track...assuming you use Excel or something similar.

Cheers!

[sailorboy1]

I use excel, but it has groups just like I do on post #1. We rarely use cash and use our credit card on 95+% of stuff.at the year Ndola the billing period I just go through my credit card statement for items. This is partly what I have the various categories as I can mostly tell/remember those each month.

[carlo de leo]

thanks for sharing!
Can you tell what was your average expenses over those 20 months?

[jhulmer]

Thanks again sailorboy, still looks reasonable to me! I do like to eat GOOD food out!

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by carlo de leo

Can you tell what was your average expenses over those 20 months?

I could, but it’s kind of meaningless without the details of the individual months.

[Lost Horizons]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

I could, but it’s kind of meaningless without the details of the individual months.

I think it is the opposite. Cumulative spend over a long period has statistical significance, while individual months will show some fluctuation.

I remember some time ago Cruising World surveyed a large number of full-time cruisers and bucketized results into three categories: a young couple on a shoe string budget, a family with two children on a moderately tight budget, and a couple of retirees who were well off. The annualized budgets were, as far as I remember: 8, 30 and 60 thousand USD, or so. Off course, that was at least 15 years ago, so in today’s dollars the figures would be at least twice as high.

[sailorboy1]

Everyone is welcome to go to each month’s thread and write the amounts down and average them out. I of course have that number on my main laptop. But to me without the story behind the number it’s just another number and you can find lots of those (unless it’s like $500/ mo as you will never get accounting for those)

[Gulliver 2]

Originally Posted by Lost Horizons

I think it is the opposite. Cumulative spend over a long period has statistical significance, while individual months will show some fluctuation.

I remember some time ago Cruising World surveyed a large number of full-time cruisers and bucketized results into three categories: a young couple on a shoe string budget, a family with two children on a moderately tight budget, and a couple of retirees who were well off. The annualized budgets were, as far as I remember: 8, 30 and 60 thousand USD, or so. Off course, that was at least 15 years ago, so in today’s dollars the figures would be at least twice as high.

Exactly what I think! Statistacaly much more important is the long run average, not a month. But Sailorboy is bringing great info anyway,
Congrats

[fabgo]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

Everyone is welcome to go to each month’s thread and write the amounts down and average them out. I of course have that number on my main laptop. But to me without the story behind the number it’s just another number and you can find lots of those (unless it’s like $500/ mo as you will never get accounting for those)

I think it's the opposite. The 20 threads you started are just a bunch of numbers that don't provide a lot of useful info IMO. It's when you start adding it all up that it starts to get interesting.

The best picture of what it costs to cruise I got from cruisers who have calculated and categorized their costs over 8-10 years.

Ultimately it's the boat-related costs that are the most interesting. And those costs tend to be highly irregular. What groceries cost and how much we will spend eating out and such is easy to estimate.

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by fabgo

I think it's the opposite. The 20 threads you started are just a bunch of numbers that don't provide a lot of useful info IMO.

Great! Stop reading and save both of us time.

[zboss]

I think the one thing we have learned during commuter cruising for the last 5 years is that we can set all the budget numbers we want but we lack self discipline when we are in place like little Harbor, Abacos, Pete’s pub. When we want to have fun, we have fun. In order to instill some discipline we need to be in a way out place where there is no opportunity to spend money.