Hi Clinton

There will be more experienced CC’ers that can answer your question, but I just wanted to respond to your note about “bit late in life – 52”. You are not late in life at that age and my husband and I are doing exactly the same thing (and I am happy to say that I am 56). We are selling up our house and moving onto the water. We have decided to have a marina spot for the first year but we may consider CC’ing next year, just depends on how we find the marina life.  SO , at 52, you are at what I would say is the right age to do what you are doing. ENjoy, be excited, embrace it.  Life is too short to dilly dally around so get stuck in , we are. )

Hi Clinton

We’re fairly new to this liveaboard / continuous cruiser lark having just lived aboard full time for ten months, of which the last six have been as continuous cruisers. I’ve not seen Pauls software, but wouldn’t expect it to be anything other than ‘very useful’ to you although it wasn’t unfortunately around when we were in your shoes and trying to get our head around potential costs.

We’ve just updated a page on our blog comparing what we thought our annual costs would be compared to a projection based on the first six months of this year that may help you and you can find it at http://www.narrowboatboysontour.blogspot

There are a number of constants such as licence, insurance, breakdown insurance etc that you’ll be able to pinpoint exactly and some variables that are more dependent on how you live such as heating, gas etc with the biggest variable probably being the fuel for your engine. We only average about 30 hours a month as we tend to just move for a few hours then stop for a couple of days, but then we’re not running to any timeline and we’ve got solar panels so running the engine just to charge up the batteries is minimised/unnecessary. You’ll need to consider what your plans are for your ‘gap year’ as the more of the network you may want to cover will of course be dependent on engine running hours.

Hope everything goes as planned for you and that you enjoy your ‘gap year’ although you’ll probably find that it flies by.

Keith

Hi Clinton

Let me have your E-mail address and I’ll put something together for you.

Regards,

Keith

clintonroger said

Alan said

I initially budgeted for just over £5k per year (with the aid of Paul’s book, spreadsheet was not available then) based on 8 months CC’ing and 4 months winter mooring.  That includes £500 for “repairs” but nothing extra for blacking or painting.  At some stage I will compare the actual with the budget.

 

Hi Alan it seems £5 K is rather cheap, does that include food, eating out ect. Do you think you are on/near your budget I have a budget sheet I am working with and am using our daily/weekly living costs as I don’t think these will alter much, I am more interested in finding out heating costs, winter mooring costs (any recommendations would be great)

 

Clinton

 

No that is just boat costs and I would think I am pretty close to budget.  Food etc will be pretty much the same as home.  Bit more on eating out and pubs which I have budgeted for.

Let me have your email address and I will send my spreadsheet, which includes a two year cashflow.  Paul will not mind forwarding it, I am sure, if you do not want to post it here, or you can post it on my blog.  You could also try Pauls spreadsheet into which you can insert income outgoings, capital etc and it will tell you whether you can afford a boat.  It is very good value as you also get his e-books (I presume you still do)

Paul Smith said

pearley said
 When people ask me how much it costs, I always reply that it is no cheaper than living in a house.
 

I couldn’t agree more. I would go as far as saying that the costs are comparable to living in a three bed semi.

Not sure how you compare with cost of living in a 3-bed semi. Would the comparison assume you own the house outright with no mortgage or still paying and how much. I myself, am still paying off a large mortgage at 59 (usual reasons of two divorces, kids at uni etc, etc). But, I own boat outright so if he house was sold, not only would I have a good deal of money in the bank, I would have mo mortgage to pay either. I suspect, the comparison is owning both outright and its just other running costs. Certainly for me, the mortgage burden has been a lifetime experience! I am interested in others thoughts on this. 

Rob

Life is as cheap or as expensive as you want to make it. A couple of examples – before we moved aboard I posted my budget online, my shopping budget was laughed at (£160 per month) one guy who has lived aboard for years said he would spend that a week including booze! Over the last 12 months we have averaged £152.12

A well respected fellow blog writer buys all of his meat at farmers markets and farm shops – we buy what ever is on special offer.  

We are continuous cruisers and I can tell you it IS cheaper to live because the chances (if you fall in love with boating) are that your quality of life will improve, your health will improve, what make you happy will change, your life will be simpler, your stress levels will decrease. You won’t need to supplement your life with expensive things like posh meals out, foreign holidays keeping vehicles (cc’ing and keeping a car is hard work)

Friday two years ago in would have been in a restaurant or at least spending £30 on a takeaway and a bottle of wine. Tonight I’m on the rear terrace listening to the radio with a bottle of homebrew. (doing then same Paul?)

Oh and to answer your question my piece of string is just under 10k a year that’s everything boat related, all food and entertainment, diesel, petrol (for generator), occasional car hire, £400 extra for birthday and Xmas gifts and food for family and even a few bob for personal insurance  

Oh and our gap year started 18 months ago when I was 42

Get out there and enjoy life, you only get one shot!

Well, here comes my pennies worth on the topic . . . .

When its been mentioned about a boat costing as much as a house I’ve sort of disagreed although prior to moving onto our boat we didn’t really keep a close track of our costs on land so it wouldn’t be easy or maybe realistic to try to prove or disprove it now.

When talk is made of the cost of living on a boat then I would suggest this should be sub-categorised into those living aboard in a marina/residential mooring or continuous cruisers. As continuous cruisers ourselves, we don’t have the sizeable cost of mooring our boat somewhere that I think gives us a head start on our annual costs against the other type of liveaboard boaters. We also own our boat outright so there is no consideration in our costs to repaying any loans that may not necessarily be the case for everyone.

After that, I think it really comes down to the different lifestyle on a boat and more directly, the compromises you need to make. You have your boat within which you live and that provides for your daily needs so space is a premium and you don’t have an endless supply of hot/cold running water, electricity etc. Because of this, you’ve got to be more considerate of what you buy and what you use.

Two simple examples, the first being our weekly shop. We don’t have a car so what we buy is carried in rucksacks with I’d say the average walk back to the boat being about 20 minutes with some being as much as 40 minutes and you certainly do then think about what you’re buying. When you get back to the boat you’ve probably got a smaller kitchen than you did on land so you can’t overbuy for this reason also. Because you probably won’t be able to just nip out to the shop in-between, we put a menu together for the week and if you stick to the resulting shopping list and not wander round the shelves slipping in other bits that you might not necessarily need then this keeps the size of the shop down. The more you buy the more it costs although having said that, we fail miserably compared to you James as we come in about a £100+ a month more than you. Let me know where you are and we’ll come down for some one on one shopping training.

The second example is an amalgamation of lifes basic utilities such as I’ve touched on above, hot/cold running water, electricity etc. Again, back on dry land we’d always have hot water, whereas on the boat you need to plan for it i.e. you’ll be cruising today so you’ll have some, if not put the heater on to get some, or simply boil a kettles worth. In terms of water volume, you wouldn’t fill a household bath on a boat, a shower you (well we do) turn the shower on and off whilst your washing whereas on land it would be left running for the duration. And what about the luxury of a flushing toilet, how many times do you flush in a day, how much water is that each time and if there are two of you, then double it. The more you use the more the impact whether this is from a cost viewpoint on land or an availability viewpoint on water or in terms of the toilet it’s not just out of sight out of mind on a boat as it is on land, you need to consider how you’re going to get rid of it so less is best.

Electricity, well you certainly need to be mindful of what you use especially if you’re mainly relying on battery power, maybe less of an issue if you run a generator but as we don’t I can’t really comment on that, other than it would be an additional cost that we don’t have now. So because of this you need to think more about what you turn on, how long you need it on for, or can you even manage to have it on. Again, the more you use the more the impact whether it be from a cost or availability viewpoint.

You could go into a lot more detail on a lot of other topics both for and against land or water based costs, but what I can say (based on ourselves and with the compromises at a level that we are happy with) that if we were on dry land now, we certainly couldn’t afford to have retired before fifty and if we did go back to living on land then I would be job hunting and you can draw your own conclusions from that.

Regards,

Keith

NB Badger Sett

Paul Smith said

I agree that carrying shopping all the way back to the boat is a fantastic money saver. When we’ve been out cruising, the weight of the finished shop is always at the forefront of our minds while we are walking around the supermarket. It’s the heavy stuff which is left behind. Usually it’s the beer and the wine.

Unfortunately I have a shopping trolley!!  It has been a well worth buy – if increasing my supermarket spend.