We've blown the budget already!! Our true cost of cruising

November 2019 - The true cost of living on our boat whilst full-time cruising.

Costs for our cruise so far in our Venus 46' Ketch.  Where to start?  Our current circumstances are we sold our house, which was part of the plan and Cordelia is paid for so there is no mortgage.  We felt like we could not do it if we had a mortgage to pay on either a boat or property.

We planned that we were going to leave the employment rat race early so we needed to make sure we had an income to sustain the lifestyle that we wanted.  Our target date to set sail was April 2019.

Our income consists of a small pension and some savings.  Annette also continues to work remotely on a part-time basis in a job she loves.

We have a daily budget, which works brilliantly for us.  We write down on a daily basis every penny we spend, no matter what it is for or how small the amount.  This is then transferred to a spreadsheet each month to enable us to look at what and where we have spent our budget and more importantly where we need to pull our belts in.  I know it's anal but it works for us lol.

What we did find is that during the first 3-4 months we spent more on restaurants, which was rather strange because it was not something that we used to do.  When we looked at why we realised that it was due to our activities on the boat every day.  There were days we would work in the early morning and then go out exploring and this was always just before lunch. This meant that we were out over lunch time so we were eating out.  We have since changed that and work up until lunch and go out after lunch. This way we also use the food that we were still buying when we were eating out! Whilst most cafe's/tapas bars are reasonably cheap, it's amazing how quickly our lunchtime bill would come to €15 and when your daily budget is only €42.50 that is a large chunk of it.

We also changed our sailing plan during the summer and are now going into the Mediterranean in
2020.  This has meant a 6month stopover in a marina and whilst this is cheaper than a daily marina rate it is still 183 days in a marina that we did not budget for.  We certainly won't do this next year.

There are also days where we spend nothing.  These days we like because it means that if we want to hire a car to go sightseeing, we are able to do this.  Our non-spending days are due to the way Steve has set up the boat with a good fridge, freezer, water-maker and we make sure we provision in advance.  We overspec'd our ground tackle to keep us safe whilst anchoring as much as possible.  We also just love relaxing on the boat sitting in the sun reading a book or fishing (even though we have yet to catch anything in 6 months 🤣.

We were once told....do not try and live this life too differently than how you lived on land....what they meant was, if you eat out a couple of nights a week, try and continue to do this, if you go to the cinema once a month again try and do this or something similar.  You are who you are, do not try and change too much otherwise you may feel there are too many compromises and you don't want to regret your decision.

We've had an amazing time in our first six months.  We've visited 37 ports from May - Oct 2019 of which 6 were marina's plus our winter marina berth.

Actual Spend & Budget May - Oct 2019

Our 6-month spend & budget.  We break it down as follows:

Marina Berthing / Fuel - Diesel / Fuel - Gas / Food / Restaurants / Coffee's / Boat bits / Laundry / Mobile phones & Data / Other - includes ferries, clothing, taxis, hair cuts etc.

We did not include flights in our budget but this year we have had 2 exceptions, one being our son's wedding which included a weeks holiday stay too and also an emergency flight to the UK due to a parent falling ill.  We don't envisage having to do this again however we will include on 'other' in future.

Boat Bits below includes a 2nd hand Electric Torquedo outboard that we purchased in France and a new Victron Invertor in the UK and each was €800.

NB.  Our boat insurance is not included in our budget.  We made the decision to not include this and to pay it annually from our savings when it is due.  For reference though, our insurance is approx. £1250 per six months.

There are cruisers who have sailed on less per day and cruisers who have sailed on more per day. There is no right or wrong way, only the way that best suits you.  This is our true spend for our initial 6 months and we absolutely will spend less in the next 6 months.

We would love to hear your comments or if you have questions, fire away.  If you have any ideas on different things you would like to see please let us know or why not watch our last vlog episode 14