When The Family Freaks Out! a post by Jared
Several family members have expressed serious concern recently and have asked a few questions. Hopefully, this will calm those fears a bit and shed some light on the lifestyle in which we are about to embark.
How can we afford to cruise? Are we sacrificing retirement in the future? Are we crazy?
Our plan of cruising does not involve taking off from work to go on a two-year
vacation. This is a temporary (or
permanent) life style change in which we reduce our costs, get a safe home that
floats, and continue to work while we travel and educate our children in
various locations around the world.
Before I even considered this
lifestyle, I asked myself:
Are there risks?
What if we lose the boat to catastrophe?
What if it sinks or starts on fire?
What about pirates?
Why would you sell your wonderful home with
an ocean view?
Are there risks?
Yes,
there are risks. Some are the same as we
encounter in everyday life in addition to some additional risks (like
sinking!). If you want to get depressed
in a hurry, start studying the risks of living amongst people. People are crazy!
What’s worse, those crazy people can go buy
guns (in the US) and do some serious damage pretty quickly. What is riskier than that? Driving.
We take some necessary precautions to make driving safer but still,
people die every day in vehicle accidents.
Every time you get in the car, you are essentially rolling the
dice. And I hate driving to boot. The first half of my driving life involved
sitting in the car driving for at least 20 to 30 minutes to get anywhere. This is a quick way to waste one to two hours
every day. It’s not healthy to sit that
long either (more on that later). If you
think you’re safe in your home and nothing could hurt you there, please realize
that 1 in 1 million people die from eating peanut butter (not allergy related),
our own water systems have killed hundreds of people (water treatment mistakes,
oops, that chemical wasn’t supposed to go in there), and sickened countless
thousands (think lead pipes).
The
materials in our home can also do us in (asbestos, lead pipes, formaldehyde…) and
talk to a grocery supply expert about the amount of food recalls every
day! We don’t hear about these things because
it’s not news worthy. It happens too
often and we live with these risks. The
barn may seem safe until it’s not! How
do we live with these risks? We buckle our
seat belt, filter our water, and use our heads to think about keeping ourselves
out of trouble.
Losing our boat would be a major setback, just like losing
our home would be a major setback.
People die in house fires every year.
Boat fires are scary, too. Our answer to this is to be prepared. The
boat will have insurance, we will practice fire drills, have smoke alarms,
fire extinguishers, and be as safe as we can in this regard. This is probably my biggest fear. If it happens in the open ocean (a very rare occurrence),
we will have an emergency life raft and our dingy to jump into, several EPIRBS
to alert the authorities, and of course, fire extinguishers and lots of water
nearby to bucket brigade if possible.
Our
kids swim well, but life jackets on passage, and harnesses for all anywhere
outside of the cockpit / interior of the boat will be our seatbelts and
personal locator beacons on life jackets.
Pirates?
How about
car jackings, home invasions, or theft in general?
Nope, you don’t escape bad people on the water, they just call them
pirates. The definition of piracy? Criminal acts at sea.
We choose not to live in high
crime areas and we are choosing to not visit high crime areas. Does it eliminate the risk? No, but the risks
are manageable and if conditions change, we can leave and seek safer locations.
But your beautiful home! That ocean view!
We have a wonderful home in a small city. We can see the
waves breaking ½ mile away. It’s
great! We can also hear the neighbor two
doors down washing their dishes. Yes,
two doors down! That means they can hear
us, our kids, and anything else that makes noise. It’s kind of weird. We could sell and move back to our home town,
but that would involve lots more of that driving stuff and being located close
to high crime areas which isn’t all that fun.
It’s also not very enriching.
We
have an opportunity to travel and learn about our world; not though text books,
but through the world itself. I’ve read
about Venice, seen pictures, and sailing affords the possibly to experience and
learn about amazing places like this with our children. Way better than a text book in my opinion and
worth the risk to our finances.
Finances!
We do not
plan on exhausting our finances. As part
of our making the decision to cruise, we talked to a financial planner. It wasn't a decision made over night, but after YEARS of careful and thoughful planning. We can do this without exhausting our
savings/retirement.
True, it is risker investment than
owning a home. A home has the potential
to go up in value, where as boats tend not to go
up in value, ever! That said, we have
been on the wrong end of the housing crises and we don’t plan on doing that twice. The money we make from selling our current
home will buy the boat and provide for about one to two years of cruising. I will continue to work as I spend most of my
time sitting at a computer. I need
frequent but periodic access to internet to keep working but that appears possible
from all that we have read. The other portion
of our home sale funds will go to investments and a portion will go to
emergency funds. When we are done
cruising, we will either put the boat into charter or sell it to recoup some of
our investment.
Why not wait and cruise when your children go off to
college?
There are a few reasons not to
wait. The chief one being that we want take
our kids with us while they want to go along.
In 5 years, the boys will be in high school and would not want to leave
their friends or the experiences of high school (girls).
Another reason? My health. After having health issues for the past
several years and it culminating with pneumonia last summer, I realized that
time may not be on our side. We are
rolling the dice every day and each new dawn could be our last. My doctors feel that we have my health issue
figured out and thankfully, I’ve had no issues since last fall. We will not be away from medical care while
out cruising and our doctors have shared their personal phone numbers and
emails with us! They have been
overwhelmingly supportive. Our child’s pediatrician
said we inspired him to do something similar with his own family. They are in the initial planning stages and
have a departure date four years from now.
Are we crazy?
Yes,
but in a good way. I feel we have been
living the typical white collar life in lots of ways. A teacher and engineer with three kids. We even have the typical golden retriever! Each of us spends most of our day working to pay
the bills and when we get home, spend the rest of the time corralling the kids
to events, meals, and bed time.
“Man sacrifices his health in order to make
money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so
anxious about the future, that he does not enjoy the present moment. As a
result, he does not live in the present or the future, he lives as if he is
never going to die, and then he dies having never truly lived.” – Dali Lama
I have a great job. I work for myself from home. I also sit on my butt 8+ hours a day. Then, when I can, I head off to the gym in
hopes of not losing my health to this lifestyle. I fit into the Dali Lama’s quote like a key
in a lock. My health, at 39 years old,
is fair. I only get exercise when I can
break away. On the boat, I’m hoping to
swim, surf, paddle board, walk and run more (on land of course) and gain fitness
through an active lifestyle while we explore the areas we are visiting. And because our expenses will be much lower
than they are now, I will not need to work nearly as much. I’ll be spending more time with my wife and kids, taking part in my children's education, and taking better care of myself. In my mind, the additional risk of living on
a boat are far exceeded by the benefit of an active lifestyle, world travel,
and the experience with my family.
So to our family and friends who are a bit worried. We love you and cherish the relationships we have with each and everyone of you. We hear you and understand your concern. We will not sacrifice the safety of our family and we hope you find time to join us. However, we are choosing to experience more than just life in a box.
Thanks for this post. We are going through something similar, and it was helpful to read your experience. It will get better with time, but it is hard dealing with it in the moment. ~Michaela
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