Saving Review - Cost of Cruising

I've noticed that many blogs and posts don't really give any details on what people are spending on their cruising lifestyle. This includes prices paid for boats and in particular what they are spending every year. I'm going to include as much information as I can to help the prospective cruiser.

Right now our plan is to save $125k over the next 8 years for both boat and cruising kitty. The idea is to spend up to $90k on the boat and have another $35k in the cruising kitty to last us two years. We are planning on spending approximately $1,800 per month so we'll need to augment the cruising kitty a bit through this blog, dividend stocks, etc. Maybe I'll learn to cut hair. If we can spend less on the boat, it will leave more time to cruise.

If I retire at 62 as planned, we can go sailing away that summer and try to hold out until I'm 65. At that point we can start collected some social security. We've had one year of savings and have $10,200 in the boat fund and $3,810 in the cruising kitty. So, we are on track for the boat fund, but will need to pick up the pace for the cruising kitty. Our house is due to be paid off in 2019, so we'll be able to add to the cruising kitty at that point.

The main thing we've done to save money is to cut costs. We've reduced our monthly budget by $350 by doing the following:

• Less costly cell phone plan (Republic Wireless versus big name company)
• Revised our phone/internet/tv package (This year I'm thinking of just going internet to save more)
• Cut out our expensive health club and went with a less costly club
• Took our 2014 job raise and put it into savings instead of increasing our lifestyle
• Our children are off our health care policy and that saved us a few bucks

I've also starting selling some of our possessions as we won't need them. This includes some bicycles, ski boots, skis, long bow, etc. I'm happy with our progress but realize that we will have to do more to make this happen. I'm also fortunate to get work bonus' and all of these will be put into our cruising kitty. We also revised our expenses to live on 2 paychecks a month. As we get paid bi-weekly, twice a year we get an "extra" paycheck. This extra paycheck will also be put into the boat funds.

So far we haven't missed anything from these changes. More reading, talking, less tv. It's all good!