So , how much does this all cost ?

So , costs       (updated February 2021 , scroll down)

Last post I made was ‘the big question‘ , but how much is this going to cost?

Lets break it down a little bit (and of course mileage will vary for different cruisers , some spend more and some spend less) but I hate to come up ‘short’ so I think I calculated it quite good and after extensive research on what other cruisers spend I came to the following amounts

1: The Boat ! , all said and done I would like to have a ‘cruising ready’ yacht for 150K Euro , so that means buying a less kitted out yacht for less money and use the delta for upgrades and repairs or a ‘ready to go’ yacht for the 150K. Hopefully we can find something for less ? would be nice and we’re looking at Jeanneau Sun Odyssey’s 45.2 and we bought a Beneteau Oceanis 473

2: monthly expenses incl food , drinks , yacht maintenance , trips , fuel , mooring etc etc . 2500 euro per month (*12 = 30K euro a year)

3: Schooling for the girls , since we have 2 girls that need to be boat schooled , and material , tests , Internet , landbased progress assistance etc it will be quite expensive ! for now we figured 5K euro per person per year so that is 10K euro for both per year (update 2-2018 : we’ve actually decided to bypass the worldschool for the first few years so costs are a lot lower)

4: Mortgage , another big ticket item . Since we did not ‘sell up and go’ but choose to keep our current home the mortgage needs to be paid as well while we’re gone. According to a real estate agent we can rent out our current home and get some extra income out of that (approx. 800 euro per month ) which will pay for the kids schooling

5: Insurance for the boat (1500) and health insurance , 2808 euro , pension 500 = 4808 euro per year ?

so , add it all up for 4 years :

Spending

  • boat 150K
  • living expense 120K
  • schooling 17(28)K 10K
  • Insurance 20K

income

  • 30K from renting out the family house
  • 110K from rental property we already own straight up

Grand total for 4 years : 300K euro – 148K euro = 152K euro and since I am sure there will be value in Blue Pearl after we return , and I am conservatively guestimating it at 80K euro  when we return , the total voyage would cost us 70K euro over the 4 years , so 17.5K euro a year

We do have an emergency fund for unforeseen large boat/personal expenses but as this is personal for everyone I do not list or count that here , if we need to tap into that I will mention that in the running costs section

edit update January 2021:

As we just sold our Beneteau 473 “Blue Pearl” (and have bought  another bought in Greece !) here is an update on the budget and costs since this was originally written

After purchase , refit/upgrade etc the total costs of the boat was indeed around 150k euro , not counting upgrades we did while we were traveling (extra solar , extra solar controller , lithium batteries etc) we sold Blue Pearl for 125k euro so ‘lost’ 25k , basically the money spent on upgrades is the money that we did not recover , so depreciation : 6250 euro per year

The monthly budget was pretty much ‘spot on’ measured over a year , but on a month by month basis it can vary greatly , specially if you are in an expensive area *and* have to spend time in a Marina , luckily we have almost never found ourselves in such a place ? and the Marina’s we did spend a lot of time (Surinam , Colombia & Panama) the cost of living was quite acceptable , and Panama the Marina was quite affordable and cost of living higher. But all in all the 30K euro per year worked for us

Schooling for the girls has been a lot cheaper than I initially thought , this probably has to do with the fact that we didn’t use the ‘worldschool’ but Joline decided to do her own thing , all in all I think we spend 500 euro a year on books, material etc

the house costs were also lower as we rented out our home , so the rent basically paid for the mortgage , insurance, maintenance , taxes etc . We don’t make any more off off it but it doesnt cost us anything either *knock on wood* !!

Insurance(s) , we opted to have an allrisk boat insurance *and* health insurance, the boat insurance was around 1600 euro per year in Europe and rose to 2500 euro per year in the Carib . Health insurance for our family of 4 is around 300 euro per month or 3600 per month . Total insurance costs 5600 euro per year (avg.)

If you have any questions , please free to contact us !  Bluepearl@kesting.nl