So , what is the budget ?

So , what is the budget ? (updated February 2021 , scroll down)

Last post I made was ‘the big question‘ , but what *is* our budget ?

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 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

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. And since we don’t know yet whether or not we can (or will) rent it out I budgeted for 4 years of mortgage at 20K euro per year . If we can rent out the house we will of course not spend this much on mortgage 🙂

5: Insurance for the boat and health insurance , 10K euro per year ?

so , add it all up for 4 years :

• boat 150K
• living expense 120K
• schooling 40K
• Mortgage 80K
• Insurance 40K

Grand total for 4 years : 430K euro

update 28-sept-’16:

Now that we actually bought Blue Pearl I have a somewhat better idea of costs

• boat 150K

Not far off I think , purchase price 118K euro , upgrades and necessities (dinghy + outboard , safety gear, etc) +15K = 133K euro

• living expense 120K

Still sticking with the 120K for 4 years

• schooling 40K

This seems to still be realistic (or maybe on the high side)

• Mortgage 80K

Still 80K

• Insurance 40K

maybe we can lower this a little bit ? 1500 insurance pa for the boat , 5000 pa for the family = 6500 per year x4 = 26K

this would bring the total to 133K + 120K + 40K + 80K + 26K = 399K

 

 

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