Part of getting serious about converting a dream is figuring out which parts of it matter. It’s great to have a specific goal in mind, to have a definite picture of what it is you’re trying to achieve. Knowing exactly what you want gives you something very concrete to strive for. But to make it an ‘all or nothing’ deal is severely limiting; you either make it or you don’t. There are some things you can control and it’s those things that you can actively work towards putting in place. But there will always be things which will be beyond your control which will influence the outcome; being flexible about what success looks like gives you options and choices. For me, there’s a lot of parts to what I want the future to look like… not all of them are essential. Ideally, I’d like to sell up in Melbourne, buy a boat (about 40 foot) somewhere in the Mediterranean (preferably Greece), spend the next 5 to 10 years cruising around Greece, France, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Croatia… then end up back in the Pacific sailing between Samoa, New Zealand, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Australia. At some stage I suppose I’ll be physically past living on a boat, so it will be important to have land-based options available for then. When I break that down into what’s really important to me, these are the key points:
- Experience living the cruising lifestyle
- Be somewhere warm/avoid being anywhere cold
- See new places/meet new people
There’s a lot of options which meet those essential criteria; anything from the ideal scenario above to continuing to work in Melbourne during the 8 -9 warmer months of the year and heading north on my current boat for Melbourne’s winter. The things I can’t entirely control which will influence the end outcome include:
- If/when my boat sells and for how much
- Rental income derived from investment properties
- The cost of purchasing a boat more suitable for living aboard
- My ability to earn a minimal income remotely
Getting serious about heading off has also forced me to figure out what else matters to me… what I’m not prepared to compromise on in order to convert my dream. For me, there are 3 key things that I won’t jeopardise, even if it means not achieving what I’m hoping to do:
- Family and friends
- My health and well-being
- Financial security
My family have been the rock-solid foundations who have allowed me to navigate through life’s ups and downs with more or sometimes less success. They have been there for me through thick and thin, even when they haven’t agreed with decisions I’ve made or paths I’ve taken. Whatever the future holds, it will need to include ways of staying in touch with and continuing to be close to my family and friends.
I hope to enjoy a cruising lifestyle for many years to come… but more fundamentally I hope to enjoy life for many years to come. This means doing everything I can to look after my own health and well-being. In the context of a cruising lifestyle, there are particular considerations regarding safety and security at sea and when visiting other countries. That includes developing the necessary skills and gaining the relevant experience, but above all making sensible and cautious decisions.
Financial security is probably the biggest reason I would have always thought a cruising lifestyle was beyond my reach. Like many people my age who’ve had children and been divorced (in my case twice), asset-building and superannuation growth has been a very stop-start affair. I’ve still got nearly twenty years before I reach my ‘preservation age’ (what a macabre term – reminds me of Egyptian mummies!) so in theory there’s still time for me to build financial security for my future. My Scottish-presbyterian heritage has always made me think along the lines of full-time work until at least that age if not beyond, in order to be mortgage-free with substantial funds in superannuation when I eventually retire (to a cruising lifestyle in warm climates). The difficulty with that line of thinking is that when I look around me, I see more people whose health doesn’t allow them to enjoy that retirement lifestyle when they finally get there than people who do. I might be one of the lucky ones, but then again I might not… so it’s important to me to include some aspects of that lifestyle in the here and now. Admittedly I have an expensive hobby and I could build financial security far more quickly if I gave it up. But that hobby is also what keeps me physically active and mentally healthy, not to mention providing my own social outlet as well as for all those who crew for me. When I look at the trajectory I’m currently on, it would hopefully end up looking something like this by the time I’m 70 years of age:
- Mortgage-free on a small property
- Increased equity through capital growth in 3 other properties – probably sell one to positively gear the others and provide additional retirement income
- Sufficient superannuation funds to retire
When I started researching the annual budget required for a cruising lifestyle and comparing it to my current incomings and outgoings, I realised that I could achieve the lifestyle change now and still end up in a situation like this by the time I’m 65 years of age:
- Mortgage-free on 3 properties; choice of which one to live in and which ones to retain as investments
- Same accumulated superannuation funds as if I continue working full-time
That was when I realised that by reorganising things, I could actually be setting myself up not only to enjoy a cruising lifestyle many years earlier than anticipated, but also to be better off financially in the long term than if I continue living in Melbourne working a full-time corporate job for the next 20+ years. Now that’s exciting! Is it just me, or does that strike anyone else as a no-brainer?
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