Where Should Cruisers Live?

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by wolfgal

hi RaymondR,

you've sailed far and wide and have surely gathered much wisdom from other sailors along the way

would you (and other)s mind listing the benefits of having only mobile assets and cash liquidity?

much appreciatedif you do

wolfgal

The problem with owning things is that as much as you owning them they own you. For example houses require you to maintain them and pay taxes on them.

In addition all sorts of predators, like venal partners and inheritance protecting offsprings, are attracted to them. In contrast mobile and liquid assets can be readily moved about, they are no longer the goat staked beside the water hole acting as the very obvious bait for the predator.

Sounds cynical but I got that way through experience over many years.

[CassidyNZ]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

The problem with owning things is that as much as you owning them they own you. For example houses require you to maintain them and pay taxes on them.

In addition all sorts of predators, like venal partners and inheritance protecting offsprings, are attracted to them. In contrast mobile and liquid assets can be readily moved about, they are no longer the goat staked beside the water hole acting as the very obvious bait for the predator.

Sounds cynical but I got that way through experience over many years.

That’s an interesting perspective.

Our home ownership over the years has shown massive capital growth and we have bought and sold homes at very considerable net equity gains, never ever lost money. In addition, when the sailing thing goes out of our lives, we will have a place ashore to live that costs much less to maintain than a sea-going boat.

In my lifetime I have always been if the opinion that “inheritance-protecting offspring” is a wildly over-stated concept. I earned better than my father did. My daughter (only child) earns far and away more today than I ever did. If anything, she and her husband will be capable of supporting their respective parents into old age, not the other way around.

Also, more and more one reads of the people with “mobile and liquid assets” being totally conned out of vast sums of money and, curiously, those who think they are impervious to con artists are often the ones who get ripped off.

Your situation obviously successfully runs up-stream of conventional wisdom. Maintaining my boat is way more costly than maintaining my home.

[RaymondR]

Hi CasidyNZ,

Lots of people have similar experiences with real estate but then again many lost everything they owned when they had large mortgages and the GFC struck. However with a hefty portfolio of liquid assets one can have the choice of where to live.

[Eder]

Wife & I live on our boat & cruise but also have a 45' motor home to switch to when a change is needed. Travelling is in our blood I guess, happiest day of my life is when someone bought our house 10 years ago.



I shuddered when I watched my kids recently put out a million bucks for an inner city pile of chip board with a 2 car pile of chip board.


To each their own.

[Boatfreak]

Originally Posted by Ifitsworthdoing

Interesting and important question - bearing in mind that the ‘Cruiser community’ (if there is such a thing) clearly consists of a large spread of subcommunities with sometimes very different life choices ...

We are currently preparing for a largely liveaboard retirement in the Mediterranean, with almost all our cash spent on a shiny new boat. Upside is it’s built to our requirements and shouldn’t need much upkeep for a decade; downside is we have very little disposable income left other than our basic pensions.

So our Plan A is to find one or more owners of holiday properties standing empty during the winter months agreeable to letting us home sit or rent cheaply from October to March. Plan B would be to join an overwinter expat liveaboard community e.g. in Cartagena, Marina di Ragusa or Preveza. Plan C would be to look for seasonal onshore employment - maybe caring for an elderly person or couple with a live-in arrangement.

Anyone here with experience of any of these strategies? Our EU passports will stand us in good stead, but the choice of official residence will be a tricky one as it has ramifications for the boat in terms of possible added taxes and mandatory national boating qualifications (which seem to rule out Spain which otherwise would have been our top choice) ...

IfItsWorthDoing

We bought our boat in the Levkas area and overwinter her at Marina di Ragusa so have spent time in both places. Marina di Ragusa (MDR) has a great social life with cheap alcohol and free snacks at happy hour twice a week which means that few bother to cook on those evenings. The town itself has little to offer except a great beach and a lot of restaurants. There is a small but good chandler who will order in what he doesn't stock but the large and well equiped boatyard is mostly avoided by the liveaboards as it is expensive and unreliable and mostly disinterested in actually doing anything. This is a bit of a problem as most boats overwintered afloat will require an early season scrub . You can get stuff done, sail work, stainless steel, mechanics etc but it is often a struggle. There is a good hardware store but it is in Ragusa about 20Km away and you do need transport. Thats not too much of a problem because cars can be hired very cheaply in the winter. Winter accomodation ashore can be had cheaply but I have not heard of anything Free at MDR. If you take out an annual berth you can get Italian residency if Schengen is a problem.

My impression of Levkas was that there was quite a good community of sailors there and and in a wider area around e.g. Nidri, Sivota, Prevezza. You can get any service for a boat in the area and my impression of the Greeks is that they are very businesslike and efficient. The Marina is considerably more expensive than MDR but there are numerous other places to go on a short or mid term basis. We had friends who found winter accomodation off their boat for free in return for some maintenance work and from what I gather it is quite common.

I don't profess to be an expert, we bought our boat in 2018 so have had only a few years, and it aslo sounds like you are comitted, but I would caution against assuming that a new boat will not require any maintenance. One of the people we met at Levkas had a Lagoon Catamaran bought new and only two years old. It was on it's third haulout for warranty work in that time and the owner had to pay each time, though it was refunded after about nine months. At a minimum of £1000 a go just for the haulout, that is a consideration for most people.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

There's a lot to be said for having only mobile assets and cash liquidity.

Your reasoning makes a lot of sense for travelers.

Could you go into some specific details about how to store your mobile assets and liquid cash?

What types of assets are best for mobility ?

What mobile assets will be good protection from inflation?

What assets are liquid enough to convert to cash as needed?

Which assets are you able to accumulate globally as you travel?

Which also provide anonymity?

Your idea is an interesting one and it would be great to hear details regarding this type of financial strategy.

Aside from the benefits you already stated, another huge benefit I see is stress reduction. Imagine not having a heart attack every time the markets come tumbling down or the next pandemic cancels all rent on your rental property. Imagine not having to spend hours managing things. These are huge upsides.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by oceanminifish

We had the same conundrum. Landlocked in Atlanta and coming up on retirement and wanting to be on salt water, near a central, major sailing hub in the Caribbean ( so I could charter skipper and help deliver boats) and had an international airport. It also needed to be near world class diving (Saba etc.) since one of us is a scuba instructor. Having been raised in Florida, that was ruled out entirely. After saving for a sailboat for 30 years the money ended up going into a fixer-upper villa in St. Maarten an independent island country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The island has MANY world class marinas, all the boat services and chandleries anyone could want. Our place is on Oyster Pond where the marina (Captain Oliver's) is still destroyed from Hurricane Irma (but will be rebuilt someday) so we will have a place to store our boat and keep an eye on it. Or, we can charter boats when we want to sail and explore and dive and save the cost of actual ownership. Moorings/Sunsail, DreamYacht, and many small charter companies are on practically every island in the Caribbean. St. Maarten has everything we wanted in a central Caribbean location with the most diversified and tolerant population and laws we could find. Check it out! It is a sailor's dream!

I have always said... If I win the lottery I would buy that bit of land on the Marigot Bay side of the entrance to the Lagoon with the square shack on top and the crab pool at the bottom on the opposite side of the fuel jetty.
The best view in the world for an old sailor.

[Benz]

Originally Posted by Chotu

Your reasoning makes a lot of sense for travelers.

Could you go into some specific details about how to store your mobile assets and liquid cash?

What types of assets are best for mobility ?

What mobile assets will be good protection from inflation?

What assets are liquid enough to convert to cash as needed?

Which assets are you able to accumulate globally as you travel?

Which also provide anonymity?

Your idea is an interesting one and it would be great to hear details regarding this type of financial strategy.

Aside from the benefits you already stated, another huge benefit I see is stress reduction. Imagine not having a heart attack every time the markets come tumbling down or the next pandemic cancels all rent on your rental property. Imagine not having to spend hours managing things. These are huge upsides.

This was easy for me when all I owned was a 27' boat and $1200 in cash. It gets complicated when you become rich enough to have 10k and don't want to keep that all on the boat in bills. Then you have a bank, and a card, and the bank shuts down your card because it can't believe there'd be a hit from a Colombian grocery store even though you TOLD them specifically you were going to Colombia....
I have a dream of stuffing the bilge with 100s and heading off with neither card nor bank acct nor anything shore-based, but reality is you need an address for boat reg., passport, Driver's license; you need a bank card to rent a car just about anywhere: I'm not sure I could walk into an airport any longer and just buy a plane ticket over the counter with cash. I'm afraid bank cards are a necessity in this world, and a bank card requires a bank, and they require to be managed, and to forward you a new card from time to time. It's all a huge bother.

[hpeer]

When talking mobile liquid assets things get interesting. Moving sums of cash over $10,000 can be problematic if the US government becomes aware. You become liable for asset seizure and forfeiture. Lots written on that.

Lets say you have $100,000 total savings in cash. You want to keep it with you on board. How do you do that?

Dollars or some other currency is convenient but robbers or the government can confiscate it. What else is there where you can have a small volume, light weight mobile asset?

Good or silver? Lots of regulation about that, and it is hard to buy a beer with a bit of gold dust.

Bit coin? Perhaps a good solution but still a bit edgy and who knows what legislators will do to its legitimacy/legality.
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/ans...n-legal-us.asp

Ammunition? Checks a lot of boxes but can get you locked up many places.

What else? I am out of ideas.

The ideal would be something small, light, easily divisible for small purchases, readily accepted, not of obvious value to the initiated.

[CassidyNZ]

Originally Posted by Chotu

Aside from the benefits you already stated, another huge benefit I see is stress reduction. Imagine not having a heart attack every time the markets come tumbling down or the next pandemic cancels all rent on your rental property. Imagine not having to spend hours managing things. These are huge upsides.

Imagine having a heart attack when coming back from a shopping trip to find the washboards on your boat lying on the cockpit floor and knowing that your liquid assets were all on the boat when you left. Liquid assets quickly convert to a liquid tummy.

That said, I have a bank account in a country of which I am no longer a citizen or even a permanent resident. I have a retirement annuity that feeds a small amount of cash into the account and I have a debit card that can be used in money machines pretty much anywhere in the world. So I guess having all your assets converted to cash and on hand wherever you need it is possible even without a “fixed abode”.

However in today’s CV19 world with the US Fed allegedly printing $120b a month in bank notes and the EU Reserve bank printing €1.8t a year in fresh cash, what are the chances of my little bank falling over and all my cash reserves going with for the ride? I’m no economist that’s for sure but right now I’m not confident enough to convert my home into cash in the bank. YMMV.

Even with no cataclysmic banking meltdown, interest rates worldwide mean that liquid assets are not appreciating at all while my home grows (at present) at at least 10%pa in value.

[Eder]

How is a credit card with a high limit not liquid? Or will investment accounts soon be confiscated?


The only cash I have needed in the last year is a roll of quarters for the laundromat at the marina.