Quote:
Originally Posted by wind_magic
I just mention that because I don't agree with the idea that you have to have 30k$us/year coming in or you're going to be eating stray mice and scraping the bottom of the boat with shells you find on the beach. Learn to freaking cook, pressure cook some beans with ham bone in it for G's sake, anchor out once in a while.  |
I have to laugh at some of the assumptions I hear at times. Take food, for example: I saw an item on the news about a couple who spent $250/week on groceries who lost their jobs and now have "cut back" (no prepared meals or luxury tidbits). Our household is two adults and a child and our total grocery bill is about $100/week. We don't do what we would do on a boat (powdered milk, more "from scratch" cooking, food prep geared to minimizing refrigeration) and so I think that boat living should be cheaper, particularly if we can snag three or four pounds of fish a week, which I find a reasonable prospect. "Snagging" in this case also means trading a couple of cans of beer with local fishermen.
We do enjoy wine with meals and that will require some rethinking. Fragility of bottles and the simple fact that I drink very little when in charge of a boat means that the 1 litre TetraPaks made sense, but then you have to dispose of them in ways other than chucking a glass bottle over the side (which I consider "habitat enhancement", by the way...the bottle eventually becomes sand again.)
I think the combination of careful food prep, opportunistic purchasing in bulk and less reliance on processed foods (making our own breads, for instance) means we can keep the "ship's food bill" at $5K or less per year, leaving enough for the occasional shoreside treat of a restaurant meal or getting steaks or something.