A boat is a hole in the water you pour money in to.
The only people I know who have boats -- let alone those who claim said vessel is capable of sailing the seven seas -- are wealthy, and certainly not frugal.
If the following question appeared on a quiz, I'd expect the vast majority of frugal people to answer "no": "If you want to save money and be frugal, would you buy a boat?"
So I await the budget for the poster claiming the above on a budget of $20K-$70K.
There is too much undocumented puffery here. We're all basically frugal. Folks claiming others are over-spending need to document their own situations explicitly so we can all conduct a peer review.
Camping on BLM land in a RV we scratch built from steel and aluminum. We are selling our house and so will have no mortgage, real estate tax, maintenance. We will have maintenance on the truck and RV, but the RV is built better than most houses with a continuous aluminum roof with no holes or seams to caulk. 2 inches of polyiso flame resistant insulation, 1100 watts of solar panels, 100 gallons of water and 100 gallons of propane. It also has a workshop/garage that houses our two dual sport motorcycles and it pulls our 17 foot Montgomery sailboat. The base truck is a 2006 Isuzu
NRR diesel with lowish miles. Fairly reliable and not too bad to fix.
A typical month camping might be (we are married, no kids):
$300 fuel
$400 food
$300 health insurance
$50 phone/internet (when near a tower)
$100 vehicle insurance
$200 vehicle maintenance/registration (should be no more than $2400 a year)
$200 hotel/B&B stay (probably 2 or 3 nights a month)
$100 state campground (going to try to stay on National Forest/BLM but occasionally will stay in parks
$200 (misc. camping supplies, toiletries, books)
So about $1850 a month or $22,200 a year. Maybe a bit more if we dry store our sailboat at a cheap mini-storage yard (no point in taking sailboat in the middle of the desert or up a mountain). Certainly under $25,000 a year.
Now, for sailing around the world, I have read a lot of books and we have taken blue water cruising classes, but I do not have actual budget figures yet. I have priced good used boats in the $50k range and would figure another $50k for new rigging and gear. There are plenty of couples who sail on much less than a $70k budget, but I just threw that figure out there. I will let you know in 5 or 6 years when we are finished touring the states and buy a sailboat :-)
Here is a pic of our camper, and a pic of the construction progress on our garage pod that mounts behind the camper where the motorcycles currently sit on the flatbed. The garage has a ramp door and built in workbench because I want to still work on odd projects on the road.
