Some people never find it, some only pretend, but I just want to live happily ever after every now and then…
-Jimmy Buffet
For the next year my goal is to live off of one dollar per hour.
$24.00 per day
$168.00 per week
$730.00 per month
$8760.00 for the whole year.
"White Rabbit"
The answers everyone is looking for.
The understanding of the unknown and unexplained.
The wanderer looking for his place in the world.
Answers to questions yet to be asked.
Chasing that which cannot be caught or found.
Elusiveness of the misunderstood.
You don't drown by falling in water. You drown by staying there.
January 4th
It's been four days and I can see I may have already bitten off more than I can chew. I'm not quite sure how I am going to make this budget work but it will. When I hatched this ridicules plan I had never intended it to be more than a spending experiment to try and track where the money goes. I am 41 an have never balanced a checkbook. My problem is that I am used to making so much money that price tags don't matter. In the old days if I saw something I wanted I bought it. Its been several years since I gave everything away and walked out my door with nothing but a daypack and my dog. I spent that winter living in a snow cave searching for answers. My diet consisted of fresh food from the local co-op dumpster and road kill. If you've never had fresh venison you don't know what you are missing. It may seem extreme but I needed a change and I got it. I had lost my compass and was living for money not for life. I look back on those days and can hardly remember who I was.
I still have not been able to break the habit of just spending without thinking so my new budget is going to be interesting. I my world if I can live here on that amount of money I can live anywhere just as well. While I'm already torturing Lizzie making her live on such a small boat in the winter I wasn't sure how to approach the whole budget thing with her. She is already such a frugal girl that I don't know if it would matter. So for my experiment the budget will cover all our living expenses minus debt. We over pay every month and are expecting to be debt free by the end of the year. when we leave we will have no debt so there is no reason to include it. Our goal is to add equal amounts per month to our freedom account which consists of savings, debt payment, and boat gear all in equal proportions. As a ex financial advisor I can say that this is not the program I would out a client on but we have very specific reasons for this order of saving and spending. As far as Lizzie is concerned if she wants to go out to lunch with a co-worker or buy a book I'm not adding it into my budget. As a travel writer I also have several weeks committed to travel this year and that wont be included. I know I know I'm starting to sound like I work for the government. The budget is what it is. For us its a start at how little we can live well on. as long as we are still in the building process life will be expensive but we get closer every day to being free.
Over the weekend we discovered condensation in our bilge food lockers so that and our new cooktop are on the top of my list.
If you mind the cents, the dollars will take care of themselves
-Mathews grandfather
January budget
Cash730.00
Slip Rent 239.00
Utilitys 4.00
Tobacco 36.78
Vending Machine 5.00
Showers 9.00
Groceries 63.61
Laundry 2.00
Stove Fuel 9.94
Boat Insurance 36.66
Coffee 4.00
Restuarant 56.00
Night Out 90.00
Balance170.11
We have emerged from our winter hibernation and the rush to beat spring is on. Before we can sail we still need to add new primary winches, finish rigging our boom, Staysail track, traveler, recut the main, ad an outboard plus a few smaller projects like lazyjacks, sail covers life jackets, flares and a bowsprit platform. Our search for a dingy is still underway but as of yet we have had no luck falling in love with anything we can afford.
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
-Henry David Thoreau
January 15th,
Smacked again, for the second time this week we have been hit with winds in the high 50's. We are both a little short on sleep and having the mid winter blahs. It's been hard to find motivation in the short cold days and I think I need to start planning a trip to somewhere warm to recharge out batteries.
Where to go? Hawaii, Baja, Cancun, the Bahamas? We want to go somewhere warm and close. Our passports are still floating around in the system somewhere so It might be Hawaii. There is this guy who has been there all winter living in a small shack he made with a deck made of scrap 2x4's and a plastic tarp. He has it nestled in the hill overlooking his favorite surf spot. As much as I'd like to disappear for a few months I think a few weeks is all we can get. Lizzie is teaching her first college course so we will have to be patient for a month or so till her term ends but just thinking about it is making me feel warmer.
Trouble in paradise. If it was easy we would all succeed at our dreams. Lizzie has moved off of the boat. I could blame the small space, a harsh winter, too much work with too little money... Or maybe its just me. We have been cooped up in such a small space and have been having major communications issue, you know Men are from Mars, women are from Venus type stuff. Anyway's I've let her go and the boat seems a cold lonely place. I've lost all motivation and can't find my True North.
I never actually read anything I write. It just flows from my heart and I move on. Today I went back through my blog and read it from start to finish. It reads like a wonderful fairytale. Perhaps that's all it ever was, a fairytale. :(`
Bachelor Stew Yum
It's still a beautiful world
January, 20th
When I'm stuck with a day that's gray and lonely. I just stick out my chin and grin and say oh. The sun will come out tomorrow so you gotta hang on till tomorrow.
There are some people who see a glass as half full, while others see it as half empty. I just see a glass of water, pick it up and drink it. I haven't spent my life studying quantum physics but I do believe that there are multiple possible reality's or perceptions for every thought, act, or situation. What I'm trying to say is that we have a direct effect on the reality we see even if we try to hide from it and play victim.
We set ourselves up for the perfect relationship storm. Our self imposed strict budget while a hardship is not the end of the world. we need to learn a realistic budget for our cruise. If we cant live on it here we wont be able to live on it anywhere.
Spending a storm ridden winter with two dogs in a
horribly exposed berth in a 24' sailboat is certainly not a deal
breaker. I think we both looked at it as a mini adventure.
There were many reasons for selling the car but at this point it doesn't matter. The car was our dog sitter we could leave them safely and comfortably in the car for several hours while we went out to eat or to the book store or wherever. The car was our outlet to mountain biking, hiking, skiing. It was our escape vehicle on the weekends. Now we are literally trapped. We can't leave the dogs on the boat or they will freeze. If we leave the heater on the dogs will nock it over and burn the boat down.
Any one of these things would simply be a hardship but all three at the same time created the perfect storm. I was noticeably frustrated with our situation and while none of it was directed towards Lizzie she felt like she could not make me happy. Her unhappiness weighed heavy on my heart because I count figure out why I couldn't make her happy. Our inability to communicate this to each other made things worse by the day. At this point there is nothing I can do other than love her and give her the space she needs. She is a big girl and knows her way home. If and hopefully when she comes home is when the hard work will start. We still need to learn to communicate and be more/less sensitive to each other's and our own personal environment
Its clear that we cant go on living like this. Do we get a bigger boat? Maybe we need to go back to the house and get a smaller boat, maybe something on a trailer that we can pull to the Sea of Cortez for a few weeks. Maybe this is not our time and we just need to slow down and figure it out. While I love the boat and she is perfect in so many ways in the end its just a fucking boat. Lizzie is my wife, my best friend, and my lover. I'm simply not willing to chance losing her or us over a silly boat. The dream can be put on hold for now. There is always tomorrow.
There is a Chinese saying said,静坐常思己过，闻谈莫论人非。。。I am sorry that I dont know how to translate it into English..
One dollar an hour
