People often assume living on a boat is cheap.
It isn’t.
Our monthly living costs are roughly
$4,000–$5,000.
We still buy groceries.
We still need fuel.
Cooking gas costs money.
We also have two cars and a tender.
In reality our life looks like this:
Life on land
plus
a boat.
So no, boat life isn’t a “cheap lifestyle.”
The Boat We Live On
In 2014 my partner suddenly started building a boat.
Instead of buying a house, he decided to build one on the water.
A 50-foot catamaran.
For people who don’t know boats, a catamaran simply means a boat with two hulls instead of one.
Think of it as
two long floating structures
with a house built on top.
Basically
a house on the water.
No Blueprint
People often ask about the design plans.
The honest answer?
There weren’t any.
The boat mostly existed inside his head.
He wrote notes in a notebook sometimes, but I never really saw a formal blueprint.
He would build something, think, adjust, and build the next part.
This went on for three years.
Three Years Extremely Broke
Those three years were
laughably broke.
Almost all the money went into the boat.
At the time our kids were still very small.
Kai and Alby were both preschool age.
Life was very simple.
Most people take another path.
Buy a house.
Take a mortgage.
Pay it for 30 years.
That’s the standard life structure.
We did something different.
My partner hates debt.
So instead of borrowing money,
we lived extremely broke for three years.
The result looked like this:
3 years broke
→ no mortgage
→ a finished home
That home just happened to be
a boat.
The Hidden Advantage
Living on a boat doesn’t automatically mean spending less.
Our monthly costs are normal.
But one thing is missing.
Debt.
And that changes everything.
The weight of a household isn’t determined by income.
It’s determined by fixed costs.
High income with heavy fixed costs
can still mean no freedom.
Average income with low fixed costs
can mean a surprisingly flexible life.
The Money That Saved Us
A few years later I had a brain hemorrhage.
My income suddenly stopped.
Completely.
Not reduced.
Zero.
But life didn’t stop.
Bills still arrived.
Food still had to be bought.
Kids still had to live.
Before that happened we had about
$30,000 in the bank.
It wasn’t planned.
It was just there.
But that money suddenly became something else.
An emergency fund.
I now call it
life money.
The Structure That Changed Everything
That experience changed how I think about money.
The order is simple now.
Emergency fund
→ investing
→ freedom
Investing alone doesn’t create freedom.
Without a safety buffer, people make decisions from fear.
With some margin, people can think clearly.
Poor-Looking, Strong Position
From the outside our life probably looks strange.
A DIY boat.
A simple lifestyle.
Nothing flashy.
Maybe even a little poor.
But the structure behind it is different.
No mortgage.
Emergency savings.
Investments.
What I call
a poor-looking strong position.
Life Design
The boat isn’t the goal.
It’s simply the result of designing life differently.
Emergency fund
→ investing
→ freedom.
And sometimes,
that path leads to
a house floating on water.
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