We will do our best to gather our monthly cruising costs here for you to dissemble. It was a tremendous amount of help to us to have others' information to review as we prepared to cruise.
A couple pieces of information:
Our billing cycle is from the 21st to the 20th of each month so the numbers will be slightly out of sync with the calendar months.
We hopefully will continue to reduce these amounts as we become more practiced in finding free anchorages and docks.
I have no desire to track cash expenditures to the penny the way that some cruisers do. You will see in our monthly expenditures a category entitled "Cash". These are ATM withdrawals and the money is typically spent on food, gas, water, and the dining out expenses required to pay for WiFi in the islands and the percentages of that cash are about the same as the percentage of the items that were categorized. In months where we leave for the Bahamas there will be large withdrawals of cash. If you're one of those people who can spend hours writing down every single cash receipt while looking out at the expanse of turquoise waters, I admire you and wish you well. I would normally have at least totaled up receipts, but the fact is that in the Bahamas most businesses don't give you receipts and if they do they are not itemized so you have no clue what they were for in the first place.
We order a lot from Amazon. Amazon orders break down into either Entertainment (music, Kindle, movies, etc.) or Misc Supplies. Misc Supplies are mostly consumables like inline water filters, toilet chemicals, laundry soap, paper products, staples like our protein shakes, organic products that are hard to find like our organic dehydrated strawberry powder for shakes, etc. Again, no desire to spend hours breaking these out. What I know is food I categorize as such, but most of it ends up in Misc Supplies.
Hopefully maintenance issues will continue to decline since we have done so much refitting and parts costs will decline.
I used to put the detail transactions under each category but the size of the files was getting too big to manage so I have reduced the reports to just the category totals. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me and I'll try to help you.
June, July, August, and part of September of 2014 are not accurate for normal cruising expenses. Our children had a boat purchase disaster of epic proportions and needed help. The bulk of the expenses are not included here as it was a loan that was paid back in full. I'm only including incidental costs here, such as shared meals, as a way of showing you that the unexpected will happen and you need to be prepared for it. May-June-July-Aug 2017 costs are also high because we had our daughter and family living with us on Kintala and we were cooking for seven.
June, July, and August of 2015 we were on the dock at Oak Harbor Marina in Pasadena, MD. The high costs of these three months reflect the solar panel install and the accompanying bimini rebuild, the autopilot installation on the wind vane, the pilot berth rebuild, the bottom paint, and the trip back to St. Louis to sell our condo. Any time you sit on the dock for any type of maintenance you can expect to pay at the very minimum $100-150 per day.
April through November of 2016 will show some elevated costs because we were on the dock at Snead Island Boat Works where Tim took a job for those months. While he was working, I was doing work on the boat. Work on the boat requires parts and materials. Parts and materials require $$$$.
This page contains just the totals of each month. For more detailed category info, see the pages for the yearly totals. As you can see, we have some work to do to meet our spending goals.
A couple pieces of information:
Our billing cycle is from the 21st to the 20th of each month so the numbers will be slightly out of sync with the calendar months.
We hopefully will continue to reduce these amounts as we become more practiced in finding free anchorages and docks.
I have no desire to track cash expenditures to the penny the way that some cruisers do. You will see in our monthly expenditures a category entitled "Cash". These are ATM withdrawals and the money is typically spent on food, gas, water, and the dining out expenses required to pay for WiFi in the islands and the percentages of that cash are about the same as the percentage of the items that were categorized. In months where we leave for the Bahamas there will be large withdrawals of cash. If you're one of those people who can spend hours writing down every single cash receipt while looking out at the expanse of turquoise waters, I admire you and wish you well. I would normally have at least totaled up receipts, but the fact is that in the Bahamas most businesses don't give you receipts and if they do they are not itemized so you have no clue what they were for in the first place.
We order a lot from Amazon. Amazon orders break down into either Entertainment (music, Kindle, movies, etc.) or Misc Supplies. Misc Supplies are mostly consumables like inline water filters, toilet chemicals, laundry soap, paper products, staples like our protein shakes, organic products that are hard to find like our organic dehydrated strawberry powder for shakes, etc. Again, no desire to spend hours breaking these out. What I know is food I categorize as such, but most of it ends up in Misc Supplies.
Hopefully maintenance issues will continue to decline since we have done so much refitting and parts costs will decline.
I used to put the detail transactions under each category but the size of the files was getting too big to manage so I have reduced the reports to just the category totals. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me and I'll try to help you.
June, July, August, and part of September of 2014 are not accurate for normal cruising expenses. Our children had a boat purchase disaster of epic proportions and needed help. The bulk of the expenses are not included here as it was a loan that was paid back in full. I'm only including incidental costs here, such as shared meals, as a way of showing you that the unexpected will happen and you need to be prepared for it. May-June-July-Aug 2017 costs are also high because we had our daughter and family living with us on Kintala and we were cooking for seven.
June, July, and August of 2015 we were on the dock at Oak Harbor Marina in Pasadena, MD. The high costs of these three months reflect the solar panel install and the accompanying bimini rebuild, the autopilot installation on the wind vane, the pilot berth rebuild, the bottom paint, and the trip back to St. Louis to sell our condo. Any time you sit on the dock for any type of maintenance you can expect to pay at the very minimum $100-150 per day.
April through November of 2016 will show some elevated costs because we were on the dock at Snead Island Boat Works where Tim took a job for those months. While he was working, I was doing work on the boat. Work on the boat requires parts and materials. Parts and materials require $$$$.
This page contains just the totals of each month. For more detailed category info, see the pages for the yearly totals. As you can see, we have some work to do to meet our spending goals.
| Monthly Average | $3,517.01 | |||||
| Daily Average | $104.95 | |||||
| Monthly Avg Max Goal: | $2,500.00 | |||||
| Daily Avg Max Goal: | $82.19 | |||||
| 2014 | Monthly Total | Daily Avg | Year Total: | $45,021.35 | ||
| Jan 2014 | $1,930.77 | $62.28 | Year Daily Avg: | $123.35 | ||
| Feb 2014 | $2,130.81 | $68.74 | Monthly Avg | $3,751.78 | ||
| Mar 2014 | $4,194.72 | $135.31 | ||||
| Apr 2014 | $2,735.93 | $88.26 | ||||
| May 2014 | $4,175.22 | $134.68 | ||||
| Jun 2014 | $4,388.43 | $141.56 | ||||
| Jul 2014 | $4,295.03 | $138.55 | ||||
| Aug 2014 | $6,316.71 | $203.76 | ||||
| Sep 2014 | $6,708.45 | $216.40 | ||||
| Oct 2014 | $3,092.02 | $99.74 | ||||
| Nov 2014 | $2,121.26 | $68.43 | ||||
| Dec 2014 | $2,932.00 | $94.58 | ||||
| 2015 | Monthly Total | Daily Avg | Year Total: | $40,738.94 | ||
| Jan 2015 | $2,852.46 | $92.01 | Year Daily Avg: | $111.61 | ||
| Feb 2015 | $4,147.94 | $133.80 | Monthly Avg | $3,394.91 | ||
| Mar 2015 | $2,165.77 | $69.86 | ||||
| Apr 2015 | $1,788.56 | $59.62 | ||||
| May 2015 | $3,046.60 | $98.28 | ||||
| Jun 2015 | $5,153.63 | $171.79 | ||||
| Jul 2015 | $4,888.55 | $157.70 | ||||
| Aug 2015 | $5,258.41 | $169.63 | ||||
| Sep 2015 | $3,823.48 | $127.45 | ||||
| Oct 2015 | $2,174.34 | $70.14 | ||||
| Nov 2015 | $2,905.12 | $96.84 | ||||
| Dec 2015 | $2,534.08 | $81.74 | ||||
| 2016 | Monthly Total | Daily Avg | Year Total: | $39,141.12 | ||
| Jan 2016 | $2,801.51 | $90.37 | Year Daily Avg: | $107.24 | ||
| Feb 2016 | $2,687.89 | $96.00 | Monthly Avg | $3,261.76 | ||
| Mar 2016 | $2,122.04 | $70.73 | ||||
| Apr 2016 | $3,712.02 | $123.73 | ||||
| May 2016 | $4,498.82 | $145.12 | ||||
| Jun 2016 | $3,064.83 | $102.16 | ||||
| Jul 2016 | $3,185.73 | $102.77 | ||||
| Aug 2016 | $4,843.43 | $161.45 | ||||
| Sep 2016 | $3,100.05 | $103.34 | ||||
| Oct 2016 | $2,122.83 | $68.48 | ||||
| Nov 2016 | $3,496.56 | $116.55 | ||||
| Dec 2016 | $3,505.41 | $113.08 | ||||
| 2017 | Monthly Total | Daily Avg | Year Total: | $29,846.84 | ||
| Jan 2017 | $6,377.14 | $205.71 | Year Daily Avg: | $81.77 | ||
| Feb 2017 | $2,022.46 | $65.24 | Monthly Avg | $3,730.86 | ||
| Mar 2017 | $1,053.85 | $34.00 | ||||
| Apr 2017 | $2,124.17 | $68.52 | ||||
| May 2017 | $4,984.86 | $160.80 | ||||
| Jun 2017 | $4,073.89 | $131.42 | ||||
| Jul 2017 | $4,015.53 | $129.53 | ||||
| Aug 2017 | $5,194.94 | $167.58 | ||||
| Sep 2017 | $0.00 | |||||
| Oct 2017 | $0.00 | |||||
| Nov 2017 | $0.00 | |||||
| Dec 2017 | $0.00 | |||||
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