Three seperate but related stories:
1. Traveling Lifestyle: We both love travel and had talked about when we retire we would travel full time. At this point, it was just something nebulous when we got into our 60's we could sail off on a 60' boat. As we started planning and budgeting for retirment, we figured we could push up the date to our late 40's if we dropped back to a 45' boat. I'm an engineer and use far too many spreadsheets. One day, I don't know why, I took our budget spreadsheet and looked at it from the opposite direction. If we sold the house, car and all the junk that went with it, what would it cost to live the traveling lifestyle. It turns out if we could get debt free, it was only around $25-30k for a nice lifestyle. When Tammy got home, I told her we needed to talk. We then spent about a year and a half clearing the junk out of our life and getting debt free while buying a 35' sailboat.
2. During this process, Tammy's Dad was diagnosed with ALS, he had just retired and had recently bought a new truck and 5th wheel with the idea of taking longer trips. They took a few short trips but soon he was to the point where he couldn't safely drive. Finally we had to sell his new truck because we would find him just sitting in the truck in the driveway. He was only 60. This drove home the point that if you can do it, do it NOW. We set sail at 37.
3. After 3 years cruising on the boat, we found ourselves in Michigan in the fall and weren't likely to make it south ahead of the weather. While we know of a few that winter over on thier boats in Michigan, it held no appeal for us, so we arranged winter storage for the boat and picked up a truck and 5th wheel on the cheap and headed south.
We now flip back and forth depending on the weather and our interests with plans for a trip to Europe (not sure boat or RV) and driving the pan-american highway.
