by Michele | Nov 7, 2012 | Preparation Stage
Well Election Night has come and gone, and once again we all chose a president. The real question now is so what? While it’s nice to hear what a candidate is “planning” to do, what we really need to know is how their policies are going to affect our everyday lives. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to find good concrete information about how US policies affect our future plans. We have been trying to find better information about what our status will actually be once we move out of the country essentially as nomads.
Here are a few of our most pressing questions:
- Where is our legal “residence” once we no longer live anywhere specific?
- Would we have to pay state income taxes in addition to federal if we aren’t a state resident?
- Through which state/city do we do our absentee voting, and where do we have our ballots sent?
- How is the federal health insurance mandate going to affect us? Does it apply if we aren’t living in the country?
- How do we maximize our tax status to use the system to our advantage while we are living on interest only?
- Do we have to pay capital gains tax on the sale of our house if we don’t “reinvest” it in another house? (This one we have answered now: only if we sell our house for more than $250,000 more than we bought it for. In our dreams.)
- How do the new overseas banking regulations affect us?
The difficult thing in finding the real answers to these questions is the fact that every cruiser is different and most policies aren’t exactly written with roaming nomads in mind. And while both of us are fairly confident in our abilities to read and understand legal contracts and other important documents, we aren’t very comfortable with basing very serious decisions on our own knowledge of tax, immigration/emigration, and healthcare law. I mean have you ever tried reading raw tax code? Not recommended for the living.
by Michele | Oct 19, 2012 | Preparation Stage
Our first batch. Those strawberries were delicious!
As you may have figured out by now, I don’t exactly consider myself the “domestic” type. This would certainly include my cooking skills or lack there of. My father-in-law used to joke that my best dish was bagel-bites and that wasn’t really an exaggeration. That is why you will find “Learn to Cook” on our To-Do List page. My best dish is no longer bagel-bites but I do still have a long way to go before I could peruse a Julia Child cookbook with confidence.
At the beginning of the summer, I heard an ad on the radio for a local crop share program which ran once a week from May through October. I figured this would be the perfect way for Dan and I to get a taste of what it might be like to only be able to cook items that are readily available, instead of relying on out of season fruits and vegetables. We know that there may be a lot of new foods in our travels that we haven’t eaten before and so we wanted a little practice with finding new recipes and getting out of our comfort zone.
Well, it sounded good in theory anyway. In the beginning of the season, we were doing pretty well trying out arugula in chicken breast with sauteed radishes. We had some fabulous green beans and spinach, fresh garlic and blue potatoes, corn on the cob and delicious blackberries. However, those were all the things that we had eaten before and already knew that we liked to eat. When we started getting shipments of squash, parsnips, turnips and beets, we were significantly less successful in our enthusiasm. Mostly, we would just drop off our whole box of food at Dan’s parents’ house and go out to eat. Not exactly what we had hoped but I guess that’s life.
I’m not sure if we learned more about cooking or about ourselves in this exercise. We certainly know that we have a long way to go before we could live reasonably on $1000-$1500 a month, which is our eventual goal. Maybe we’ll just start by eating bagel bites and move on from there.
by Michele | Aug 2, 2012 | Preparation Stage
Dan’s mom, Shelly, and Carter at the pumpkin farm last year.
Step 1: Put a big sign in front of your house that says it is for sale.
Step 2: Wait for your family to freak out.
Okay, this is exactly what we didn’t do and hopefully anyone reading this blog will try to avoid this approach as well. We were not looking forward to telling Grandma and Grandpa that their adorable grandson would soon be living on a boat out of easy cuddle range, however we decided that it would be very unfair to put our house up for sale without letting them know first.
Let me just insert a little history here to help everyone understand why we were hesitant to tell our parents. First of all, we have a very good relationship with Dan’s parents. They live only a few blocks from us, which means that we see them a lot. It will be a major change for us (and them) to not see each other basically every day. Secondly, sailing off on a boat is not the first time that we have told our families that we are moving somewhere else, but it will be the first time that we actually do it. We wanted to make sure that we were far enough along in the planning and preparation that we would be taken seriously, as well as have as many answers to their questions as possible. Finally, over the last year we have been trying to prepare them for the idea of cruising by talking a lot about sailing and other people that we have met who are currently cruising.
To be honest, I think our general preparation worked to make the idea sound feasible, but I’m not sure that we overcame the obstacle of being taken seriously. We told Dan’s parents at dinner at Cracker Barrel (his mom’s favorite restaurant, mine less so) that we were putting our house up for sale in August and that we planned to move to Florida as soon as possible to find a boat to live on. And then…nothing happened. It was extremely anticlimactic. Eventually they did ask some of the basic questions like “What about pirates?” and “How do you make sure Carter doesn’t fall in?”, but the overall mood was so subdued I almost wished someone would cry or yell or something. It felt like being a kid again…
“Hey mom! I’m going to be an astronaut when I grow up!”
“That’s great, honey, now wash your hands for dinner.”
Since that day, a week and a half ago, there still hasn’t been much reaction. Things have been mentioned in an off-hand kind of way, but no more questions or concerns have been voiced. I have a feeling that may change once we are actually leaving, but for now I just don’t think that it is real to them yet.
Note: some of you may have noticed the lack of information on my family’s reaction to the news. That’s because we would like to tell them in person, but we haven’t been able to get up to Chicago to talk to them about it yet.
by Michele | Jul 11, 2012 | Preparation Stage
“Success always comes when preparation meets opportunity” -Henry Hartman
And so begins the next step of our journey. Ladies and Gentlemen, Dan and I have officially changed our mindset (and actions) from what we like to call the Planning Stage to the Preparation Stage. As I said in my last post, we are preparing now to be ready to cruise by the end of next year’s hurricane season. We’ll be (hopefully) saying Happy New Year 2014 from an anchorage in the Bahamas. That being said, there is a LOT to do in a year if we really want to be prepared to get out there.
First and foremost among items on our To-Do list is getting our house sold. We are frantically fixing up all the little loose ends around our house that have been left undone in the almost 4 years that we have lived here. Prime example: the family that lived in our house prior to us moving in apparently decided they like their mantle piece on the basement fireplace too much to leave it behind, (totally bizarre I know) so we had to put a new one in. Luckily, we’re hoping to have the vast majority of those things completed within the next 2-3 weeks, as we would like to have our house on the market by the beginning of August. Speaking of getting our house on the market, anyone know a good realtor in Peoria?
Secondly, we have instituted a policy of no spending that is not beneficial to live on a boat. While that may seem somewhat broad, the biggest part of controlling our spending is based on the mindset of looking at every dollar going out of our bank account. Every dollar we spend on land is another dollar we won’t have when we’re living on a very fixed income on the boat. Going out to eat? No way. Visible home improvements? Sure. New swimsuit? Maybe. There are still quite a few large purchases/financial obligations that we will need to deal with before we can leave, but hopefully many of those will help us make money (like Dan’s scuba instructor certification) or save money (like getting LASIK surgery) in the future.
So what’s next, quitting our jobs? buying a boat? telling our family? duhn duhn duhn. Coming soon to a blog near you!
Follow your Dreams. Follow the Horizon.
by Dan | Jun 6, 2012 | Preparation Stage
We were impressed all around by Bull Shoals.
Michele and I were fortunate enough to be able to spend a few nights aboard a 60 ft houseboat on Bull Shoals Lake recently. I was quite impressed with both the lodging and the diving. It’s no Caribbean, but it’s way better than anything around us. The houseboat was a four bedroom, 2 bathroom (ok, head) model that was custom designed by the owner of the boat dock. I’ll get to how we met the (super nice) owner later…
The main reason Kyle, Becca, Michele, and I decided to go on the trip was for Kyle, Michele, and I to finish the open water portion of a few scuba certifications… advanced for all three of us as well as rescue for Kyle and I.
Not what I was expecting. (Credit: BSLBD website)
To be honest my expectations were quite low. I’ve seen houseboats on the Illinois River… and, well, they look like houseboats on the Illinois River. Most are barely more than tents or campers precariously perched on a few rusty pontoons. Not so with the houseboats from Bull Shoals Lake Boat Dock. The boats were open, clean, and basically felt like a house inside (I know).
The diving was varied… a recent lack of rain coupled with unseasonably high temperatures has created a large algae bloom, reducing visibility to 5-10 feet in places. Below the thermocline at 26 feet the visibility greatly improved to 50-70 feet. Unfortunately the temperature dropped from 75-80 °F above the thermocline to around 55-60 °F below… too cold for our 4/3 wet suits.
The dives consisted of a few wall dives, some sunken machinery, and a ton of fish. My favorite dive, however, was our advanced class “deep” dive. Deep in quotations because we’ve already gone deeper in the Caribbean. Don’t tell PADI. When the Bull Shoals dam was built a huge swath of land was flooded, creating Bull Shoals Lake. The houses were dismantled prior to flooding but the trees were not. On our deep dive we were able to swim through an underwater forest of decades old trees… it was unreal.
Bull Shoals Lake
While preparing to descend for our night dive Michele was injured by Kyle accidentally jumping in on top of her. One of the instructors was bringing us over closer to the boat’s lights so he could explain the dive plan more easily. In the time between Kyle checking the water and announcing he was about to roll in, we entered his drop zone. We should have been aware divers were still entering the water. The instructor with us (who was facing the boat) should have been aware divers were still entering the water. It was dark. Kyle followed the proper procedures for entering the water… accidents just happen, however.
The owner of the boat dock was simply awesome. He instantly picked Michele and I up in his speed boat and brought us to a waiting ambulance at the dock. He then was kind enough to pick us up from the hospital at 3 in the morning after Michele was discharged. If you are ever in the area, I would highly suggest renting a boat from Rick at the Bull Shoals Lake Boat Dock. I am confident Rick will take great care of you.
Fortunately the three of us were able to complete our additional scuba certifications despite the accident. Kyle and I are now ready to begin divemaster training! The road to our dream won’t always be easy, but it is a path that is worth taking. It felt great to live on the water, if only for a few days. We can’t wait until it becomes full time.
Follow your dreams. Follow the Horizon.
We are normal (well ok, not so normal) people that have a dream to see the world and live life as it was meant to be. We both have successful careers in the healthcare industry, even in this terrible economy. We want to break free of the current cycle of trading time for dollars and dollars for more and more things we don't need. So, we have decided to forego the fruits of our economic success and "retire" well before we are 30 and set out to see what is over the Horizon.