Creating a Cruising Plan

Things you should include in the scope of your plan.

Understanding the dream.

o Is this your dream or is this a shared dream between you and your partner?

o How long do you plan to cruise?

o Is this going to be a circumnavigation, one year cruise, two year cruise, or a complete lifestyle change?

o Where do you plan to cruise?

o Will you be a coastal cruiser, blue water cruising, or just a local cruiser?

The boat you plan to cruise on.

o What kind of boat will you need for the type of cruising that you want to do?

o How much will that boat cost, can it be easily be handled by the people involved?

The skills necessary to achieve your cruising goals.

o Do you have the necessary sailing and maintenance and skills to achieve your dream?

o What classes would you need to take to enhance your skills?

And of course finances.

o How you're going to pay for your cruise?

o Will you work part time and cruise part time? o Will you offer services to other cruisers, run a boat based business?

How Long does it take most cruisers to get from wage slave to cruiser?

In my experience and in my research it usually takes the average person or couple about five years from the time that they decide they actually want to go cruising, to create and an execute a plan to get them from a wage slave to full time cruiser. A lot of people have done this much faster, and some never actually achieve their goal.

In my opinion the best place to start when creating your cruising plan is with your finances. One of the most important things that you can do to get yourself ready to go cruising is to pay off all of your debts.

If you start out your cruising life completely debt free, you can live an incredibly fulfilling and frugal lifestyle while cruising full time.

When I first started creating my cruising plan I went to a site called bankrate dot com and they had what's called a snowball calculator. I used this snowball calculator to figure out the fastest and best way to pay off all of my credit card debt. Within 24 months I was able to pay off almost 100 percent of my debt. (except my mortgage, but our plan involved selling the house)

Here is an updated Calculator like the one I used: http://www.crown.org/FindHelp/Personal/Calculators/DebtSnowball.aspx

Now of course this took a lot of effort, a lot of scrimping and cutting back on pretty much everything, but I was absolutely determined to be able to go cruising full time.

That brings us to the next most important thing about creating your cruising plan:

making sure that the dream is not just your dream. When you're creating your cruising plan make sure that this is a shared dream between you and your partner. There are plenty of stories online about couples who started out cruising together and cruising actually destroyed their marriage. Make sure you have the buy-in of everyone involved.

So there you have it, just a quick overview to get you started thinking about what goes in to a cruising plan.

I am a Full Time Cruiser and Entrepreneur. Living and working from my boat "The Gypsy Soul"

Want to learn more About The Cruising Lifestyle?
Visit My site at: http://thecruisinglifestyle.com

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