That is the burning question right now in our house… where are we going to move next spring?
Originally, the idea to sell our house in April 2013 had three goals:
- Get us out of this enormous mortgage, so we could save more $$ for our RTW sailing adventure
- Get us out of this enormous house, so we could start living with less
- Get us out of this town, so we could show our kids that the rest of the world is not like our little suburban town…
We’ve been searching and searching, and…nothing.
You would think having the opportunity to choose anywhere in the world we want to live would be a fun exercise. You would think! But actually, we are pretty much limited to staying anywhere in the U.S. because our 9-5 jobs, although remote from home, require 9-5 hours, travel within U.S., and availability to head into an office when required.
So we started searching 50 states, and immediately started to narrow down our options to coastal states because we want to be near water and sailboats. But what we have found in our search:
- We live in a state with no state income tax. This is actually a really big deal. If we choose to move to a state with a state income tax, we would basically take a 5-9% hit to our income. Um, no thank you? Why would we want to give up 9% of our income to move to another state? We are scrimping and saving. Moving is supposed to save us money! The thought of just handing over 5-9% makes absolutely no sense to our RTW plan! There are only a handful of states with no state income tax, and only two states, in addition to our own state of Texas, that we are considering: Florida or Washington. (No offense to Alaska, Nevada, South Dakota, or Wyoming – but Matt is scared of cold weather, and Nevada has no coastline.) Somehow, we just narrowed down from “anywhere in the world” to “anywhere in the 50 U.S. states” to “anywhere in three U.S. states.” THREE!
- Pro/Con of each of these three states:
- Texas: We can get out of our big house and our big mortgage. We can move to the coast to be near water and boats, but moving within Texas (although a huge state) does not really do anything for us culturally. We are still in Texas.
- Florida: We can get out of our big house and our big mortgage. We can be close to water and boats and the Caribbean. But finding schools equal or better than what we currently have has been difficult. And I’m not sure Florida is much different than Texas… it’s still the south.
- Washington: We can get out of our big house, but rent prices will not save us any money over our big mortgage. We can be close to water and boats and mountains and islands and Canada, but again… finding good schools will cost us more $$ in rent, so we won’t really save any money – in fact, it may actually cost us more.
- Now what? Research indicates that either staying where we are, or moving to a smaller house where we are might actually a better choice than than moving ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD? This cannot be true. Can it?
We’ve thought about buying and moving on the boat next year as an option… but finding a liveaboard marina with a good elementary school in one of these three states has proven difficult. Also? We would have to live on the boat for 2.5 years before saving enough to take off… both of us working from home the boat… With two kids… In about 500 sf… (I just made up that number, but I know it is small.) And yes, I know we will be living on the boat when we are traveling, but Matt and I won’t be stuck on our computers/conference calls 9-5 M-F every week. We will be homeschooling and adventuring all day! We will be running around countries and islands during the day and sleeping on the boat at night. Or we will be sailing and studying and reading all day. Which is not at all the same as working/living in a marina for 2.5 years.
I know people who would tell us to quit planning and “Just GO!” And I know people who walked away from their house, debt, etc. and started traveling without any savings, (and don’t think it hasn’t crossed our minds, and I’m totally not judging) but we still need to buy a boat to live on, and have obligations we must attend, so that is really not an option for us. Plus, that just stresses me out.
We still have 8 months or so to decide where we want to go.
Think you know exactly what you would do if you were us? Let us know!! We want to find another option to staying in Texas. So, give us your ideas! PLEASE!
Hi Guys,
Great post and great questions. Katie and I already lived in FL in a too-big for us house when we decided to get a boat and sail away. We downsized while selling the house, moved into a small apartment, then eventually onto the boat before leaving. FL is a very culturally diverse state depending on where you go, i.e Miami is VERY different from St. Augustine. We kept our boat on a mooring because it was so much cheaper than a marina (think another mortgage payment). As for the schools, we don’t have children so I can’t speak from first hand experience but by reputation, they aren’t great, at least in South FL. Another factor to consider is boat insurance – the Gulf area is the most expensive, FL east coast is second and it gets cheaper as you go north up the coasts. We saved nearly $3000 this year just by being north of the FL-GA line during the peak months of hurricane season (July-Nov 1st). Katie and I are thinking about relocating north of FL, at least during hurricane season and then wintering back in FL – have boat, will travel! Good luck with whatever you decide.
Ben & Katie, s/v Buckeye
We didn’t even think about boat insurance being more expensive!! That may play a factor in our decision…
Schooling is pretty much our biggest obstacle at the moment… we both need to keep our full-time jobs in order to get out of debt and save. If we both weren’t working, we would homeschool (which is the plan when we take off) and could (theoretically) live anywhere. We would even consider a state with state income tax, if overall it was cheaper for us. But we don’t have that option right now… and when we look for neighborhoods with good schools, rent prices are considerably more… making our mortgage seem cheap! It may be that we just stay in our area until we are truly ready to take off… we were just hoping that moving next spring would make us feel like we are getting closer to our dream. We feel so stagnant at the moment…
Just curious… how long did it take you between when you decided you wanted to sail to getting on the boat and taking off?
Sailing away has always been a dream of mine and was something that Katie and I discussed on our first date ten years ago but I don’t think that we got too serious about it until about five years ago. Sure, I was a little more obsessed than Katie was, getting all of the cruising magazines and watching the boat listings online. We would both go to the Miami Strictly Sail every year and dream but about four or five years ago, we decided to really start making the moves towards making it happen. ASA sailing classes followed by actively looking for boats. We had almost given up searching, frustrated by the available boats and prices when we found the “one” – that was in May, 2010. We spent the first year getting the boat outfitted for full-time live aboard cruising, doing much of the work myself under the guidence of a marine contractor. The next year was more focused on getting us ready, getting our personal life in order, downsizing, selling the house, etc. We left just before our two-year anniversary of when we closed on our boat. The plan is go until the money runs out, then work again for a while replunishing the cruising kitty. Probably a littel easier for us without kids.
Ben