I’ll get this out of the way from the GetGo… Affordable IS important.
So, back to the list:
- Affordable to build or buy
- Affordable to cruise and maintain on a tight budget
The hard part when the word affordable comes into play is it means different things to different people. What’s affordable to a person making $100K a year and someone making $50K are quite different things and not a lot of rocket science involved to figure that one out. Simple.
Where the hard comes in, is that society is relentless in telling everyone that they need to consume in a way that has nothing whatsoever with one’s actual financial state of affairs… Hence, when I open up a copy of a new yachting rag it’s mostly about telling me I need stuff that is silly expensive and the sort of boat I really should have costs $850K…
What’s worse for those who can’t afford an $850K boat is the relentless pressure to conform. So whatever boat they get should emulate said $850K boat in terms of systems and accoutrements, resulting in the sort of silliness that accounts for the word McMansion (or, should we say McYacht?).
That said, it doesn’t tell you what is an affordable sailboat for you and what you should budget for sailing off into the sunset, now does it? As it happens I’ve been looking for some cunning formula that would tell me what I should pay for a boat and how much I should spend to actually cruise for decades and, while I hate to say it, I’m still looking.
What I use at the moment is flawed but is as good as any… I start with the amount I feel I could comfortably cruise on and then work backwards towards what a boat should actually cost me.
- Affordable to cruise and maintain on a tight budget
So, here’s something a lot of people don’t realize …