Cheaper Than a Mortgage? Couple Plans Cruise Ship Retirement After Reviewing Cost
A Seattle couple has been living aboard a cruise ship for the past year, and their unique lifestyle has quickly become their ultimate retirement plan.
With no plans to return to living on dry land, Angelyn and Richard Burk say that cruise ship living is cheaper than paying a mortgage and covering the high cost of living expenses.
The married pair dream of retiring to a life of travel, and this lifestyle seems to be the best solution for their leisure goals.
“We really enjoy cruising and being able to visit different parts of the world without hopping on an airplane,” Angelyn told 7 News in Australia.
After cruising around the world at least once, sometimes twice a year, Angelyn, who works as an accountant, crunched the numbers and determined that she and her husband could plan for early retirement by living onboard cruise ships for as little as $43 per day.
“We have been frugal all our lives to save and invest in order to achieve our goal,” she explained, adding she and Richard "are not into materialistic things but experiences.”
The decision seemed easy, so the couple quit their jobs and have been enjoying life at sea since May 2021.
“We don’t plan to permanently live on land in the future,” Angelyn said, adding that they can count on one hand how many nights they have slept on land in the past year alone.
Ship-hopping takes some planning, but Angelyn and Richard don't mind the logistics. When schedules don’t match up perfectly, they opt to stay ashore: “Our original plan was to stay in different countries for a month at a time and eventually retire to cruise ships as we got older."
Angelyn shared that because she and her husband love to travel, they were "searching for a way to continuously travel in our retirement that made financial sense." Now, they've found it.
While Singapore, Italy, Canada, Iceland and the Bahamas are some of their favorite spots to visit, the Burks hope to travel to “every corner of the globe eventually.”