I’m late in getting this up but, in doing so, I’m developing the process by which I would like to manage our budget reports each month. So, bear with me. I’m sure this will be an evolving process.

If you missed out on my previous Expense Report, where I detailed everything we’ve spent so far on transitioning our family to life afloat, check it out here!

*Note that on this previous expense report, I did not count our slip fee of $620/month. In an attempt to be more comprehensive, I’m going to do so moving forward. (Eventually, I want this cost to drop drastically as we give up our slip and start living at anchor!)

Moving forward, my intention is to get to a point where I can report out exact incomes and expenses, a full budget, each month. At this point, we’re not quite ready to disclose all the details on our income, so you’ll have to accept just the lump sum figure of our total income for the month. In addition, there are some expenses and debts that I’m not exactly sure how I want to report out yet. I think, for the time being, I will primarily still focus on boat-specific expenses.

July 2018 Income

$4,575

July 2018 Boat Expenses

$1900 – Rigging final payment

$640 – Slip fee plus electrical bill for the month

$200 – Boat loan

$120 – T-mobile *cell phones, including data package for internet to work from home

$160 – AT&T *new expense: mobile internet router 20gb/month for internet to work from home

$100 – Cruising Coach fee

$910 – West Marine and Sexton’s Chandlery over 9 trips throughout the month (have we mentioned we’ve been doing boat projects like mad??)

$285 – Home Depot over 5 trips throughout the month (more boat projects…)

$100 – Uhaul rental to bring dinghy home

$895 – Final payment on the dinghy **also noted the full price of the dinghy on the previous extensive expense report

$100 – PredictWind weather app subscription

$100 – Swantown Marina waitlist fee

$225 – Hotel fee for Redmond trip for Totem family meet & greet barbeque

TOTAL $5,735

What does this all mean?

Well – it means what we’ve been saying for the past eight months: we’re hemorrhaging money on this boat! Thankfully, the refit is wrapping up and, though this budget post is for July, here where we currently are at the end of August our expenses have slowed down quite a bit.

We’ve decided not to make the jump from Portland to the Puget Sound this year, so we’re settling in here for another nine months of fairly normal-to-us boat life. Lots of work over the coming winter to try to get our debts really knocked down and build up our savings so that we’ll be in a better place, financially, when we head north next spring/summer.

Morale is Good

Thankfully, since making the decision to stay put for the winter, we have been making good on our vow to get out and use the boat as much as possible for the remaining summer and fall.

We’ve spent a couple weekends away from the home slip already, venturing to other docks up on nearby Government Island. The kids LOVE these adventures and we have even renewed friendships from a boat family that we met up with last summer during the eclipse weekend!

Brenden and I were able to get out for a couple lessons with Captain Stephen Frankland aboard Mosaic and we’re feeling more comfortable sailing here on the river.

Brenden’s on vacation again this coming week so we’re heading up to Government Island again for the holiday weekend and will hopefully get Mosaic out during the week for our first solo sail. Maybe we’ll even be able to bring the kids along and let them experience what this boat was made to do!

I’ll post the August budget report in the next week or so and will do a vacation wrap-up post as well to update you on how next week goes! Until then, thanks for reading! ~Rachel

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