Robert Reich in his book "Aftershock" uses the term "next economy" in the subtitle and it's the key phrase when dealing with what's going on...
The problem is that everywhere you turn everybody is trying to deal with things in the same old same way when, in point of fact, it's not the same old same world anymore. Sadly when you confront new problems and situations with old thinking you have a pretty good recipe for disaster.
The same goes for the whole cruising and sailing on a budget gig. If you take a lot of the old/current consumer yachting strategies as gospel you may find yourself between a rock and a hard place.
Here at Boat Bits central, I often get email with advice on various posts especially of the money saving sort... The problem is about half of them just don't make any sense. The most common one is the advice that for a low budget cruiser to cruise on a tight budget they should go out and buy an expensive boat and equip it with very expensive gear to avoid the possible need to repair items along the way...
It's obvious that the writers of such advice don't quite twig that a budget actually includes all expenses devoted to an enterprise and not just the monthly outlay once you actually go sailing. Even if it were the monthly outlay, if you were to compare a super well equipped Hallberg-Rassy 34 and a cheapseats CAL 34 monthly operating budget the HR 34 would still be the more expensive boat to cruise... I'm not knocking Hallberg-Rassy's by the way (they are seriously fine boats) I'm simply pointing out that having one won't save you any money.
The idea that you can save money by spending money simply does not compute these days, and most certainly not in the "next economy" we find ourselves about to enter where thinking up clever means of dealing with problems and budgets is a lot more useful than throwing money at them... Welcome to the future!
So if you want to send advice on how to spend less, we're all ears...
Listening to Mr Zevon
So it goes...
Bruce+
7 hours ago
