Apologies to those who logged in yesterday for our regular link smorgasbord. Some good friends invited me onto their canal boat for a bit, and there I stayed!
As a conscientious objector to the ongoing war
Sadly, as best I can work out narrowboats depreciate with a half-life of around 10 years. They’re not cheap to begin with, either – £40,000 to £80,000 or more used, and much more brand new – and they also eat up a couple of thousand annually to keep from rusting.
Then there are mooring fees, or rent by another name. Few boat owners can genuinely continually cruise the waterways (which itself costs around £800 a year in licences) so most need a permanent base. The better residential ones in London cost £4,000 to £8,000 a year, though elsewhere is cheaper.
As someone wise once said:
“A boat is a hole in the water that you pour money into.”
If I eventually do try living ‘on the cut’, you will learn about it here.
Whether you’ll want to read the financial musings of somebody who does something so ruinous to his wealth will be up to you, though!
From the blogs
- Life at Goldman Sachs – AdGrok
- Confidence battered by blood-curdling talk – David Smith
- FTSE 100 cyclically-adjusted P/ratio – Retirement Investing Today
- Are you a bond or a stock? – The Psy-Fi blog
- The 10 most economical sandwiches – Len Penzo
- Securing your bacon and Oreo future – Investing Caffeine
- Should the US extend unemployment benefit? – The Digerati Life
- Budgeting for small business – Wealth Pilgrim
Retirement mini special
- What is retirement? – Get Rich Slowly
- Is retirement becoming obsolete? – Studenomics by Mike
- My escape plan – Simple in Suffolk
- Jacob’s early retirement reading list – Early Retirement Extreme
From the big websites
- The corporate bond disaster that wasn’t – The Economist
- Wealth and compassion – The Economist
- Charlie Munger’s words of wisdom – Motley Fool
- Yen has the edge over gold – FT
- Currency affect on fund returns – FT
- Value in commercial property – FT
- City bonuses jump 25% – Telegraph
- 50 years of property cycles – Telegraph
- Individual capitalism – Telegraph
- Kindle versus other eBook stores – Guardian
- Buy UK stocks for Chinese growth – Independent
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I remember coming to this site when you wrote your ultra-popular post on why people shouldn’t blog for money. Now here I am getting mentioned here. Thanks for the link!
.-= MD on: Are You Reaching Your Money Saving Goals =-.
I thought about the boat option years back when I wanted to buy property in London…. I never realised it cost so darn much until then!
.-= Forest on: Pickled Red Cabbage Recipe With Video =-.
@Forest – Yes, the problem is the boat is just the initial first cost. The cost of ownership/stopping it rusting and mooring can easily double or triple that over 10 years. And the boat is depreciating throughout… Still, would be fun.