FIRE, Sailing

Why I Started A Blog

by Celene

Recently my boyfriend, Adam, and I decided to start a blog. The thought of writing a blog has always been in the back of both of our minds, and although it will most likely be only family and close friends wanting to hear about our journey (Hi Mom!) who knows…

So here are a few reasons I have decided to start this blog… and maybe something will inspire you to do so, too!

As a Creative Outlet

When I was younger I loved to write. I even started my own newsletter that I made my mom distribute at her work. The newsletter was called ‘Beanie Flash’ due to my then obsession with Ty Beanie Babies.

In high school, my creativity dwindled as my focus turned towards academia. I took a Commercial Art class which I very much enjoyed, and always liked English. But with hopes of attending university to become a pharmacist (spoiler alert: didn’t happen!), most of my classes I focused on were Calculus and Chemistry.

Since then I have not had a real creative outlet. I thought blogging might be a way for me to express myself and get back to my creative side!

To Continue Learning

Since Adam first introduced me to the idea of financial independence and to the idea of living fulltime on a sailboat I have learned a lot about both sailing and personal finance. It has been said that the best way to know if you understand something is to try and explain it to someone else. So here’s hoping writing to you, blog reader (again – hi mom!), will do the trick!

I’m far from an expert on either personal finance or sailing. In the past year or so my financial knowledge has certainly increased, but there’s still a lot to learn. A blog can be a place for me to organize my thoughts and hopefully learn more about finances and the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) movement.

Likewise, a blog can be a place for me to learn more about sailing. Adam and I have owned a sailboat for four years now and you’d think I’d be a novice sailor by now. Unfortunately, that is not the case (yet!).  Adam has become a great sailor in the past few years and I have been relying on him to get us from point A to B. However, our dream is to one day live on a sailboat so I need to step my game up.

To Be Accountable to My Goals

There have been many times I tell myself “I really should stop spending so much money on going out to eat”, or “I could really stand to learn some more about sailing” and even “One day I’m going to start a blog”. I find it’s easy to be accountable to other people, but sometimes it’s hard to be accountable for myself. I’m hoping that having a blog to be accountable to will help with both my financial and sailing goals.

One of my goals is to become Financially Independent (FI), and my spending is pretty minimal. However, I am far from perfect. My guilty pleasure is drinking way overpriced beverages at bars and restaurants and I have been known to have the occasional shopping spree. Having this blog will help me be accountable to myself reaching this goal.

Another goal I have is to become a proficient sailor and to sail the world with Adam. As mentioned above, I’m far from being the sailor I want to be. This blog is a way for me to not only learn about sailing while writing about it, but to also hold my butt accountable to that goal!

To Keep Track of Our Journey

I hope that years from now I’ll be drinking a Long Island Iced Tea and reading this blog post from the cockpit of my boat and smiling about how far we’ve come.

I wanted to start this blog to keep an account of our journey towards Financial Independence and how our money situation will change in the next few years.

I also want to document and share our journey towards living on a sailboat. Right now we have a 26′ sailboat that we spend our off time on in the summer, and eventually, we are going to purchase a larger boat to live on full time and sail the world.

To Share Our Experience with Friends & Family

A lot of our close friends and family know that we have the goal to live on a sailboat fulltime and to do so by becoming financially independent. This is a place where our people can see what we’re doing and learn more about our journey!

Meet & Engage with Likeminded People

As much as we love to share our journey with our friends and family, not all of them love to talk about personal finance as much as we do! A lot of people even think money can be a taboo subject. Nor do all of our friends and family like to talk about sailing and being on the water.

A blog might be a way to connect to other people with similar interests as us, and maybe even inspire some people to become financially independent to reach their dreams! Or to inspire people to travel the world on a sailboat!

What Better Time Than Now!

The world is in full lockdown mode right now with the Covid-19 pandemic. So what better time to start blogging!

So there’s a few reasons why I started this blog – and maybe you can, too!