Who doesn’t own a house and isn’t bothered?

[Horcrux]

We are trying to sell our house and we have very little intention of buying another. We have 2 children and jobs and plan to rent as it’s cheaper in our area. But it will also give us more freedom to travel.
Is this totally stupid?

Of course children can live on boats..2 of my friends did.

I don’t want to rain on your parade because in part the idea kind of sounds hippyish / romantic and bohemian and i get your desire to escape everyday drudgery. But

1. Marine properties / Boats bloody expensive to maintain - mooring, service, maintenance etc and all consuming.
2. Life with teens in later years could be hell - think sulks, strops and door slamming.
3. House boats are a diminishing asset - they rot, all efforts are really just trying to maintain and delay that process.

You’re right @madcatladyforever we’ve rented in the past and it can be shit

We have had mortgage and also rented. The best rental properties we had were houses owned by estates( land owners..etc)...we had a very bad time a few years ago..served section 21..awful landlords. We were very fortunate to be allicated a council property in very rural area.

I have a lifetime tenancy also, with freedom to swap for more or less bedrooms on the same street.

Allocated!

Buy a house in a cheaper area and rent it out

Use the proceeds to travel the world.

Can you rent a boat?

All the problems I had in various rentals, work not being done, being made to pay to renew a contract only to be served with two months notice to leave, woodworm, damp. Landlords really do not care. I'd take the certainty of owning my own home any day of the week thanks. Besides which, I do not want to pay rent when I retire as it is really hard and I do not want to be financially struggling into old age. We pay an extra £55 a month off our mortgage. Not much, but it means it will be paid off by the time I'm 60, although we plan to over pay by more as time goes on.

I think it's mad too. But at least make sure you have done all your sums before committing to anything. Can you remortgage to get a lower interest rate? Will your earnings increase in the future to allow you to start overpaying? You can know years of your mortgage buy not overpaying very much.

I know some people who sold up to live on a barge. They've been doing it for about 20 years and are very happy, but have recently started to worry about when they become to frail to cope with the big step off onto the towpath etc. Make sure you plan for that too

@Bakedbrie out plan is to stay on anchor as much as possible, which is free. And when in marinas it will be long term renting which varies massively where you are but will never be a match on our mortgage costs.
Boats do depreciate and need constant maintenance but this is something we can do ourselves and factor it in price/time wise. We don’t plan on buying a caravan on water either, it will be a blue water boat.
Teenagers... haven’t figured that one out yet.

Sounds like a plan OP.

We privately rent but would love to buy.
Twat xh spent my deposit and I will never be able to save that amount again

If you have 110k in equity you could easily own a house outright. If you're talking about living on a boat and home educating then it doesn't appear you're tied to an expensive area so why not just move and be mortgage free/have a minimal mortgage.

It sounds like you have it all worked out in fairness, OP.

Someone made a good point about buying a cheaper house with some of the money and renting it out.

I'm in the North West and £90k could buy you a 2 bed terraced house outright. £45k would give you a very low/short term mortgage.

The beauty of dh’s job @VirtualHamster is that we can live anywhere, but we would rather live in beautiful warm waters on a boat than a shithole in the UK

We live in the NW too. I could buy a house in Morecambe 🤣

Sounds daft, tbh. Sorry, but it sounds really silly long-term.

In all seriousness I have considered buying a house in Lancaster for postgrads to rent.
But we wouldn’t be around to maintain it.

Interesting. So are you able to say where the beautiful blue waters might be?

The £45k we have saved can go towards a house when we’re too old and frail to sail anymore. But my dh just wants to be thrown overboard in middle of the atlantic when he gets to the point when he can’t sail anymore 🤣

Whilst I think your idea may be lovely for the children short term, personally I think you would be better off doing it when they have finished their education and elect not to come with you.

Could you realistically educate them to a level where their futures will not be impacted by your decision?

Ok if you plan to anchor for long lengths of time in an area to seek work/get registered with the education system in that area to help with your kids educational needs then I would say that sounds more reasonable. So you'd anchor somewhere and use that area as a base for a year or so then travel around in the boat during holidays etc?

At first it seemed like you just planned to live on a boat out at sea and vaguely anchor and get a weeks work or something. Yes people live on boats but if they have kids, they need to base themselves somewhere a lot of the time for work/education. That is what I meant by you need a fixed address. You can't just be constantly on the go in the boat

Blue a water boats? @Bakedbrie I want a Hallberg Rassey but struggle to find one less than £60k 😖 My dh has sailed an Oyster recently so looking at them too. We have about 5/6 blue water boats in mind.

Friends of ours did this about 18 months ago, sold their house, bought a camper van went travelling, 18 months later the husband is back at work they don't have enough money to buy another house and yes they had a fantastic 12 months travelling but now they are back n a rented house paying someone elses mortgage and in their late 40s so not much chance of earning enough to pay cash for a house in the future

We owned our own house and sold it last June. The area was going downhill and we were coming up to supplying for se ondary fir our DS. We wanted to live in a nicer area in a bigger house and have an address in catchment for the svhool we liked.
So we moved into rented
We live in a lovely big house now in great area and have applied for the school. We couldn't afford to buy here just yet.
We love it and we're really happy.
So no I don't think you're mad at all.
Seize the day!