Grotty Thumberg

If you only have 30k to spend and want to try living on a boat for a year, is buying and converting a lifeboat a terrible idea? I see them on the canals sometimes, and they they always look depressing. However, the fact that they can go offshore, is attractive, and I imagine if you only spend 10k on such a boat and then put another 20k in it, maybe it doesn't have to look like a crusty homeless shelter. Alternatively, there are rather aged 30-40 steel boats at that price point, which I imagine I'll find a lot easier to sell if and when the novelty of boat life has worn off.

I did "a couple of years out" thing 20 years ago and lived in various countries for all this time. At one point I spent a few months in Indonesia looking at getting a boat built, but concluded it was a stupid idea then too (phinisi boats in Sulawesi if you're interested). I can't quite shake it though. I blame watching Miami Vice at an impressionable age. Crockett lived on a boat with a crocodile and everything.

I have considered it, but rejected it. Doing a poo in a van is one of my few red lines

Thanks for your concern, but after a year of agency work, I am not that convinced about the "better than universal credit" part. And recent events suggest UC is the plan for almost everyone. Maybe woodland then. The main thing is not having 30k in cash while everything's going a bit Weimar. Wrecks seem to come up on eBay quite often. There appears to be a market for them.

Come January, I confidently expect I'll have no job, 30K in cash and no assets apart from a suitcase of clothes and a 10yr old laptop. Rather than be unemployed (and just pay rent with that 30K until there's so little left I qualify for Universal Credit) I would like to buy something expensive.... like a boat. The smarter option is possibly some land, but I want a boat. I even moved to Milton Keynes last year so i could study the matter further. I am thinking of spending 20k on a small "project boat", where the engine works and not much else. I am not a delicate person accustomed to central heating and working electricity. Hot water would be a nice luxury though, but apart from that I don't really care for myself. Fitting out a boat is more of an occupation I would create for myself. I don't have some fantasy a floating home to live in happily ever after. I want something I can sell in a year or so for the same, for ideally more than I paid for it. I sometimes notice boats on the grand union where people obviously have the same idea. Floating building sites full of power tools and bits of wood rather than dogs and castles and roses jugs. Is buying a "project boat" and living in it for a year a stupid idea?