Retire at Sea

Quite a while ago I came across what seemed to be a clever/strange idea. With the price of nursing homes constantly going up, a more cost-effective retirement would be to become a long-term “guest” of a cruise line.

Barbara Mikkelson gives an excellent overview of the pros and cons of this lifestyle, but to summarize:

Instead of being ignored in a corner and only having other deaf old people to socialize with, you’d get to travel through the world, have attentive staff helping you, enjoy a wider variety of special activities, eat better food and have access to all the necessities (doctor on board, etc).

The trade off is you couldn’t have a pet, visits from family and friends would be harder to arrange, and the social group around you would always be in flux (as customers and employees were added and left the ship you were on). Some people would view this as a negative, but some would view it as a positive.

Either way, its chilling to think about getting to a point in life where it’ll cost $200 a day to live ($73K / year would eat into most people’s savings in hurry).