How We Bought The Yacht Of Our Dreams
We’ve heard some chuckle-inducing assumptions from various people about how we came up with the money to buy our beloved S.V. Haven!
✗ “One of them must have rich parents”
✗ “They borrowed the money from their parents or grandparents”
✗ “They got some inheritance”
As it turns out, the answer is D, none of the above! The secret?
We worked – hard.
We never lost sight of our vision, even with the understanding that it would take a few years to achieve our goals.
Below is our “dummy’s guide” to saving for the yacht of our dreams.
Prequel & how we increased our income
**Flashback to early 2017**
Hayden and two mates purchased a project yacht, S.V. Galadriel.
That’s right – a fixer-upper.
Everything was in full-swing on the project-side of things, but we underestimated the costs and time involved in getting S.V. Galadriel ship-shape.
We were starting to stress about our finances, so we (literally) sat down and did a quick budget. It was clear we needed to cut some costs. We also needed to work out how to pay for the yacht and save for the adventure at the same time!
To our dismay, the math was not good. It quickly dawned on us that we had to implement some quick changes to:
Increase our income
Reduce our outgoings; and
Reach our goal faster.
To bring in more income faster, Hayden began looking for FIFO and DIDO jobs. Luckily Hayden was successful in landing himself a high paying job at the mines! Unfortunately this was a double-edged sword, as Hayden was required to work away. This meant we would often only see each other for a weekend every third week.
It sucked. Big time.
We knew it was only temporary, though, and we hung in there knowing that would help us keep up with the (seemingly unrelenting) expenses Galadriel was throwing at us.
And just like that, our free-time was gone. We spent all of our rare weekends together working on the yacht to get her off the hardstand and into the water. In the end, we just ended up getting burnt out and Galadriel was sold before ever making it into the water.
The new owner of Galadriel was able to continue the dream and get Galadriel back in the water (check their adventure here).
You may now be thinking “ah, so that’s how they made their money!”
Let us stop you there. We actually sold Galadriel for LESS than we bought her for, let alone what we spent on her. After the money of the sale was split, we had only $5K in our bank account.
Are you still reading?
Don’t be fooled – it may seem like we have wandered off on a tangent, but this little prequel is here for a purpose! We want to point out that there is no straight line to success. Sorry to burst your bubble. You will get knocked down, it is inevitable. Believe us when we say that you have to get back up – this is the most important bit.
Picture this: we spent months working our butts off, we put our relationship on the line, and we poured all the money we got into something that never happened. Upon selling Galadriel, we felt so defeated.
But we didn’t let that stop us! On the contrary, we used this experience to our advantage.
We brushed the dirt off and decided that having sold the yacht, we no longer had any ties to the Whitsunday region. And so, off we set on an adventure down the coast seeking higher paying jobs for Hayden without the frustrating nuance of having to work away. Lily continued to work full-time during these movements, as her job is based online.
We continued to live a minimalistic and nomadic lifestyle, bouncing all over the countryside as Hayden chased higher-paying Government construction contracts - think jails, schools, hospitals and highways.
How we reduced our outgoings
Man, this is the real crunch. Even if you manage to secure a good income, you need to reign it in on the spending or it’s all for nothing! This was especially true in our case.
Some of the things we sacrificed were:
✗ Holidays (including group snow trip with our friends)
✗ Festivals
✗ Night clubbing and parties
✗ Engagement parties and weddings
✗ Purchasing anything considered “materialistic” such as new clothes/shoes/hats, make-up, jewellery, toys, electronics, furniture etc.
Cutting out certain things was rough - certain events, too. To make matters worse, sometimes people held grudges against us for the decisions we made. This is yet another thing that sucked. That being said, our true friends always understood and supported our dreams - the ‘saving phase’ ended up being a good filtration method to move those rotten eggs along (😂)!
WHAT WE DIDN’T COMPROMISE ON…
In order for us to achieve our goal, we needed our minds to be in ship-shape (pun intended). It’s common knowledge that “bad” and processed foods affect all aspects of us – in particular, mental clarity and physical body. We learnt that fueling our precious bodies correctly was key to achieving our long term goals – which we did, with the help of local markets and in-season foods. We never were big “food-spenders” anyway, but a full-time pasta diet wasn’t ever going to be worth it (no matter how big the savings were!).
There is also this ridiculous stigma attached to saving money that if you partake, you are lame. And boring.
This couldn’t be more incorrect!
The amount of free or minimal cost activities out there are mind boggling. *Ahem* let us think… There is: bushwalking, swimming, surfing, bike riding, snorkelling off the beach, learning a language, learning an art (painting, photography, poetry) - learning any new skill, for that matter – and the list goes on!
We made our best memories during this time by connecting to what really matters – nature and self-development.
The Search
Hayden was constantly trawling through Gumtree, Yacht Sales and Facebook for yachts from day dot. This helped us to get a feel for price range, what we liked and didn’t like, and what we would actually need to embark on a sea crossing of epic proportions.
Low and behold, by early December 2019 we had finally saved up a bit of money! With our new found savings came our graduation from the online-realm, as we began to look at some of our shortlisted yachts in person! We were spoiled for choice. In particular, there were heaps of yachts listed on DBY Boat Sales that we really liked, and they were only a 3 hour drive away. Bright-eyed, bushy tailed and minds filled with ideas of getting closer to our goal, we pencilled in our plans for the next weekend to go inspect some yachts.
And there she was – S.V. Haven in all of her glory. We looked at all the other boats, but Have was love at first sight. Reality hit us hard when we realised she was still outside of our price range.
After we viewed Haven, we had weeks - heck , more like two months - of grey skies! For people like us who froth over outdoor adventures and buzz on sunshine, the permanent greyness was really challenging!
On a weekend in early February 2020, we found ourselves sitting at The Hill in Gerringong having an espresso martini (‘cause what else does one do after weeks of grey?). We were gazing at the hectic storm swell, wishing we had enough money to buy Haven, and mulling over how far away we were from being able to do so. Worst of all? The paranoia started setting in that Haven would likely be sold by the time we had scraped together enough money.
The funny thing is, we barely drink alcohol or caffeine. As science would dictate, the espresso martinis went to our heads pretty quickly! And that was it – fuelled by liquid confidence, our super-caffeinated selves thought it would be a stellar idea to put an offer in for Haven anyway. We super nervously (but kindly) offered what we could afford… Which was $50K less than the asking price. Yep - it was a risky move. The last thing we wanted was to come across as rude, devalue the yacht, offend the owner and broker, or burn our bridges for future possibilities. It was a perfect storm in an espresso martini glass.
Can you imagine our surprise (not to mention the broker’s!) when the owner wrote back, “if you can have the money by Friday, the yacht is yours.”
What!
We were in shock. Best case scenario, we predicted a 5% chance of a yes. As it turns out, we beat the odds! The final hurdle was that we had to get a little personal loan out, but after a bit of kafuffle there, we were able to transfer the money… On Friday morning. Talk about things coming down to the wire – our funds cleared right on the dot at 5:30pm. Phew!
And that was that. On Friday the 14th of February 2020, we purchased and moved onto the yacht of our dreams - S.V. Haven. Happy Valentines’ day to us!
Hopefully this hasn’t come across as a brag. Our intention was to put down on paper (or your screen) our struggle, process, and success to help and inspire others on their own journeys. If we can do it, you can do it!
Dream big,
Lil & Haydo
TGT x
