hey guys welcome to another video if you're new here my name is marina and i'm miles today we're
going to tell you how much we spend by living on a narrow boat we've been counting the costs and
we've got them to share with you and we don't tend to look at them that often because it can be a bit
depressing sometimes um but here we go we've been living on the narrowboat for two years and they
have been very very different we've been meaning to do this video for a while however we've been
waiting to go through one of the biggest expense that you go through on the boat we did blocking
and we painted our roof just a couple of weeks ago so we can include those costs in the video
so let's just set the ground rules so we're 62 foot
we're continuous cruising so we're not in a marina but we are producing our own electricity
while we're out on the move so because we're not in a marina obviously we don't have marina fees
to pay but all of these calculations are based on having a fridge and having 180 watts of solar
for the last 12 months we were both living on the boat full time and working from the boat
as well so we both work online and that is also a factor of how much electricity we use
for those who don't live on the boat laptops do take quite a lot of electricity
for us to get electricity we need to run our engine that's how we can charge our
laptops just to give you an example the laptop that i have should like the battery should
last 10 hours in normal use like if i were browsing internet or using some apps however
for the video editing work that i do the software is quite power hungry so the
battery only lasts for one hour so that's why it needs to be charged quite a few times a day
cool so the first cost in boat ownership is buying the boat so we had a bit of savings
that we put in but then we also borrowed some money we get a lot of questions
like can you get a mortgage for a boat i think you can however we got an unsecured
loan which costs us 450 pounds a month for five years so but a lot of people might not
have this cost if you're looking to buy a boat out savings and obviously it depends on what
size of boat you get and how much money you put in versus how much you borrow so
the next monthly expense is cit license so our license uh for being on the canal
we pay that to canal and river trust if you're not a boater i think of it as
a council tax so we get free water for that and the use of facilities this money obviously go
towards upkeep of the canals and rivers in in the uk so that's all good with us
last year we spent 88 pound a month on our city license however this year we
are upgrading to a golden license to cruise on certain rivers like the thames as well
so the next one is insurance with the amount of times we bash into bridges you're going to need
insurance our insurance is 18 pound a month which is 220 pound a year but obviously it depends on
the size of the boat the age of your boat and many other factors i did have a boating license before
so that might mean ours is a little bit cheaper than some people's but i don't think it's that
expensive it's not as expensive as a car depends on the age of the boat and alba's 29 years old
another expense that we have living on board is internet there are many options for
accessing internet on the cat and what we do is for the beginning of the year we had a
small dongle so we access internet through a sim card and our contract is only 22 pounds a month
that is unlimited internet which gives us access to unlimited data the internet on a good day is
pretty good however sometimes if we are staying in the middle of the field it's a little bit patchy
and that's why a few months ago we installed a signal booster thing an omni directional antenna
on the outside of the boat we're still using the same sim card of the same wi-fi so the costs
remain the same but we have paid a little bit more for installation
and additional um hardware we're going to be talking about repairs and stuff that we spend
on throughout the year in a separate section top tip have your mobile phone on a different
network so then in case some patchy internet you can try different network and see which one
works best so we can tether off our phones from time to time as well if we need to
so next up is fuel and that's going to include gas coal and diesel we have a log burner
as well and it will also include wood but we also have diesel central heating
and our shower is also gas rather than a clarifier which some boats have so that will factors in
gas costs us roughly around sort of 30 35 pound a month a gas bottle lasts us a month and that's
pretty much because we have gas for the shower um as well so it's a little bit more than other
boaters would spend on gas and the second reason is because we do our laundry as well so we heat up
we'll use hot water from the tap and which obviously then uses gas as well so coal obviously
uh varies um from month to month particularly in the winter we can go through quite a bit of coal
and then in the summer obviously we probably don't need any coal at all a bag of coal is
usually about sort of 10 to 15 pounds and we go through in the winter a bag of coal
every sort of two and a half days so roughly um averaging out uh probably cost us about 30
30 40 pounds a month on coal so we tend to use sort of heat logs um instead of actual logs
which we found to be a lot more efficient you get a lot more logs for your money but they're usually
about seven to eight pounds um a bag and so it's the same price as logs but you get a lot more
of them and they're much easier to store but all in gas coal diesel and wood for the fire
over the year obviously some months or more than others probably averages off
about 180 pounds a month and that includes things like traveling keeping warm showers
etc so it's all of our utilities and just in terms of fuel costs as well naturally last year
in between lockdowns we went up the grand union down the oxford down the thames and started the k
a which was about 330 miles so all of those costs for fuels also include 330 miles worth of travel
toilet costs are pretty low for us we've got a compost toilet that we got with alba so we
didn't have to buy one and the only expense is getting wood shavings that we get in massive bags
it they only cost 10 pounds and they last us about three months which you can get from a
pet store and some garden shops i think all then for the year our toilet expenses are 40 pounds
so another cast boaters will have will be blacking or narrow boaters
we'll be blacking every two to three years we've just had our blacks obviously it depends on size
but our blacking six anodes and a bit of welding work to alba cost us one thousand three hundred
and pounds so yeah you can divide that by three years and we'll break that down into a monthly
average for you as well so when we were looking at blacking we were looking we had many sort of
different quotes in london it was about 1800 quid whereas um in devises where we went um they quoted
us 950 quid obviously we then put the anodes on top um as well as some of the welding bits as well
when we went in for lacking um because we stayed under cover for a few days we decided that
it's the best time to repaint albus roof we've never done it before and we didn't know what
state of the roof is going to be and how to tackle it we spend money on paint on hiring
specific tools and some miscellaneous items that you need for painting like paint brushes and
stuff like that um so we spend about 290 pounds on paint 65 pounds on hiring tools and
um a few more on miscellaneous items so all in painting albus roof cost us 410 pounds
we didn't pay separately for hiring a a tunnel or anything like that because we went in for blocking
and that was undercover for a few days when i said paint i meant primer undercoat top coat um a fair
town which is a rust converter alcohol decreases stuff like that obviously you don't need to
paint your roof every year we don't know exactly how long it should last we did a really good job
we hope because we pretty much taken it to the bare metal but we've heard that it should last
for about six to eight years so we'll just calculate split onto six years
next one is servicing and repairs last year we spent 2 600 pounds on servicing and repairs that
included fixing coolant leaks replacing core plugs having a full engine service having the shower
fixed and the shower pump replaced it included a new set of batteries including fitting as well
now obviously that's quite a big expense over 12 months roughly around 220 pound a month however
the year before that so 2019 we spent nothing on servicing and repairs um once we bought the boat
and had it into the yard it can vary from year to year it's probably worth having some money aside
for those day rainy days where you just need to get a professional in to get it fixed quite often
when something goes wrong on your boat it's quite a detrimental thing whether that be your engine
which is your power source and water pump lighting charging etc so you do need to be in a position
and be prepared to get things fixed what we tend to find is most of the repairs that we have done
on the boat individually aren't that much money they're quite cost-effective the engineers that
we've worked with have been really good and really fair as well often a big fear about
moving on to a boat is the sort of cost of repairs and things like that and i know i've just dropped
the bomb on how much we spent last year but on the whole each one is quite sort of manageable
so obviously all boats are different they have different water tanks different type of toilets
different systems some expenses that we don't have but other boaters might have and you might
need to think about them if you're moving on the boat pump out toilets every time you empty
those type of toilets you need to pay which is i think about 17 or 20 pounds cassette toilets
for those type of toilets you would need to use a special uh clearing liquid that is another expense
if you live in a big city like london and you've got a small water tank perhaps you will opt out
to use a gym so a cheap a gym membership could be an expense and another expense that we also don't
have we only went once is a laundrettes so we wash our clothes on board but if you don't then you
will be going maybe once a month a couple of times a month to wash your clothes and that's another
expense to think about so the total annual costs for living on a boat are wow that's a big number
oh no that's why we don't count it normally anyway and what that works out on average a month is
but all of the expenses that we have are necessary we don't budget fuel or stuff like that because
when you're cold you're getting everything you need to keep warm
when the engine when you have an engine issue you do whatever it takes to sort it out so
well i hope you guys found this useful we are really happy that we finally recorded this video
because this was one of the most commonly asked questions if you still have more questions do
leave them down below and we'll try and answer all of you if you want to see what actually happened
in the last year we have been vlogging every week so check out our channel so you can see
what we actually spend our money on because we've documented all of that and it's worth it and it's
really fun i hope you enjoyed it and found it useful thank you so much and i will see you in
the next video see you in the next one bye we made it back in just in time it started to snow again
this is a blizzard we just had sunglasses on and sat out in the boat
you