Imagine a life where you are catered to 24/7, have no mortgage, no maintenance worries, no car, and no commuter traffic to white-knuckle through. No housekeeping and no cooking. Everything is at your fingertips.
You wake up every morning and have an all-you-can-eat breakfast. Spend the afternoon hanging out by the pool or touring a fantastic city such as Rome or Dubrovnik. At night, have a drink in the lounge watching a comedian or a jazz band, then hit the sack and do it all over again the next day.
Does it sound like a dream-come-true? A few people, thinking outside the box, made it come true—and it’s cheaper for them than living on land. Of course, if you’re the homebody cocooning type who likes to cozy up to the fireplace, or want more than 200 square feet to live in, this lifestyle may not be for you.
For twenty-eight-year-old Austin Wells of San Diego it was just the thing he was dreaming of. Wells purchased an apartment on the MV Narrative, which is currently being built in Croatia and sets sail in 2025. “The thing that most excites me is I don’t have to upend my daily routine, in order to go see the world,” Wells told CNBC.
“I’m going from this model where you want to go somewhere, you pack a bag, you get on a flight, you rent a room, to now my condo, my gym, my doctors and dentists, all of my grocery stores travel the world with me,” he added.
The rough math for Wells’ dream makes perfect sense. He purchased a 12-year lease on the ship for $300,000. That comes to about $2,100 a month if he didn’t have to take out a loan. By comparison, most apartments in San Diego cost more than $2,100 per month in rent.
The ship charges an additional $2,100 a month for all-inclusive services, which include food, drinks, alcohol, gym membership, routine healthcare check-ups, onboard entertainment and laundry. So, it could cost Wells as little as $4,200 a month to live an all-expenses-paid life. Plus, there’s no need to pay for a car or waste time shopping for groceries or traveling anywhere. It’s all on the ship. Wells can work from the ship because his job with Meta is fully remote.
“What I’m probably most excited about is going to places that ships can only uniquely go,” he told CNBC, adding that cruise ships can travel to “unique ecological parts of the world or beautiful dive spots that are a few miles off land or caves to dive through and the ship will do a number of overnight stays in those areas.”
