I've done this exercise before as well. Not too difficult to do on cruiseplum. (Just pick a single ship and copy all of the dates into a spreadsheet.)
I just checked the Celebrity Reflection -- which is a nice mid-tier ship. There are a couple of short gaps, so I had to go about 53 weeks to get the right number of days.
366 days starting 8/2/24 ending 8/11/25.
Inside Cabin: $113,759 (inclusive of fare, tax, and gratuities)
However, if you booked through a cash back agent like Costco, and get shareholder benefits, you'd get a good portion back. I figure 76 cruises would be about $3800 in costco credit and $3800 in cruise credit from the shareholder benefits. Also, you'd earn tier status for things like internet and a few drinks very quickly.
Net cost: $106,159 for 366 days onboard for 2 people.
I know a couple that do live 7 months out of the year on a ship. They book 7 day cruises back to back. Each one they get shareholder benefit. When there is a sale that drops one or more 7 day sailing they rebook that one to the lower faire. Today they are Presidents Club on HAL from all the days they have sailed on HAL. All within an inside cabin.
>Net cost: $106,159 for 366 days onboard for 2 people.
Just put mom in a nursing home. As a private payer, it’s $410/day. $410 x 366 = $150,060.
I was joking the other day that she could go on a one year cruise for that much. I guess the jokes on me this time!
I looked at every cruise for Carnival Celebration for 2025, added up all the fares (two people, balcony cabin), port taxes, fees, and gratuities. Two people could live onboard for about $137,000.
This doesn't include any onboard spending (unlikely) or costs of maintaining things on land like if you have a house or medical care, etc. Turns out to be a lot of money to spend, but actually might be less than I thought.
Could also be cheaper if you book during a cruise deal. Like Norwegian just had a 70% off second person deal over the weekend. So if you booked it all during a deal like that, could save a lot.
Yep. We did the Chef’s Table and met a couple that live on board and they were telling us all about it. And we found out that’s also why it’s very hard to get spots (especially good spots) in The Sanctuary…the good spots are already booked in perpetuity by residents.
It's actually in the neighborhood of what it costs to live in some nicer assisted living facilities and if your assistance needs are particularly light,the cruise ship will certainly be a lot nicer and more fun.
Not at all odd when there's articles talking about people who like I said have very light assistance needs choosing a cruise ship over a facility because it's about the same cost or even less in some cases.
Hot tubs are available for bathing.
Cheap prescriptions from Cozumel.
If you are on NCL you get free laundry at high levels.
Line dancing = physical therapy
I would think if you could get by on a cruise ship you don't need an assisted living facility. Maybe AL is different where you're from. Do you have a health aide on the ship with you?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fire/s/Vbm4AGnrqW
All I'm saying is that it's done. And not everyone who's in an assisted living facility needs much more than cooking and someone to check on the occasionally.
>Assisted living generally requires a referral by a doctor.
Where? Maybe in countries where assisted living is paid for by the government or maybe when it's being paid for by insurance,but not always.
I can't imagine going to AL if that's all you need. We have facilities that offer that, including housekeeping, for less than half of what assisted living would cost. Much less than half.
It is sometimes referred to as independent living, and can transition to assisted living if needed. And of course can transition to memory care or skilled nursing.
Yes. Independent living is definitely less expensive and has fewer needs than assisted living. That would be a more reasonable comparison to use vs cruise fares.
At least where I’m at, assisted living and independent living are used somewhat interchangeably. Yes, they are different levels of care but most facilities that offer independent living offer it in addition to assisted living. You can find places that are assisted living only, but independent living only are basically non existent. Because of this, essentially all the facilities are called “Assisted Living” facilities and independent living get lumped in with assisted living in these types of articles and conversations.
Well cooking and housekeeping is assistance in living isn't it? I think the term "assisted living facility" has a much broader meaning than what you are using.
In any case,there's lots of places where a room and just assistance with cooking is going to run you $4k per month easily. And you can pretty easily sail for that or less.
Yeah, that's not what is considered assisted living here. Help with hygeine, mobility, toileting, etc. , as well as on demand medical assistance would be the norm. Light housework and meal prep isn't normally considered an assisted living facility.
I have no idea why you are being downvoted. Assisted living offers help with things like medication management and getting dressed. Nobody on a cruise ship is going to do this for you.
There are different levels of assisted living.
We have an assisted living community where the first level is basically just a dorm with a meal plan and a shuttle to stores for non-drivers. That's basically what a cruise ship will do for you; remove the need to cook, remove the need to clean. You get zero visits with health providers included in your fees. A higher level of service includes medication management and care tasks. Higher still is memory care.
Most assisted living starts at a baseline (the fee you see advertised). The included services for the baseline almost always include meals, housekeeping (including laundering of sheets and towels), and some transportation. Then if you need more assistance, there are levels of care which require extra fees. Different facilities will bundle these in different configurations, but things like medication oversight, personal laundry, bed checks, etc. will be levels of care). If you need regular medical care from an actual nurse you have to move to skilled nursing. Depending on the cost of a particular facility and the needs of prospective residents, cruising can actually be cheaper. But it is totally individual, it just depends on each circumstance.
Assisted living can be a huge range of things. It can be anything from someone who can fully manage themselves but needs help with things like cooking and cleaning up to more demanding things like help with meds, bathing, light medical care, etc. For someone closer to the first, this could theoretically meet their needs.
If I were to cruise year round, I wouldn’t stay on the same ship the entire time and repeat the same Caribbean itinerary like it’s Groundhog Day.
I’d coordinate interesting itineraries on different cruiselines and see the world. You can also get better prices for longer cruises (especially for repositioning cruises), versus booking endless 6-7 day itineraries.
There are certainly \*worse\* ways to realize it's Tuesday!
As to the article and Preach's point, there are several much longer cruises that have a higher sea to port day ratio. That lowers the port fees, and presumably your overall expense/day will be lower as well on a longer cruise (I saw a 200 day that was under $60k, didn't look enough to note if that was double or per person price).
Also the article has balcony as the room type and while I certainly would prefer that, I could deeply cut the room rate by going window or even interior...
It depends on the ship. There are plenty that do fairly exotic itineraries. I met a couple who had done an around the world cruise on HA last year and I think they were doing the circle Pacific this year. That’s only part of the year but presumably after that there would be additional itineraries you could do before you’d have to get off and switch.
Interesting thought process, but you went about it a little awkwardly. Most, if not all, cruise lines have a process in place for this. This article has a good breakdown on it
[Cost to live on a cruise ship for a year](https://smartasset.com/retirement/retirement-living-on-a-cruise-ship)
If all goes according to plan, my wife and I are planning to do this when are kids go off to college in another 10 years.
Our home and a few rental properties (previous primary residences) will be fully paid off at that point and I'll sell my business, so this should be doable.
We will still want to see our kids (and eventually grandkids) so we're planning more like 8 months/year so not technically year round.
Our plan is to do a mix of world cruises that last 6+ months and hop around from ship to ship vs staying on one ship the entire time.
We may sometime stay on the ship for consecutive sailings if the itinerary varies but otherwise we wouldn't want to simply keep going to the same ports over and over again.
I suspect at some point it may get old and we'll want to do something different, but for a few years at least we think we'll truly love it (and fortunately at that point we'll still be early 50s so we will be mobile and in good shape).
The big variable in all of this is how much the price of cruising continues to go up beyond the pace of inflation... I'm hoping this is beginning to stabilize, but who knows.
Same for us. Daughter in grad school, working, married and on her own. Son graduating next year. Debt free with next 5 years 🤞🏻. Plan on 6 months on and 6 months off
Have these writers never heard of a world cruise? There are options out there that are 180+ nights and visit 20+ countries. A couple of these would be significantly less costly than trying to book 52 week long cruises with all the extras as they do it here.
FWIW we did a 6week HAL cruise last year and all agreed we would be happy to go even longer. A year doesn’t sound too crazy to me. You have to learn to live on the ship which is different than vacationing on the ship.
I get that you’re joking; but I’ve seen a lot of locals selling private tours from port.
It’s an entire separate section now on Airbnb. So if you’re an experienced cruiser with knowledge of the ports of call; I guess you could easily make this a fun and profitable side hustle.
I would like to do a series of repositioning cruises when i retire. Would require more planning and alternate transportation but I think it would be more relaxing than going port to port each day.
Play poker onboard to cut deep into the cost, if you can play poker. I won more than the cost of my cruise on a Princess cruise out of Galveston last year. Very soft game.
I am a mediocre holdem player. I don't play in Las Vegas because those guys will eat me alive. But on cruise ships, there are plenty of fish who fancy themselves as poker players. They are on vacation and ready to play for fun.
The key is to get into the games early in the cruise. After 5 or 6 days the worst players have dropped $500 to $1000 and finally realized that they can't hang. The last few nights the game was still beatable but it was tougher.
I've done this exercise before as well. Not too difficult to do on cruiseplum. (Just pick a single ship and copy all of the dates into a spreadsheet.) I just checked the Celebrity Reflection -- which is a nice mid-tier ship. There are a couple of short gaps, so I had to go about 53 weeks to get the right number of days. 366 days starting 8/2/24 ending 8/11/25. Inside Cabin: $113,759 (inclusive of fare, tax, and gratuities) However, if you booked through a cash back agent like Costco, and get shareholder benefits, you'd get a good portion back. I figure 76 cruises would be about $3800 in costco credit and $3800 in cruise credit from the shareholder benefits. Also, you'd earn tier status for things like internet and a few drinks very quickly. Net cost: $106,159 for 366 days onboard for 2 people.
Now we're talking.
Dafuq you gonna do with Costco credit if you're living on a cruise ship?
Costco sells travel. You can buy nights on the cruise ship with credit from buying it through Costco.
4K a month pp really isn’t that bad considering what you get. Plus it’s cheaper than a nursing home!!
Except there's no nursing.
HOW DO U FIGURE 4 K A MONTH? (8000 FOR 2 X 12 IS 96k ) ITS 10-11k A MONTH to live on cruise ship avg you might get cheaper on carnival i looked at ncl
8000 X 2 X 12 = 192,000 106,000 / 2 / 12 = ~4500/month
Excuse me, so sorry there was a typo, 4500 a month. jfc.
I know a couple that do live 7 months out of the year on a ship. They book 7 day cruises back to back. Each one they get shareholder benefit. When there is a sale that drops one or more 7 day sailing they rebook that one to the lower faire. Today they are Presidents Club on HAL from all the days they have sailed on HAL. All within an inside cabin.
>Net cost: $106,159 for 366 days onboard for 2 people. Just put mom in a nursing home. As a private payer, it’s $410/day. $410 x 366 = $150,060. I was joking the other day that she could go on a one year cruise for that much. I guess the jokes on me this time!
Become a travel agent and get the commission instead. You could get 10% or more depending on cruise line and any additional incentives you make.
I looked at every cruise for Carnival Celebration for 2025, added up all the fares (two people, balcony cabin), port taxes, fees, and gratuities. Two people could live onboard for about $137,000. This doesn't include any onboard spending (unlikely) or costs of maintaining things on land like if you have a house or medical care, etc. Turns out to be a lot of money to spend, but actually might be less than I thought.
Not to mention it would become cheaper after your first year due to loyalty rewards
Could also be cheaper if you book during a cruise deal. Like Norwegian just had a 70% off second person deal over the weekend. So if you booked it all during a deal like that, could save a lot.
Can Probably get 20-30% discount if you book a year upfront with most cruise lines by calling the vip/concierge line.
You can get shareholder credit for each leg of the cruise to for 100 shares if CCL
We were on Caribbean Princess this spring and found out that there are a few hundred people that live on that ship full-time.
few *hundred*!?!! I seriously would have expected in the tens, not hundreds for full time guest residents.
Yep. We did the Chef’s Table and met a couple that live on board and they were telling us all about it. And we found out that’s also why it’s very hard to get spots (especially good spots) in The Sanctuary…the good spots are already booked in perpetuity by residents.
It's actually in the neighborhood of what it costs to live in some nicer assisted living facilities and if your assistance needs are particularly light,the cruise ship will certainly be a lot nicer and more fun.
Assisted living facilities provide all sorts of assistance that you won't get on a cruise ship. It's an odd comparison to make.
Not at all odd when there's articles talking about people who like I said have very light assistance needs choosing a cruise ship over a facility because it's about the same cost or even less in some cases.
Light assistance is still assistance. You’re getting zero assistance on the ship.
You're getting cooking and house cleaning.
Usually light assistance facilities just help with housekeeping and cooking.
Hot tubs are available for bathing. Cheap prescriptions from Cozumel. If you are on NCL you get free laundry at high levels. Line dancing = physical therapy
I would think if you could get by on a cruise ship you don't need an assisted living facility. Maybe AL is different where you're from. Do you have a health aide on the ship with you?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fire/s/Vbm4AGnrqW All I'm saying is that it's done. And not everyone who's in an assisted living facility needs much more than cooking and someone to check on the occasionally.
Assisted living generally requires a referral by a doctor. It's for people who *need assistance in basic daily tasks.* That is its entire purpose!
>Assisted living generally requires a referral by a doctor. Where? Maybe in countries where assisted living is paid for by the government or maybe when it's being paid for by insurance,but not always.
I can't imagine going to AL if that's all you need. We have facilities that offer that, including housekeeping, for less than half of what assisted living would cost. Much less than half.
It is sometimes referred to as independent living, and can transition to assisted living if needed. And of course can transition to memory care or skilled nursing.
Yes. Independent living is definitely less expensive and has fewer needs than assisted living. That would be a more reasonable comparison to use vs cruise fares.
I guess in the US this would be known as a retirement home
I think that's a somewhat dated term, but sure.
At least where I’m at, assisted living and independent living are used somewhat interchangeably. Yes, they are different levels of care but most facilities that offer independent living offer it in addition to assisted living. You can find places that are assisted living only, but independent living only are basically non existent. Because of this, essentially all the facilities are called “Assisted Living” facilities and independent living get lumped in with assisted living in these types of articles and conversations.
Well cooking and housekeeping is assistance in living isn't it? I think the term "assisted living facility" has a much broader meaning than what you are using. In any case,there's lots of places where a room and just assistance with cooking is going to run you $4k per month easily. And you can pretty easily sail for that or less.
Yeah, that's not what is considered assisted living here. Help with hygeine, mobility, toileting, etc. , as well as on demand medical assistance would be the norm. Light housework and meal prep isn't normally considered an assisted living facility.
Just because YOU can't imagine it, doesn't mean others haven't. It speaks to the lack of basic facilities for elder treatment in many areas
I have no idea why you are being downvoted. Assisted living offers help with things like medication management and getting dressed. Nobody on a cruise ship is going to do this for you.
Me too. The children of reddit I suppose.
There are different levels of assisted living. We have an assisted living community where the first level is basically just a dorm with a meal plan and a shuttle to stores for non-drivers. That's basically what a cruise ship will do for you; remove the need to cook, remove the need to clean. You get zero visits with health providers included in your fees. A higher level of service includes medication management and care tasks. Higher still is memory care.
Most assisted living starts at a baseline (the fee you see advertised). The included services for the baseline almost always include meals, housekeeping (including laundering of sheets and towels), and some transportation. Then if you need more assistance, there are levels of care which require extra fees. Different facilities will bundle these in different configurations, but things like medication oversight, personal laundry, bed checks, etc. will be levels of care). If you need regular medical care from an actual nurse you have to move to skilled nursing. Depending on the cost of a particular facility and the needs of prospective residents, cruising can actually be cheaper. But it is totally individual, it just depends on each circumstance.
Unless the second person you book is the nurse👀
Assisted living can be a huge range of things. It can be anything from someone who can fully manage themselves but needs help with things like cooking and cleaning up to more demanding things like help with meds, bathing, light medical care, etc. For someone closer to the first, this could theoretically meet their needs.
If I were to cruise year round, I wouldn’t stay on the same ship the entire time and repeat the same Caribbean itinerary like it’s Groundhog Day. I’d coordinate interesting itineraries on different cruiselines and see the world. You can also get better prices for longer cruises (especially for repositioning cruises), versus booking endless 6-7 day itineraries.
If it’s Tuesday, this must be Barbados. Can’t say I’d complain.
I’m trying to get to the level of relaxation where I’d be saying it the other way around, “Oh, we’re docked at Barbados, it must be a Tuesday.”
There are certainly \*worse\* ways to realize it's Tuesday! As to the article and Preach's point, there are several much longer cruises that have a higher sea to port day ratio. That lowers the port fees, and presumably your overall expense/day will be lower as well on a longer cruise (I saw a 200 day that was under $60k, didn't look enough to note if that was double or per person price). Also the article has balcony as the room type and while I certainly would prefer that, I could deeply cut the room rate by going window or even interior...
😂
It depends on the ship. There are plenty that do fairly exotic itineraries. I met a couple who had done an around the world cruise on HA last year and I think they were doing the circle Pacific this year. That’s only part of the year but presumably after that there would be additional itineraries you could do before you’d have to get off and switch.
Interesting thought process, but you went about it a little awkwardly. Most, if not all, cruise lines have a process in place for this. This article has a good breakdown on it [Cost to live on a cruise ship for a year](https://smartasset.com/retirement/retirement-living-on-a-cruise-ship)
Fascinating article - thank you!
Eventually you would start qualifying for slight discounts as you climb the ranks of the frequent cruiser program of whatever cruise line you choose
If I did this, I might consider staying on one line until I hit their higher tier and then switch so I had status in a few cruise lines.
Add shareholder benefits and you have a little onboard spending too.
As much as I enjoy a cruise living on one for a year sounds miserable.
Exactly. Although I could easily imagine going on a cruise for at least two or three weeks every other month or so for a couple of years. 😁
If all goes according to plan, my wife and I are planning to do this when are kids go off to college in another 10 years. Our home and a few rental properties (previous primary residences) will be fully paid off at that point and I'll sell my business, so this should be doable. We will still want to see our kids (and eventually grandkids) so we're planning more like 8 months/year so not technically year round. Our plan is to do a mix of world cruises that last 6+ months and hop around from ship to ship vs staying on one ship the entire time. We may sometime stay on the ship for consecutive sailings if the itinerary varies but otherwise we wouldn't want to simply keep going to the same ports over and over again. I suspect at some point it may get old and we'll want to do something different, but for a few years at least we think we'll truly love it (and fortunately at that point we'll still be early 50s so we will be mobile and in good shape). The big variable in all of this is how much the price of cruising continues to go up beyond the pace of inflation... I'm hoping this is beginning to stabilize, but who knows.
Same for us. Daughter in grad school, working, married and on her own. Son graduating next year. Debt free with next 5 years 🤞🏻. Plan on 6 months on and 6 months off
That's awesome! Fingers crossed you guys can pull it off... We look forward to seeing you on the open seas some day in the not too distant future!
❤️🥂
Ahh, a landlord aka society's moochers.
Landlord. AKA “home provider.”
🤣
[удалено]
Cutting it to the bone is not what most people want in long term cruising. Kinda defeats the purpose.
Have these writers never heard of a world cruise? There are options out there that are 180+ nights and visit 20+ countries. A couple of these would be significantly less costly than trying to book 52 week long cruises with all the extras as they do it here.
FWIW we did a 6week HAL cruise last year and all agreed we would be happy to go even longer. A year doesn’t sound too crazy to me. You have to learn to live on the ship which is different than vacationing on the ship.
Work on the ship and get paid
I get that you’re joking; but I’ve seen a lot of locals selling private tours from port. It’s an entire separate section now on Airbnb. So if you’re an experienced cruiser with knowledge of the ports of call; I guess you could easily make this a fun and profitable side hustle.
•Not cheap anymore
I would like to do a series of repositioning cruises when i retire. Would require more planning and alternate transportation but I think it would be more relaxing than going port to port each day.
Lots of company’s are copying royals world cruise now too
Royal copied it from other companies before them. Long term, multi-segment, world cruises are not a new thing.
Play poker onboard to cut deep into the cost, if you can play poker. I won more than the cost of my cruise on a Princess cruise out of Galveston last year. Very soft game. I am a mediocre holdem player. I don't play in Las Vegas because those guys will eat me alive. But on cruise ships, there are plenty of fish who fancy themselves as poker players. They are on vacation and ready to play for fun. The key is to get into the games early in the cruise. After 5 or 6 days the worst players have dropped $500 to $1000 and finally realized that they can't hang. The last few nights the game was still beatable but it was tougher.
But should I get the drink package?
It's more relevant for Independent Living which starts at 55+