cruise ships

Wouldn’t it be amazing to give up all life's stresses and live on a cruise ship? Every few days, you experience a new, exotic destination, and you don’t have to worry about traffic or cooking your meals. There’s no light bill, no water bill, and no need to pay someone to mow the lawn. It’s great to fantasize about, but that lifestyle is only for the super wealthy, right? Think again, a retired couple from Ontario, Canada, sold their home and lives on cruise ships, and it's surprisingly affordable.

Tori Carter and Kirk Rickman, 50 and 54, have been living on cruise ships since December 2022. The couple decided to live the best life possible after Tori went through a period of hardship. In 2019, she lost a friend to a stroke and her dog, which she loved like a son. She also had a back injury that affected her mobility for months.

“We started asking ourselves, Why wait until we’re old and sick to go on big trips if we can do it while we’re healthy? We were still pretty young—both in our 40s—but since we’d each worked two jobs, we’d already managed to save a good amount of money for retirement,” Kirk told Toronto Life.

So, the couple sold their home, pocketed the cash, and used that, along with some rental property income, as a nest egg to help pay for their new lifestyle. The couple also takes advantage of extensive programs through cruise lines and credit cards to save on transportation and booking fees. Since taking to the high seas in December 2022, the couple has been on 29 voyages across 12 cruise lines, averaging about a month each. Their longest cruise lasted 68 days. "We feel like each ship is a destination in itself," Tori told Business Insider. "Because we live on ships, it's not like we want to party every single night."

“It’s crucial for us to avoid really expensive ships,” Tori told Toronto Life. “You could easily spend a million per year on luxury cruises, but you can ride consistently on smaller boats for not much more than $30,000 each per year. We also save money because we no longer have to pay for things like a mortgage, lawn maintenance, car payments, groceries, and everyday house or yard items.”

The couple shares all of their cruise tips and tricks on their YouTube page.

In addition to finding good deals on cruises, the couple saves a lot of money through reward programs. They use their Visa and Mastercards on as many purchases as possible, including booking their cruises, to maximize their points and perks. They use those points for hotel stays between cruises and flying to ports to hop on their next cruise. They also have Expedia Gold status to get "heavily discounted" travel. Their Mastercard is with WestJet, which gives them a free companion voucher every year and credits to pay down travel costs.

The couple also make liberal use of Carnival Cruises' stock perks. By owning shares in the company and booking through travel websites, they’ve earned $4,340 in money they can spend on the cruises. When you add it all up, they spends about $7,337.49 per month to live on a cruise ship, which is about $118 per person, per day. That includes food, cabin, and onboard amenities.

A cruisehip at sunset.via Alsonso Reyes/Unsplash

Even though the couple has lived at sea for most of the past two and a half years, they show no signs of wanting to stop their nomadic lifestyle. "The most exciting part is that there’s still lots to explore. Health willing, we don’t anticipate an end date for our adventures—we want to do this for the rest of our lives,” Kirk said. “Or until we run out of money! But we think that if we can continue being smart about how we book trips, we have at least several years of cruising ahead,” Tori added.