We’ve all got our ways of saving money. Perhaps you change up where you do your weekly shop or skip a night out with your mates for an evening on the couch.
But selling all your belongings to move out to sea is quite the step up.
And yet as many others seem to do, one couple sold their stuff to permanently live on cruise ships because the financial costs of it apparently ‘made sense’.
Monica and Jorell went on 36 consecutive trips last year, travelling the world rather than living a ‘normal’ life on land.
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Racking up thousands of followers on Instagram, they've visited over 45 countries so far as they've already got a packed schedule of trips planned for 2025. And it all came about when Monica’s parents inspired them to get out there back in 2022.
The Americans had been on a few trips together already, before Monica’s mum told them not to wait to follow their dreams and instead ‘do it now’.
The couple already had a week-long Caribbean cruise booked for March 2023 as she said to The Sun: “Instead of coming back, why not keep booking consecutive cruises for as long as we could afford to?”
While Monica is aware this ‘sounds mad’, she explained ‘the numbers made sense’.
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“Accommodation, food and entertainment would be included - we’d only need spending money,” she said.
“And because we’d been on so many Carnival cruises, we’d earned access to some amazing offers. If we chose the cheapest cabins, our savings from the pandemic would allow us to book eight months of cruising for £7,900 - some trips paid for in full, others with deposits.”
The plan was then to use rent from their three-bed home in Memphis ‘to make extra payments as needed’. So when they boarded the cruise in Miami in March 2023, Monica and Jorell had left their jobs and sold nearly all of their things.
“I instantly felt free. We didn’t know how long our money would last, but in the meantime we decided to make the most of every minute,” she said.
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Monica and Jorell document their life cruising on social media as fans keep up to date with their impressive travels and unique lifestyle.
And as they've travelled all over the world on the cruise ships, they’ve picked up a number of tricks to help save money.
“We’ve won excursion tickets, jewellery and spa treatments in onboard raffles, while on land, we do our own tours, using local transport to explore,” she explained.
Monica acknowledges there are challenges as they do miss their families but find reassurance in knowing they can just fly back home if there is an emergency.
“In our old life we’d have moments we called ‘glimmers’, when everything seemed magical,” she said. “Now I feel like my whole life is a glimmer - it really is a dream come true.”
Topics: Travel, Cruise Ship, Lifestyle, Instagram
Jess Battison