Woman now lives on cruise ship, says it's a deal compared to living in California

[Historic NY]

Cabins are sold on a permanent basis, or at least for 15 years, starting at $129,000 for an inside stateroom.

Monthly fees of $3,000 for single occupancy are additional.

Food and soft drinks are free on the ship. So is alcohol at dinner, Wi-Fi and medical visits.

There’s also entertainment, room service, weekly housekeeping and bi-weekly laundry service at no extra cost.

https://villavieresidences.com/]

https://www.wnem.com/2025/06/28/woman-now-lives-cruise-ship-says-its-deal-compared-living-california/?fbclid=IwY2xjawLQMzpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETEwSWR0WTdramNrYVg5cEpvAR471EJnpYYzaKiMYGu-Cjjf0ZfcTIBDvMOK9vq6rcbjy6xafqlT0sfSqGSmog_aem_fZp-KgCTZhAC3B088rwwkA

[LearnedHand]

1. Clean link, no beacons/trackers

https://www.wnem.com/2025/06/28/woman-now-lives-cruise-ship-says-its-deal-compared-living-california/

[chouchou]

2. So the rent is 36,000 a year + 8,600 equals $44,600

So you get a tiny box and food for 44,600 a year.
Divide by 365 ..you get 122 dollars a day.
Umm..There's decent motels in California for 75 per day and if you pay by week, you get a extra day.

And, you get to walk around and choose your life. I'm happy for her but No...Hell no.

PS..what if the Cruise corporation goes bankrupt ?

[drray23]

3. this has actually happened.

PS..what if the Cruise corporation goes bankrupt ?

I am pretty sure I saw an article a while back about people who had paid hundreds of thousands to secure a spot on a cruise ship forever and then the company went bankrupt before the ship even left port and they lost it all.

[chouchou]

6. Whoa!... Didn't know that.

Personally, I'm anti me going out to sea with people.
You have to be an actor, after meeting people all day/meals long "Well Bob, that's very interesting!"

Barf..

[Hotler]

30. Cooties everywhere. eewwwww. nt

[GladysKravitz]

5. This is one of the reasons a person should NEVER pay rent in advance, no matter where it is.

[Blues Heron]

28. But does the motel stop in Fiji?

[Skittles]

4. yeah.....but you have to live on a CRUISE SHIP

NO THANKS

[LoisB]

7. I agree totally. No way.

[Jacson6]

34. What are you going to gamble everyday and sit in the pool? n/t

[yardwork]

38. Exactly. Can you imagine?

[Skittles]

44. NO

I CANNOT even imagine, not at ALL

[patphil]

8. It's actually not a bad deal pricewise, but....

You have no privacy other than your tiny little room.
The size of your world is extremely limited.
Your life experiences also become extremely limited.
You can't go anywhere the cruise ship doesn't go.
Boredom is inevitable.
It's essentially a floating minimum security prison, that you pay to get into.
But, $3000. a month is very inexpensive.

[CTyankee]

18. have you ever been on a cruise? Or know somebody who has?

[patphil]

26. Yes, I've been on a cruise. They're fun, and exciting but it's not something I want to spend my life on.

It's far too much of a good thing; great for a vacation, but that's all.

[electricmonk]

31. When we were looking for an assisted living

facility for my mom one of the administrators showing us around was talking about all the amenities they had and said, "it's like a cruise ship that doesn't go anywhere." Of course residents do have the option to get on a shuttle bus or schedule a driver to take them shopping or out and about so actually better than a cruise ship.

[patphil]

32. I agree, but more expensive, especially with the imminent demise of Medicaid.

https://www.aplaceformom.com/caregiver-resources/articles/cost-of-assisted-living

When I was young, it was common for families with aging parents to make room for them in their house. This is still true, but probably to a lesser extent.

[electricmonk]

33. I think part

of it is people are living longer so both parents and their kids can be in assisted living at the same time.

[Akoto]

9. Travel agent and Hospitality student here...

There's actually a lady on YouTube whose name escapes me, but she documents her life solely aboard cruise ships (not always the same one) and even lists out her budget. She really does pretty well for herself, even after having left a well-paying corporate job to live aboard ship.

I think it would be tougher to do with an inside room, simply because you have no sense of day and night in a windowless room. Lots of people buy sun lamps/alarms and things like that, particularly those who live aboard ship as part of their job and are most always below decks.

Modern staterooms and suites are by no means tiny little rooms, not aboard all ships. They compare to boutique hotels aboard many cruise lines, plus everything you could ever need is aboard ship. A cruise in this day and age really is a floating city. All of that at a very reasonable budgetary cost.

Would I do this? No, but I'd certainly sail for extended periods! As far as purchasing a room permanently, I'd feel safest going with the biggest cruise lines - Carnival, Norwegian, Princess, etc to be sure you won't be out an investment right away. They're not going anywhere overnight.

[snowybirdie]

29. And when virus hits?

Lots of passengers, what is a permanent passenger do?

[JI7]

10. I don't think it's just about money for people like her

I have heard of people that go on cruises anytime they don't have to work and have free time.

I think they like how everything is done for them such as meals, laundry, room cleaning.

There are people that just don't want much more .

[CTyankee]

15. How do you define "much more"? They may be writers, fiction or nonfiction, and their laptop computres have all the

research capability of the Internet. They are freed up from all the meal planning, food shopping, meal prep and cleanup and what, exactly, is wrong with that?

[JI7]

23. I didn't say anything was wrong with it

but many people wouldn't want to be limited to being on the cruise ship. People like to go out to different places and maybe they like to see certain people regularly that living on the ship might not allow.

[CTyankee]

24. It could be stimulating, also, depending on what your visits might bring. I had my first glimpse of the continent of

Africa which was cool. My guide was such an Obama lookalike I couldn't believe it! When I asked if anyone else had made that comparison he laughed and said "Oh, yes." It was kinda nice!

[KentuckyWoman]

11. Senior living in the Midwest

Independent living cottages are now $200K to $600K buy in depending on the village and square footage plus $1500 to $3000 monthly for maintenance fees. Most do not include anything else. No food, medical care, cleaning, laundry etc. Water and trash included. Not power. In some places you can put up half the buy in up front and pay the other half over 10 years in addition to the maint fees.

There is a new place in town in a former high rise hotel that looks out over a freeway in a not the greatest part of town. No buy in. $4-6000 a month includes a 600-750 sq ft studio with a hotel size fridge / microwave. Laundry on site. 2 meals a day. All utilities except phone. They do have a small indoor pool and aquatic therapy at cost.

Where I live was a $140K buy in in 2010 and my fees are up to $1100 a month. The buy in vanishes at 5% a year over 20 years. I have 2 nice bedrooms, my own W/D. a full kitchen and pretty good maintenance. Water, trash and basic cable included. I can use the fitness room at the assisted living center on campus with a reservation and $120 a year fee. Local apartments of comparable size are running $2300.

Just a few factoids to put the cruise ship lady's cost in perspective.

[3catwoman3]

12. I have never been on a cruise, and have no interest in changing that.

I wouldn't want to do it for a week, let alone any longer.

[DFW]

13. My wife and I have done it exactly once

For a week, as a matter of fact. It was up the inside passage from Vancouver to Anchorage, and that was ten years ago because we had some time to kill in North America between the end of my work in late August and the wedding of the daughter of a good friend in New England in mid-September.

The food was indeed good, and the crew was mostly Italian and Filipino, so we got treated especially nicely by them, since I speak Italian and know enough Tagalog to get smiles if appreciation. Our room was indeed small, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live there, but it was OK for a week.

[3catwoman3]

27. I'm a serious introvert and the idea of being...

…forced to socialize with a lot of strangers is my idea of psychological torture.

[DFW]

36. Got it. That is indeed mitigating

On our cruise, there were obviously people everywhere, although there was never any pressure to interact with any if them. Still, not the cup of tea to one in your situation, I agree.

[yardwork]

39. That's considered one of the better cruise trips.

My wife and I are considering river cruises, too.

[DFW]

41. That hasn't been on our radar yet

Over here, two of the most popular are the Rhein and the Donau (Danube). But we already know most of those cities, so a river cruise on either one wouldn’t really be visiting any place new for us, where we had never been to Alaska before our cruise there.

[yardwork]

42. We've never been there and at our age, don't want to travel solo.

River cruises or museum-focused tours might be a good approach, I'm thinking.

[DFW]

45. There is no shortage of museums in our neck of the woods, for sure.

The Rhein has Basel, Strasbourg, Wiesbaden, Koblenz, Köln, Düsseldorf, and Amsterdam. The Donau has München nearby, and then Passau, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Beograd, Bucharest.

From Strasbourg, there are now hi-speed trains that get to Paris in two hours. Basel to Zürich is one hour. Düsseldorf to the Neandertal is a forty minute taxi ride. From where I live, it's half that. We drove California Peggy and Lionel Mandrake down there ourselves when they were passing through.



You won't have time to be bored.

[CTyankee]

14. Before I took a cruise, I thought it was for superficial, nonthinking, stupid people who didn't know any better. I was

wrong. My cruises with Atlas were relaxing, had great other cruisers, had fine food and wine, and offered thought provoking lectures on board, as well as well planned and greatly insightful shore offerings.

Other cruises included former college professors and other professionals who were well educated and delightful people that I wouldn't meet elsewhere.

People should update their thinking about cruises.

Also, get a travel agent! A good one will investigate and book details that you don't know how to book, while you are ashore.

[mainer]

19. It all depends on which cruise line you choose

The clientele really varies. Some are for young partygoers (e.g. Carnival).
Others, like Cunard (interestingly owned by Carnival) cater to older, more educated passengers.
Also it depends on the itinerary. The Caribbean is for young partigoers..
Asia and the Mediterranean might have more worldly passengers.
And Viking river cruises don’t even allow passengers under 16.

[CTyankee]

20. Atlas is the cruise line we took. It is European owned and definitely fit the bill for me! I recommend it highly!

[obamanut2012]

21. Atlas is very, very different than most cruises

[CTyankee]

35. I didn't know that. Have you been on an Atlas Cruise?

I'm wondering if you work in the cruise/vacation industry.

[Aristus]

22. I think I'm one of the few DU-ers who enjoys cruises as much as you do.

I love going on cruises, me and Mrs. Aristus both. We love sea days, when you don't have to get off the ship and wander around a tourist-trap port of call. Our favorite activity on sea days is going down to the main dining room in the early afternoon, and checking out that night's menu posted outside the entrance. Planning what we're going to enjoy for a nice dinner.

Before Holland-America got rid of their shipboard libraries, I used to like getting up early (Mrs. Aristus sleeps in...), going to the library, enjoying some coffee and a good book, or doing the trivia quiz or the crossword.

[DFW]

43. We were apprehensive, too

And there was indeed a large contingent of Geriatric Park, with whom we had little in common. However, at dinner, we were paired with a delightful pair with whom we are still in contact. Almost exactly our age, she was a horse raiser from New Jersey, and he was an immigrant from the Ukraine. They were also booked on the land part of the trip, up to Talkeetna, on to Denali and Fairbanks, so we were with them fow two weeks. We flew on the same plane from Fairbanks down to Seattle on the way back, but from there, they flew on to Newark, and we flew back to Washington.

[Emile]

16. Why not just join the Navy and they pay you to live on a ship?

to

[CTyankee]

17. You need an update to your knowledge about cruising. I get it that it's not something most people,

particularly working folks, would necessarily know much about. Once you get older and retired you look into these things and update yourself, as I did, on what a "cruise" actually is, in today's terms.

[Happy Hoosier]

25. Not for me....

... I don't even want to go on a cruise ship for a vacation.

But it isn't a terrible deal. if that's actually a life one enjoys.

[W_HAMILTON]

37. If you are going to live on a cruise ship, odds are you have a remote job.

If you have a remote job and choose to pay high rent for a cruise ship room when you could simply move to a lower cost-of-living area and put that money towards buying a home, well. it sounds like this person was too clever by half...

[Ilsa]

40. A doctor friend said after the hurricane that trashed

Puerto Rico during Felon45's reign, her in PR picked up, moved to a cruise ship, and stayed on it for the next year. Alot of bills disappeared while living on a cruise ship.