About Me
I used to spend Sunday nights dreading Monday. Now I spend them on a boat in New Jersey, listening to the water, wondering how I got so lucky.
For years I worked in corporate finance at JPMorgan Chase. Good job, good salary, stable career. I was also quietly miserable in the way a lot of people are — not dramatically unhappy, just slowly aware that I was working toward a life I hadn’t actually chosen. One day I quit. No plan, no backup, no safety net. I packed a bag and moved to Vail, Colorado — a place I’d never lived and knew nobody — to see what ski life was like. I loved every minute of it.
I did three winters in Vail before I shifted the model: work hard in the summer, go somewhere warm in the winter. That led me to the Jersey Shore, bartending at a marina bar, and the realization that seasonal housing was eating my savings. So I did what any reasonable former finance person would do and ran the numbers on buying a boat. I bought a 1985 Silverton, moved aboard, and never looked back.
This blog is the guide I wish had existed when I started. Not the romanticized version — the real one. How the finances actually work when your income is seasonal. What it’s actually like to live on a boat as a solo woman with zero prior experience. The stuff I figured out the hard way so you don’t have to. If you want to build a life outside the traditional path and understand the numbers behind it — this is for you.
Currently: bartending at the Jersey Shore in summer, surfing in Mexico in winter, living on my boat from April through November. Living life entirely on my own terms. Come along.
