How to be a Beach Bum on a Budget
A beach bum is a person who likes to hang out at the shore and engage in water sports such as surfing, swimming, fishing, or sunbathing. The term also brings to mind someone carefree, someone who’d rather spend their days enjoying the great outdoors than staring at a screen, someone who prefers a life of leisure over a stressful daily grind. Does that sound like you?
Being on a budget implies that a perpetual vacation is out of reach for most of us. Maybe we can afford another day in paradise, but we can’t afford a lifetime there. We can afford to visit Florida, but not to buy a house there. Or we can afford to buy a Florida house but not to lose it to hurricanes or rising sea levels. There are limits to what we can or choose to spend to make our beach bum dreams come true.
We have to budget our time, too. Everyone’s got a limited amount, and we have to decide how to spend it.
That’s why most people who come to the Forgotten Coast do so by carefully balancing their time budgets between work and leisure. They dedicate most of the year to earning time off and a few weeks a year to spending it here. Or they budget their younger years to building a career and their retirement years to leisure. Some Lanark Village residents spend their workweek in Tallahassee and budget their weekends for beach bum life on the Forgotten Coast.
You’ve got to choose what’s right for you, and then figure out how to achieve it. That’s the key to living an authentic life.
It doesn’t have to happen all at once. Becoming a beach bum may take years of planning, but if you stick with your vision of a resonant life, you’re going to realize your dreams.
If you need a role model, consider the case of Paul Gauguin.
Paul Gauguin - Patron Saint of Beach Bums on a Budget
You probably know Gauguin as the artist who gained fame from painting Tahitian Islanders, but that’s not how his story began. For years before becoming a beach bum of sorts, he tried to live conventionally, materialistically, first in government service and then as a stockbroker in Paris.
As a young man, he was making the big bucks in his professional career, but he also painted part-time, budgeting in some hours for his craft while still working at a traditional job. You know how it is.
But the life he’d manufactured wasn’t built on solid ground, and by the time he was in his early 30s, it had started to fall apart. His earnings sharply declined when the stock market collapsed. The art market also contracted, which made things even worse. His marriage was strained.
In the face of these disappointments, he craved a simple life, one in which his creative juices could flow without being dammed behind a wall of European society’s expectations. In search of this ideal, he began to travel, as seekers often do, looking for his place in the sun.
He hoped to buy some land where he could live "on fish and fruit and for nothing… without anxiety for the day or for the morrow." Most wannabe beach bums on a budget can relate.
He went to Northern France first, then Copenhagen, and then to various small French towns before returning to Paris. At first, his family moved with him. But toward the end of that period, his marriage dissolved and he began to explore on his own.
Like many of us, he found what he was looking for by the sea. Of course, even then his life was not without conflict. Becoming a beach bum won’t cure everything that ails you, even though it helps.
Poor health and interpersonal problems plagued Gauguin’s later years, but his determined search for an unencumbered life brought him closer to happiness and fulfillment than anything else he’d tried. It also resulted in a body of work that was truly original, and authentically his own.
How to be a Beach Bum on a Budget
Choose an affordable location
You can live for less in Lanark by buying one of the small converted barracks homes that make up the Village’s core. Neighborhood get-togethers can reduce your entertainment spending to next to nothing. Walkable/bikeable streets and exercise groups in Chillas Hall eliminate your need for a gym membership. It’s an inexpensive place to live.
A shuffleboard court provides activity and collegiality, and the installation of a pickleball court is in the planning stages. Once it is completed, it will be even easier to achieve the second principle of beach bum life - prioritizing your health.
Prioritize your health
Being sick eats away at your money and your time; That is not how you want to spend your resources even if you can afford it.
Luckily for beach bums on a budget, you can stay well for less in Lanark. In addition to the fitness perks listed above, just being near the coast will make you healthier.
Maybe that’s because beach bums are outside a lot, soaking in the sun’s rays and its health-fortifying vitamin D. Maybe it’s because being on the shore reduces stress. Maybe it’s because being near the water encourages an active lifestyle. Maybe it’s because we eat more fish. Maybe it’s our salty sea air. Maybe it’s because a casual coastal lifestyle makes it easy to form social connections, and a satisfying social life promotes good health. Maybe it’s the negative ions.
Nothing stretches your budget past the breaking point like illness will. And it’s hard to imagine a lifestyle better for promoting health than being a beach bum.
That’s one good reason to pursue your dreams as if your life depended on it. It might.
Eliminate time sucks
There’s nothing like having a small house and a small yard for minimizing the amount of time you spend on chores. You don’t want to be a slave to your knick-knacks and real estate holdings. You want to be a beach bum!
You want to relax on the sand and paddle about in the bay. You don’t want to dust, polish, mow, trim, fertilize, or irrigate.
And since you can live for less in Lanark, you can work fewer hours to support your beach bum lifestyle. A few nights of bartending can buy you a handful of endless days in the sand.
Or you can create something to take to the farmers’ markets on weekends and devote your weekdays to fun in the sun. Work less; swim more.
In no way do I want to characterize all work as a time suck, however. Painting was Gauguin’s life work and he devoted many happy hours to its pursuit. In cases like his (maybe in cases like yours) being seaside contributes to creativity and turns work into a kind of play.
Turn beach bumming into a profitable enterprise
Even if you don’t see yourself as an artist, there are lots of ways to be inventive in your work. Plenty of businesses flourish because their proprietors have relocated to the shore.
People who live on the Forgotten Coast may teach diving, work as scientists at the Marine Lab, fish, or reupholster boat benches, as a few examples.
Some will attend FSU’s aquaculture workshops and learn how to grow oysters, harvest them, and take them to market. Others will find ways to capitalize on the lucrative tourist trade by providing services such as shopping, housekeeping, transportation, meal preparation, or running tours.
The short-term rental business keeps property managers and tradespeople as busy as they want to be.
It’s easy to find ways to combine entrepreneurship with beach bumming. Just don’t forget what made you move here in the first place and be sure to budget in plenty of beach time as well.
Carefully consider your budget’s line items
Which would you rather have? A large house with a big yard or a small house and a boat? A 2-week luxury cruise or a 2-month, inexpensive stay near the shore? One more year at the job for a bigger retirement fund or a priceless escape from the grind today?
We all must make those choices on our own or with the help of our trusted advisors. But most people will agree that the bulk of your resources should be dedicated to the possessions and activities that are the most meaningful to you. If being a beach bum is high on your priority list, come on down.
