Cost of Fishing?

[HURRICANEBOB]

Bought my 20 foot Monark pontoon with 75 Merc new in 1994, so its now 16 years old. If I sold it today I could probably get about $5000 for the boat motor and trailer IAW Nada. 50-60% depreciation. And that's pretty moderate really.

What keeps me from getting a new boat is the initial stupidly high cost like DJD noted to start the tread. $40 to $70K seems way to much for a toy, especially so if you finance it over 15 years, and then take a 60% depreciating hit on top of that.

Take a $40,000 boat, at 6% for 15 years. Payment is just $337.54, not too bad. At the end of 15 years, you have spent a total of $60,758 on payments of which $20,758 was interest alone. Now realize after paying the $60,758 in payments, you don't have a boat worth $60,758, it deprecitated and might be worth $16,000 based on Nada average depreciation. That's another $24,000 in depreciation lost. So add the total payments to the depreciation and your total sunk costs are $84,758, not including any insurance, registration, or maintenance. Its just outrageous to me. I guess for folks pulling $150K a year or better that's fine.

I think the boating industry and boat makers have priced itself to the point that the ones that go out of business DESERVE IT. To the boat makers that still put out good priduct at $12 to $20K, I say warmest regards to you.

Me........I'm gonna take advantage of the rich folks from now on, and buy the depreciated used boat that they stuck all the money in.

[floatman]

got my spring Bass Pro Shops catalog to day and I think Nitro has gotten the message, they have a 20' 1" Nitro Z8 with a 200 Merc for 29,995 and with Merc 225 for 32,995, still a lot of money, but almost 40,000 less then that one for 70,000 JMO

Gary

[MsgMills]

I couldn't agree more with the info in this thread. I bought a 05 Triton 196 and just love this boat. But last year i was only able to go fishing 2 times the entire year due to my bad back. But to think about selling my boat is a no brainer..No way would I sell this boat, it's set up the way I want a boat to be and it is big enough for my entire family to go out on and enjoy our time on the lake. Plus it's paid off and don't eat anything while sitting in the garage.

So if and when I am able to go fishing again, I'll have my boat waiting for me in the garage, might have to put new batteries in it this year, but so far I've gotten 4 years of use out of my batteries.

Plus when my boys get old enough to actually use the boat on their own, it'll be everything they would ever want or need to use on the water.

[DJD]

I guess you can get wiser as you age cause I am so concerned now about how much money I give away on loans that I would rather save big time and pay cash or have a huge down payment on anything I buy.

This type of thinking has me buying used stuff all the time...boat, motorcycle, kayak, lures and other things. I have purchased used rods and when they have lifetime warranties it really doesn't matter.