Holes In Thoughts: Island living

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Island living

Apparently, buying your own private island is cheaper than I thought. According to Private Islands Online, you can have one for as little as $200k (less, actually, but not for decent-sized ones not in Northern Canada). OK, $200,000 is a lot of money, and the ones I really liked were more in the $600k range. But it's a lot cheaper than I had pictured in my head.

So Rachel and I, if Rudy Giuliani gets elected, are going to leave the country to live on an island. Right on. And actually, we will probably be able to save up for it by the time his first term is up!

Note: This is probably all a pipe dream.

Check this out. Rachel and I want to build a sustainable island community. Each person (assuming 15-20 wage-earners) would need to contribute somewhere between $75k and $200k. That's a lot of money, sure, but it's about as much as mediocre-to-crap house in Tucson. If, as a community, we make money, then we can pay it off like any other loan (I'll get to how we'd make money in a bit).

The goal is a happy life, I guess. Eat well, raise awesome children, enjoy friends and family, improve yourself, waste nothing, and be happy. What else could anyone want?

We'll get 20 adults together. Mostly they'll be people like this guy and others that are interested in the no-impact good life ideal, except without insufferably pretentious people. We'd take certain roles. I would help teach the kids, and keep all the electronics going, and probably do some of the maintenance of machinery. My load would be relatively light because I'd also keep my day job - web design - because I can do that from anywhere on the planet.

Others without the traditional white-collar do-anywhere jobs would be helping grow food, build and maintain stuff, cook, and so on.

We'd need some things:

A good island. At least of the ones I've seen, most of the affordable ones are in the Philippines. A good island will be well above the sea (typhoons aren't fun to watch from underwater), ideally with some cliffs for climbing, diving, and windmills. It should have a decently protected moor for a boat, a place for a small ambphibious plane to be stored in case of a storm. A beach would be nice. Vegetation is also a must. Must also be at least 20 acres.
Transportation. Gotta have at a good-sized boat, probably one capable of Atlantic travel. Also, a small amphibious plane. It wouldn't be hard to make the boat self-sufficient with today's power generation (solar, wind generators), and desalinization processes. A 60' ketch should be capable of sailing most anywhere, including crossing the Pacific, but I am waiting on an expert to be sure of that. Making a 'green' aircraft presents a more formidable challenge: you can mix the fuel (20 bio/80 regular), and lower emissions by 50%, in order to use a typical amphibious like a Cessna 208, or hope that the DA42 Twin Star gets a water-landing version with more cargo room. You'd have to get the plane from Japan or the Philippines if you wanted to have an island in the Pacific, though. It's a ridiculous notion, but I'd also want to turn my Baja bug into a biodiesel schwimwagen for diving trips and cruising around the island.
Food. If you've got a couple of garden-loving hippies on your crew who want nothing to do with a 'real' job and want to grow stuff for the rest of their lives (and we do), this is mostly taken care of, and they don't mind farming a little extra in exchange for living in paradise. Apparently, most of the vegans we know would be fine owning (and eating) various animals if they did the job themselves. Currently it looks like we'll have a cats (as pets) and chickens and a few cows (as food).
Water. Desalinization has come a long, long way. For about $10-20k you can get a salt-water purifier that's about the size of a dorm refrigerator, and it will give you 1,000 gallons of potable water per day. All you'd need is a clean reservoir, a means of getting the ocean to the filter, and a pump. Rainwater collecting has also worked well for humanity for... ever.
Fellow colonists. While you don't want to pigeonhole people into jobs that can't be replaced (in case they want to leave), you'd want to be sure to bring people you want to live with. Of course, people will have their own homes and all, but community meals are going to be a big thing here (since it's shared food), so picking your friends will be important. Also, divvying up expenses will be a good thing since maintaining the boat and plane won't be free.
Utilities. Power's the easiest thing on the list: solar and wind power is quite effective nowdays, and you'll have lots of both on an island. Use LED lighting, and highly efficient insulation (etc.), and you've got low-enough power usage (even with computers), for solar and wind. You can compost most any waste, and we'd avoid plastics like they were diseased. The only thing that won't be obviously not biodegradable is most of our...
Other niceties, like Internet access (now available via satellite), plumbing, stereo systems, computers, swings, scuba gear, a library, a medical room, a distillery (booze!),

It's all doable, though, and there's already a market for pre-made hippies-in-trees commune housing. That helps construction quite a bit (and makes it a lot cheaper as well).

We'd have to get homeowner-type loans to pay for it all, most likely. So how would we pay that off? And what about the cost of upkeep for the vehicles, and occasional supplies?

Well, I work at home anyway. So I can make some money that way. We can also rent out a little vacation spot for rich tourists. $5,000 a week is the usual run, but with a nice place with maids, you can charge $10,000. So I figure we can hire a few local people for $200 a week to live there and keep up the guest place. Usual pay in the Philippines is $200 a month for that work, so we can get some good work for that. Figuring maintenance costs, that leaves about $8,000 a week in profit, and if we keep it occupied half the time, our island makes us $200k per year. That will pay off a $1.5M loan in 10 years, just by itself, and theoretically people should be going into this with cash deposits anyway.

Add in regular income from people like me. Rachel also suggested having a little cottage industry, perhaps selling fruit to nearby islands. Plus, if 20 people are determined, a lot can be done.

Figuring a 10-year, $2M loan and 6.5% interest, monthly payments would be $17,032.20. That's a lot of money - but divide it between ten families, who don't have to pay for electricity, a car payment, food, or a load of other usual expenses. Then you're talking $1,703.22. That's about normal for a mortgage. Just maintain the stuff, and occasionally fly to visit family. So in order to make all this work, each family has to average an annual income of about ... $25k, about $5k above the U.S. poverty line.

Of course, not everyone is going to have a prototypical 'job,' so some of the money has to come from the island or islanders. But between a rental villa and some work-at-home types (web design, graphic design, writers, perhaps musicians, online librarians, etc.), it can be done.

Now the biggest three questions:
1. Can we find fifteen to twenty other people (or ten couples) to go into this?
2. Can we work up the nerve to do it?
3. Can we put together enough cash to get to critical mass?

We'll see, I guess.

Labels: ambition, life, pipe dreams, Rachel, To-Do, travel, vacation, work

posted by Steve @ 10:38 PM

0 Comments: