What financial freedom means for superyacht crew

When you hear the term financial freedom, what does that mean to you?

Does it mean meeting your monthly financial commitments with a little left over for spending, or having a decent emergency fund in place alongside a solid savings plan?

Perhaps it means quitting your job and launching that personal project or business you’ve always dreamed of? Better yet, does it mean being financially comfortable enough to consider an early retirement?

There’s no one hard and fast definition of financial freedom, or financial independence as it’s otherwise known, but one thing is for sure: financial freedom means that you’re in a position to make important life decisions without worrying about the financial impact of those decisions.

In other words, you control your finances instead of them controlling you. 

Having the freedom to choose

Financial freedom allows you to make choices, one of which is choosing to leave your job at a time that suits you. You might not want to leave the industry now. But, at some point, you will want to stop working and retire.

With this in mind, as part of our first-ever UAM Superyacht Crew Financial Wellbeing survey we asked crew whether they have the freedom to leave yachting when it suits them.

Nearly 70% of participants responded ‘no’.

Turn that on its head and only 30% of crew surveyed feel as though they have enough financial independence to choose to leave yachting at a time that suits them.

Amongst the responses to all 9 survey questions, this one, in particular, stood out to us.

Start with managing your money and setting goals

Twenty-five percent of those surveyed said that they’re worried about not having any savings. This begs the question: how can you achieve financial freedom when you’ve not got any savings?

It sounds obvious but start with learning how to manage money. If you don’t understand where your money is going, or you have trouble controlling your spending, you will find that financial freedom is almost impossible.

The good news, however, is that you can turn things around.

After learning how to manage your money and track your spending, set some financial goals specifically related to your personal circumstances.

For some of you – it starts with a savings plan. Little and often makes a big difference! Honestly, it’s one of the best ways to build your savings over time in a disciplined way.

Become disciplined about your finances

The sooner you learn to be disciplined about your spending habits and commit to saving, the sooner you will have the financial freedom to make decisions about your future, whether that’s taking the next step in your yachting career or retiring early.

We want to help change the number of yacht crew worried about their savings plans, their financial goals and whether or not they have the freedom to leave yachting at a time of their choosing.

We know that setting budgets and talking about financial goals isn’t always the most exciting thing to talk about but the idea of being financially free definitely is exciting.

It can mean the difference between feeling stuck in your situation and stressing about when, or even if, you can ever retire, to choosing what you want to do and when.

I know which situation I’d rather be in. Having met hundreds of superyacht crew, I’m confident in saying that I know it’s the same for a lot of you.

Set the foundations to your financial freedom

To help professional yacht crew navigate their financial journey and understand the priorities around achieving financial freedom, we developed a three-pillared approach to getting the right structure in place for managing your finances.

As we’ve already acknowledged, financial freedom means different things to different people. Regardless of what it means to you, we’d love to help you achieve your own version of financial freedom.

Get in touch if you have more questions or think we can help.