I live and work remotely from a cruise ship 300 days a year. It's helped my social life and cost just as much as an apartment — here's how I do it.

09.08.2023 - 09:21 / insider.com / Royal Caribbean / Cruises

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ryan Gutridge, an IT professional who spends more than 300 days a year on a cruise ship. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I've been told I'm crazy for trying to live full time on a cruise ship, but it's not just for retired people.

I work in IT, as a cloud solution engineer for a cloud solution provider, and started working from home in 2012. However, because of the pandemic my team was able to work from home and access the data they needed from anywhere.

At that time, the cruise lines hadn't announced when or if they were coming back. I thought, if they return, I want to try taking my job with me on a short cruise. I wanted to see how the WiFi would work and if I could access some elements of my job with heavy security.

That summer, in 2021, I booked two four-night cruises on Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas, and went on both in September. Everything worked great, and since then I've been on a cruise pretty much every week, except for a few weeks due to holidays.

The ship does the same route twice a week, and both stops are on the same cruise. I primarily cruise on the same ship, but I've done cruises on larger ships too.

I do meetings in the morning and afternoons, but I can also go to lunch and socialize or meet people at the gym. I've even met people that I stay in contact with and that have come back and cruised on this ship with me multiple times since.

Working from home was isolating. I don't have kids or pets, so it's easy to become somewhat introverted, but cruising has really helped and made me a lot more social.

Think about your strategy. It's about coming up with a transition plan — it doesn't happen overnight.

I wanted to really look at the cost of cruising full time, before I began. I have a spreadsheet that auto records all my expenses, which helps. I also set a budget every year. This year my base fare budget is about $30,000 and last year when I started really looking at the numbers and evaluating how much base fare I paid to be on a ship for 300 nights, I found it was almost neck-and-neck to what I paid for rent and trash service for an apartment in Fort Lauderdale.

My drinks and internet are free. If people are going to do something like what I do, I recommend trying different brands because they all offer something different. But once you commit to one, stick to it so you reach those loyalty levels.

I found that Royal Caribbean has, by far, the most valuable benefits to me — discounts, free internet, and free drinks. The highest loyalty level for Royal Caribbean is Pinnacle, which I will reach after exactly two years of cruising on this ship.

Because of the loyalty program, I'll actually spend less money