One of the biggest things that keep most people from buying a deck boat is the maintenance cost.
The maintenance cost was something that I spent entire weeks researching before I bought mine. Every night after I came back from work I spent a huge amount of tables where I would note down everything I could find on the internet about the costs involved. But in the end most of them turned out to be useless, and had nothing to do with reality.
Now that I owned a deck boat for multiple years I decided to write this article using real numbers from my own experience. I hope this will help you get a real idea of what to expect.
The average cost of maintaining a deck boat is around $4,500 per year, that means $375 per month, here is what contributes to the cost:
- General Maintenance: $40 per month / $480 per year
- Insurance: $25 per month / $300 per year
- Fuel: $160 per month / $1920 per year
- Storage: $50 per month / $600 per year
- Taxes: $100 per month / $1200 per year
Table of Contents
General Maintenance
Let’s start with general maintenance. From my experience the amount you can expect to pay can vary a lot. In your first year or two, the maintenance cost will be very low, somewhere around $200 to $400 per year.
But after that things will start to break down due to usage and you will have to take out more money out of the pocket to make sure that your boat will be in a good condition. So you can expect to pay around $500 and $600 per year.
If something major breaks, you can end up spending more than $1500 a year, but this will only happen in very unlucky situations.
So let’s say that a good average will be $500 per year, that would make it almost $40 per month.
Average Monthly Total: $40
Insurance
One of the first things that you should do once you get yourself a boat is to get it insured. The average insurance cost is $300 per year.
Most states don’t require an insurance but from my own experience it’s a really good idea to have one. Compared to the cost of a deck boat, they are not that expensive and they can save you a lot of money if something bad happens. And at some point something bad will happen. Even if you are really careful and don’t hit anything, that can’t be said about everybody else.
While the average cost is $300 per year, the cost can be as high as $600 or as low as $100, depending on what you want your insurance to cover. If you only want to cover the basic stuff, you can expect to pay around $200, but if you want it to cover medical expenses you can expect to pay around $400.
Insurance cost can be influenced by a multitude of factors, here are some of them:
- Use of the Boat
- Boating Experience
- Motor Vehicle Driving Record
- Other Drivers Experience
- Boat Insurance Records
- Horsepower
- Specs of the Boat
- Credit Score
- Multi-policies
- First Owner
- Multiple Boats
- Association Member
- Safety Course
If you want to know more details about boat insurance you can check out my article: Average Deck Boat Insurance Cost (With 19 Examples), where you will find 15 real life examples.
Average Monthly Total: $25
Fuel
A very important and costly aspect of boat ownership is the fuel.
When I was doing my research a lot of articles that I read left this one out, and up to some point I can understand them for doing this. It’s extremely hard to estimate this, there are so many things that can influence it: the type of motor, the size and weight of the boat, the price of the fuel, etc.
But luckily for me, I would say that all the deck boats were average from most points of view, they were medium sized, and most of my motors were average. So I will tell you what I paid in the last few years.
There were years when I wouldn’t go out with my boat that much and in those years I would normally pay around $1000. But there were also years when I spent almost all of my time on the lake, in those years I paid between $3000 and $4000. In the years that I would go out moderately I would say that I spent around $1500 – $2000 per year. So I will say that $2000 per year is a good average, if you set this amount aside just for fuel you should have more than enough, and you might end up with a good portion of it unspent..
Average Monthly Total: $160
Storage
Storage is also a very important thing that has to be taken into account. Depending on your preferences and the space you have available you could end up spending $0 or $300 per month.
There are 4 main options that have when it comes to storage.
Option 1
The first option, as well as the cheapest, is to store your boat in your yard or in your garage.
The only problem with this is that in order for it to be free you will need to have a trailer. If you already own a trailer and you have enough space available, then you can store your boat for free.
The problem is that most people don’t own a trailer, and you can’t store it safely without one.
Buying a trailer means spending about $2,500, which is a significant cost. The good thing about this is that you won’t have to spend any money on storage from now on.
Considering the upfront cost I won’t say that this option is completely free, instead I will say that it’s about $100 per month, so in two years the trailer will be completely paid off, and from then on you can use it for “free”.
Average Monthly Total: $100
Option 2
If you don’t have enough space in your yard, or you don’t want to fill your garage without your boat you should consider using a storage unit.
Storage units for boats come in two types, open and closed.
Open storage units are basically huge parking lots where you can store your boat. On average this will cost you around $40.
But the trailer comes into play again in this option. Not all storage complaints provide a trailer for you to move your boat, and if they do, it will usually cost you extra.
Renting a boat trailer for a day will cost you around $100. So I will also add those $100 to the count when making the average total.
Average Monthly Total: $50
Option 3
Option 3 is the closed storage. Those types of storage offer a lot more protection than open ones, so they will cost more.
For an average 18-22 ft. boat the cost will be around $130 per month. If your deck boat is bigger than that, then you can expect to pay more.
Again, we have to take the consideration of the price of the trailer. So we will also add some extra $100.
Average Monthly Total: $140
Option 4
Most ports will allow you to keep your boat docked over the winter. This type of storage is also known as a wet slip.
The good part of this option is that you don’t have to pay for the trailer since you won’t need it. The bad part is that it will usually cost around $300 per month.
Average Monthly Total: $300
Storage Total
So as you can see there are a lot of options, and they start as low as $50 per month, and they can go as high as $300 per month. But to give an average total we’ll add all them up, divide them by 4 (the number of options), and we will round the number so we will say that the average is $150 per month. But you won’t have to pay this amount every month, you will only have to pay it for 4 to 5 months, depending on the area where you live. So 7 or 8 months the average will be 0. So the monthly average, considering that you will not pay anything for two thirds of the year is around $50.
Average Monthly Total: $50
Taxes
Nobody likes to think about taxes so I decided to leave this for the last.
Taxes are probably just as annoying to calculate as they are to pay, but it’s something that has to be done.
As you can imagine every state has its own taxes, and they change very often, so my own experience won’t do you any good here. But still, let’s take a look at them.
Probably the most annoying thing to estimate, since there are different taxes for every state.
Some states like Delaware and Rhode Island have no tax for boats.
In some states the tax is only applied up to a certain amount of the boat’s purchase price. In New York, for example, they tax only the first $230,000 of a purchase price.
In other states the tax is a fixed procent, here are a few examples:
- North Carolin: 3%
- New Jersey: 3.3125%
- Florida: 6%
- Texas: 6.25%
But in some states the tax it’s capped at a certain amount. In North Carolina for example the tax is 3%, but it’s capped at $1500.
But depending on the state where you live, you can expect to pay an extra 1% or 2% due to some other taxes.
The average price of a deck boat is somewhere around $40,000. If we consider this average price, then the total average would be $1600.
If you were to divide that by 12, for every month of the year, then you will get around $130.
Overall I would say that taxes are the hardest part to estimate since they are so different , based on the location you are in, and they change quite often. But this estimate should give you a good idea.
Average Monthly Total: $10
Final Thoughts
It’s very hard to know exactly what a deck boat will cost you to maintain it. As you’ve seen there are a lot of factors that come into play. But looking back at all I’ve paid over time I can say that the average is around the number that I gave at the start of the article.
I hope my article will help you decide if a deck boat is right for you. If you want to know more about deck boats or other types of boats, you can always check the different categories on the website, there you will find all the information you will ever need on any type of boat.