(MONEY Magazine) – When Ken Seel got divorced three years ago, he decided he had to change his life. ''Back then, I thought about nothing but work. I was 25 pounds heavier. I smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. And I drank a lot of booze,'' says Seel. Today the San Francisco financial planner and father of a four-year-old son rarely smokes or drinks, and he runs four miles a day. Seel's new life set him in motion in another way as well. It prompted him to start saving and investing toward an enviable goal. Says the 37-year-old Seel: ''On March 10, 1994, my 45th birthday, I'm heading out the door.'' Seel expects to spend nine months of each year cruising the Caribbean in a 46-foot sailboat, which he intends to buy next summer. ''I don't plan to tie up at an island and vegetate,'' says Seel. ''I'll sail for two months, leave the boat somewhere, fly back and work for a few weeks, then go back to the boat and continue my trip.'' Eventually he hopes to sail around the globe. To reach his goal, Seel is willing to sacrifice. He saves 30% to 35% of his $150,000 gross income yearly. ''Instead of buying clothes where my peers do, I get suits for two-thirds the cost at a discount store. I don't go out to dinner or the theater every week. The only traveling I do is in the Caribbean. That may sound wonderful, but it's a cheap vacation.'' To conserve money, Seel also lives and works on his current sailboat -- a 35-footer that sleeps six and is docked in a marina on San Francisco Bay. ''Most of my clients come to the boat,'' he says. ''Living there is glamorous, but there isn't much room -- it's a U-Haul trailer without wheels. When I wake up on cold mornings, I think how nice it would be to have a house with a heating system.'' Seel has his savings invested for growth and income in a broadly diversified portfolio consisting principally of mutual funds. ''I try to practice what I preach as a financial planner: there is no single perfect investment,'' he says. Furthermore, he adds: ''I don't want to sit around reading the stock pages -- the fund managers can do that.'' Roughly 30% of Seel's money is in American Insured Mortgages Investors, a limited partnership that makes mortgage loans and yields 10%. Another 30% is in the Templeton World Fund, which invests in foreign stocks. One-quarter is split between the Fidelity Magellan equity growth fund and the Putnam Convertible Income-Growth Trust, a convertible bond fund that yields 5.3%. Most of the balance is in a single-premium life insurance policy, which has been earning a tax-deferred 9.5% annually. By the time Seel sets off for the Caribbean, he hopes to have accumulated $600,000 -- $350,000 in savings and $250,000 in interest and capital gains. So far, he is running ahead of schedule because his profits have been greater than the annual 10% his plan assumes. Does it make sense to devote 10 years to a dream, passing up a lot of pleasures he could otherwise afford? Answers Seel: ''Having a new car every year isn't important. You could work hard all your life to buy those things and drop over dead at 65. What's important is to do what you really want to do. I could really get into being a bum on a boat.''