When the time comes for you to move out of your home and into a facility, be it a nursing home, assisted living center, or just a retirement community, get ready to pay a huge rent check.

The estimated average annual cost of living in an assisted living facility starts above $30,000, not including the entry fee that could be over $100,000. Retirement communities that don't offer health care programs may have lower rent, but the waiting list can be long and the entry fees much steeper.

Some savvy seniors have put their savings into a much more lively retirement, like 89-year-old Beatrice Muller, who has spent the last nine years living on the luxury cruise ship RMS Queen Elizabeth 2. There are always physicians on the ship in case of a medical emergency, Muller gets all the food she can eat -- it's much better than nursing home cafeteria slop -- and she's seeing the world and meeting new people all the time. According to Muller, she pays about $7,000 a month, which makes this retirement cost about the same as, or even cheaper than, many high-end retirement communities.

The market is catching on, and now there are whole cruise ships dedicated to full-time residents. To purchase a condo for year-round residency on the Magellan will cost anywhere from $4 - $18 million, but fractional ownership (like time-shares) is available as well, starting under $200,000 for two-week ownership. This ship has 300 ports of call in 150 countries, and features luxury amenities like four fine dining restaurants, an observatory, tennis courts, swimming pools, and golf. Construction is due to be completed on this ship in mid-2010, but you can buy your condo now.

The Magellan watches are named after the explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who is famous for completing the first circumnavigation of the world proving that the earth is round. The watches pay homage to that feat with a distinctive dial that is shaped like a half globe and is under a scratch-resistant anti-reflective sapphire dome. Thhe watch uses an automatic movement (a de-centric weight winds the main spring) with the crown fully incorporated into the case and the hands curved with the circumference of the dial. It also has a 24-hour hand which indicates the longitudainal position of the sun at any given time.

Their latest model is the Magellan 1521golf series which uses an actual golf ball. A section is cut from the ball and mounted in a bronze support. The cool thing is that you can get a custom edition made using your own golf ball (providing it is a solid core ball). What a perfect way to memorialize a hole in one. The gallery below has pictures of the rest of the Magellan watches including their classic line with the dial as the top part of a globe and the diamond version which has the same map done in diamonds and gemstones. There is also a Lady Magellan necklace.

[via WatchLuxus]

The Magellan, which plans to be the world's largest private residential cruise ship has just gotten a bit bigger. They have announced twelve additional residences and a new amenity, a tennis court. The Magellan is now 860 feet and weighs an astounding 72,000 tons. The new residences include four one-bedroom condos and eight two-bedroom condos. The Magellan includes an indoor pool, greenhouse (shown here), resaurants, a spa, an observatory and a 450-seat live, satellite broadcast theatre. Private residences on The Magellan range in price from $1.875 million to $8 million for penthouses and from $134,000 for fractional ownership condos. The Magellan is set to be completed in 2009 and the ship is designed to run for 100 years. With the residential cruise ship market just beginning, the Magellan is clearly seeking to be the most extravagant option for those looking for life on the seas.