Travel in Retirement

[Douglas Dubh]

I’ve got six more years til I can draw my pensions and get Medicare. Until then I’m hoping to take several long vacations in the late spring, summer, or early fall each year. Once I can fully retire, my plan is to buy a used RV and take a couple of three to six month road trips to all the national park sites in the northern states and into Canada too. Once I’ve spent about a week in every state and province I’ll sell the RV.

 

[tink1970]

DH retired from full time work in June of 2020 and after helping take care of our fathers (who both subsequently died in early 2022), we're finally embracing the retired life more fully.

I've found that we have a general amount allotted for our travel budget which I try to plan out 12-18 months or so, with some flexibility built in as necessary (we still have a daughter in college and 2 very stubborn, elderly mothers ).

For us, travel during retirement means we have more flexibility --ideally missing the more expensive and/or crowded seasons--we were able to cruise the Wish last year in Oct/Nov; this year we're cruising on Viking to the Adriatic in Oct/Nov; and avoid summer and holiday travel if we so desire. I try to schedule 2 "shorter" vacations (around a week or so) and a longer one (10-14 days, usually to Europe) a year and this seems to work well for us.

Regarding Disney, my DD outgrew the parks in middle school and I will occasionally attend a Moonlight Magic party with friends who own DVC but I have no interest, really, in the parks at this stage of my life. I will sail with DCL, though and am excited about experiencing Norway with DCL next year when Florida is hot and hopefully Norway is not!

Congrats on the upcoming life stage change and Gig'em!

 

[disneydreamer1980]

We’re a long time from retirement but when we do I want to buy a nice RV and just travel the country. And use all of our DVC points every year (we currently use enough for a 2 week trip each year and rent out the rest) for more frequent and longer Disney trips. Also will most likely do a lot of international traveling. Hopefully our health will be good enough to do all this. We put a lot of money into our retirement fund so we will be able to do a lot of traveling plus we figure we’ll probably sell our house and downsize, so we’ll have that money too.

 

[_19disnA]

How much/where you travel in retirement also relates to your financial situation. Do you have children/grandchildren in other states you would like to see more often? What are the types of things you like doing in your spare time even before you retire? Where did you typically go on vacation when working? Even with more time to travel, it depends on how active a lifestyle you lead and what activities you currently like doing where you live.

 

[wabbott]

My DH is starting to use the R word, and speaking of it happening by year's end. I'm interested in hearing from those who are retired or planning to do so in the near future. Did you budget an 'x' amount for yearly travel? Do you plan far out or are you finding that you're able to get and enjoy last minute deals? What about Disney - are you traveling there more or less often than when you (and the kids) were younger?

We've been retired for 13 and 8 years respectively, and have thoroughly enjoyed our travels. Most of it by car, but I like to drive, so that's not an issue.

First, and foremost, know that time is limited. You only have so many healthy years allocated, and once it's gone, that's it. About the best you can do is estimate from you own general health, and that of your parents and siblings, to gauge just how long that is.

Exercise helps a lot, and if you go to WDW very much, you already know this. Once mobility is impaired, that changes everything.

Finances: That is something that you have to figure out for yourself. Do a budget - income, fixed expenses, etc. What's left over, you can allocated to travel. Excel spreadsheets are my favorite tool. Hotel costs are all available online, as are tours, etc. Build a trip spreadsheet that will forecast your expenses. And it's just that, a forecast - don't make it an accounting game and try to come out to the penny at trip's end.

The GasBuddy app will find the best gasoline prices.

And it depends on what you place more value on. A big house and two new cars? My old f@rt coffee buddies think I'm crazy spending thousands on travel, yet they see no issue with buying a new pickup for tens of thousands, only to use it to drive 5 miles each way to coffee every morning. Me, I drive an 02 Dodge pickup with 400K miles on it.

We haven't done many "last minute deals" because we like to plan well in advance and decide our route and itinerary in detail. I'm told that if you're the type that keeps a bag packed all the time and have few permanent obligations (kids, dogs, clubs, etc) that it's a great money-saving tactic. You will have to orient your life so that when you walk out the door and turn out the lights, you won't leave things undone while you're gone. Perhaps ask a neighbor to check on things while you're gone and collect your mail with a promise of reciprocity when they travel. Also, think about toting a laptop or an Ipad to keep track of your banking/credit cards when on the road. We do this.

On our road trips, I like to drive about 200 miles or so a day between our overnight stops. That way, if we see something that we didn't know about (waterfall, trail, overlook, etc) we have time to stop and explore. Some of our most interesting finds have been places and things I had no idea existed.

Where to go? My ideas have come from a lifetime of reading old Nat Geo magazines from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. And looking at all the pictures have given me a reasonably good knowledge of how to take decent photos. Take lots of them, and have a plan with AT&T or Verizon or whoever to store duplicates of your pics on the cloud. One day your phone will crater and if you don't have your pics saved, you will be devastated.

Some things cannot be adequately captured by photography, only seen and recalled. Two years ago in Zion NP, mrs wabbott observed, "I don't know which way to point my camera! It's all so spectacular."

Happy travels!!

 

[clh2]

DH retired last November. My target date is April 1st 2025. My decision on date was based primarily on health insurance. My employer has fabulous insurance. in the meantime, we are starting to look at fabulous vacation to Europe…for the summer or fall of 2025.

We are planning on a healthy travel budget for the “go-go” years. Including plans in 2026 to do a Disney cruise, taking our DD and her family.)

At some point after that, an Alaskan Cruise is also on the list. The reason we are choosing Europe first is the ADA applies to the Alaskan Cruises, not the European ones. So, if we start to “slow down”, the Alaskan cruise is still doable.

We are starting to explore the Europe trip options…there are so many choices, i‘m glad we are starting to explore options now!

 

[Disney Mickey&Minnie Fan]

We will spend about 17-21 consecutive days in March and April at Disney.

Where will you stay for your 17-21 consecutive day WDW visits in the March-April time period?

 

[OrangeBirdGirl]

We currently travel about 6 weeks out of the year (still working). For our retirement planning, I'm anticipating spending about 30% more on travel then we currently are. But we will likely travel more then 30% more then we do now, if that makes sense.

Right now vacations are usually planned flying out on a Sat and coming home on a Sat. We like to do 6 week long trips throughout the year and Sat-Sat is best use of time so we have Sun to recover before heading back to work. But when we retire we would be able to fly any day we want and could take advantage of cheaper flights that aren't on a Saturday.

Or, we love road trips and prefer driving if possible. Things such as WDW we don't want to waste the time driving to now. It would save about $400 to drive (even considering the cost of hotel enroute to/from and food for those days plus obviously gas) vs flying. We'd probably drive to WDW.

We also love to cruise. Since we like to spread out our vacation time we are sometimes doing 2 cruises a year which could have been back-to-back cruises had we wanted to spend 2 weeks on vac at once. We could do the back-to-back cruises, save on a set of airfare and save on the pre-night hotel and food expenses for the day. Even someplace like cruising out of Miami (which we wouldn't drive to), airfare for us is about $700/ea, hotel $150 and extra food for a day maybe $100 and extra set of port transfers maybe $50. Just by doing it as a back-to-back it would save $1,700. So just little ways like that where we will be able to stretch our vacation budget.

As for WDW we vacation at one of the Disney locations throughout the world each year. If WDW then a week. If we are going to DL or an over seas park it is not a full week just at the parks. I assume we will continue that.

 

[tvguy]

We currently travel about 6 weeks out of the year (still working). For our retirement planning, I'm anticipating spending about 30% more on travel then we currently are. But we will likely travel more then 30% more then we do now, if that makes sense.

Right now vacations are usually planned flying out on a Sat and coming home on a Sat. We like to do 6 week long trips throughout the year and Sat-Sat is best use of time so we have Sun to recover before heading back to work. But when we retire we would be able to fly any day we want and could take advantage of cheaper flights that aren't on a Saturday.

Or, we love road trips and prefer driving if possible. Things such as WDW we don't want to waste the time driving to now. It would save about $400 to drive (even considering the cost of hotel enroute to/from and food for those days plus obviously gas) vs flying. We'd probably drive to WDW.

We also love to cruise. Since we like to spread out our vacation time we are sometimes doing 2 cruises a year which could have been back-to-back cruises had we wanted to spend 2 weeks on vac at once. We could do the back-to-back cruises, save on a set of airfare and save on the pre-night hotel and food expenses for the day. Even someplace like cruising out of Miami (which we wouldn't drive to), airfare for us is about $700/ea, hotel $150 and extra food for a day maybe $100 and extra set of port transfers maybe $50. Just by doing it as a back-to-back it would save $1,700. So just little ways like that where we will be able to stretch our vacation budget.

As for WDW we vacation at one of the Disney locations throughout the world each year. If WDW then a week. If we are going to DL or an over seas park it is not a full week just at the parks. I assume we will continue that.

I never had more than 4 weeks vacation, and my wife 5 weeks when we were working and family obligations usually ate up at least one week of vacation time or more. .

 

[TheSouthernBelle]

We have about 15-20 years but we're already mapping out our general goals when we're in the encore phase of our lives. We are estimating about 25-30% of our annual income would be for travel. Right now we spend about 10-15% or our income and this covers a variety of travel, ie- WDW, small trips around our region like the beach/mountains, visiting family, some misc travel for my husband's motorcycle hobby and one trip abroad. We are not yolo travelers staying at the four seasons, but we're also not sleeping in a motel 6 either. We have already started doing more travel to other destinations as our kids have gotten older and are planning to do that more as we can, but we'll always have WDW in rotation but I'd like to expand our travel portfolio significantly. We didn't travel as much when our kids were really little since we just didn't have the means. Our plans when we're retired include us traveling much more and also budgeting for taking our children/potential future family members/grandchildren on trips too. It's not going to be all the time, but our families (parents) could not provide that for us and we just think there's amazing memories to be had to provide that to our kids/their future families down the road.

However, we've already planned that once our kids are through with college, we'll start pre-retirement and travel more, with or without our kids. We have some friends that have recently retired and many have landed in situations with health issues that have prohibited them from traveling at all or as much as they wanted. I know we can't control everything but I can't see us waiting until we're 65 to start traveling more. We would likely try to do spontaneous trips especially since that is usually how deals are had, it's not the destination, it's the dates and cost of the deal, so if we don't have to worry about kids' schedules and what not, we'll travel when there are good values.

We have some big goals over the next 15-20 years that will impact all of this but we already live in retirement land so we have no where we really need to move to. Our home will be paid off well before we retire so that really is the biggest variable that will allow us to travel more and enter our cool years with no debt.

 

[disneyseniors]

DH has been retired for four years. I am still working full time, but do get 30 days a year of vacation, however, I am not allowed to use more than 10 days (two weeks at any given time).

With jobs that give us / gave him in (DH's case) generous time off, we have always done a bit of traveling and the amount of traveling we are doing now that DH is retired and when I am retired is/will be almost exactly the same as when we were working. I plan to budget the same amount of dollars and time for travel pre-retirement and post-retirement. (We don't have the travel bug big time or the finances we want to put to that, but do like to do a little traveling, mostly domestically).

On top of my normal travel budget, I did budget for one longer and higher expense trip to Paris, Disneyland Paris, and Belfast (bucket list trip for DS we are taking this year in September -- DH was going to come too back when we were going to do this in 2020 but plans were canceled with the pandemic. DH being three 1/2 years older with a few more aches and pains isn't interested in doing this trip now, so it will just be me and DS.)

If you want to do the travel do it while you can. The older we get the more of a hassle travel seems to be and the less we want to do.

Kathy884, I agree with you that you should travel while you can. My husband has been retired for about 3 years and I have been retired longer. We had planned on traveling a lot. However, it isn't as easy to do that at our age. We like to drive and that is a little harder to do now. Flying is fine though. It's just that you move a little slower with more aches and pains. Not wanting to be a debbie downer, but we do travel where we want to go. We have money set aside for that, so we just go at a slower pace. I tell my grown kids to travel Now, do not wait, as you might feel differently about it when you retire. They are doing that with multiple trips and having a blast. Retirement is fun to do what you want when you want, and that includes traveling.

 

[wabbott]

Just had another thought that may be of value for travel. Compose and print out (double or triple space) a to do/reminder checklist of things to do and must carry items. Do this a week or two before travel and put it out on the kitchen table or counter with a pen so that as you recall things to add, you can write them in the spaces. Then add them to the saved list for the next time you travel.

 

[2TxAgs]

Thanks for all your thoughtful responses!

We have not waited for actual retirement to do some wonderful traveling. In my 50's I started running half marathons, so we did a few trips where I could run and then we spent another 3-4 days at that location for sightseeing. This included at some national parks - Zion and Great Smoky Mountains. Also, we've taken a couple of European river cruises. Our jobs and vacation time have been pretty flexible, so we have used that to our advantage.

I'm just trying to picture how our travel patterns/options may be different once my DH retires.

Looking forward to reading more responses

 

[Huskerpaul]

It will be about four more years before the target date for me. We also prioritize travel. DVC was ourt first timeshare. Addonitis hit hard after that first sale and I started looking at other timeshare options. A year later and I own three weeks worth of points in WorldMark contracts. We are in Portland and WorldMark has lots of properties in the PNW we can drive to, so they were a logical choice. Leave Friday for a week in a one bedroom in Seaside Oregon. We love the coast and bought to use there primarily. We will also spend the first week in September in WM Victorica BC. The place in right on the inner harbor. Also bought an every other year Marriott Grande Vista in Orlando and annual week contract for Willow Ridge in Branson. While we bought both primarily to trade through Interval International, we will be spending the firsy week in August using our 2 bedroom ti visit Branson and see my wife's aunt who lives in the area. Later when we retire I can split both the Marriott weeks into two weeks if I want more vacation (1BDR & Studio).

One nice thing about using the timeshares is the known annual cost. Also forces us to take vacation since it is already paid for. You do have to like planning far in advance. Timeshares work best if you know where/when you want to use them and then make your reservation when they first open up. We already traded our 2024 Marriott weeks for Newport Coast Villas and the MVC property 15 minutes outside Disneyland Paris. So with Interval trading of Marriott weeks you are not just stuck with the property you own. WorldMark is a credits system that works very much like DVC, but with no home resorts. All properties open for reservations at 13 months from check-in.

 

[a742246]

Where will you stay for your 17-21 consecutive day WDW visits in the March-April time period?

We do BWV for 7-10 days and SSR for 10-14 days.

 

[MomToOne]

I think I'm an exception here. I don't think I'll travel much more in retirement. I've done a lot already, and honestly, it's losing it's shine a bit. Travel is just not as much fun as it used to be, in part because my body is just older and doesn't tolerate what it used to, but mostly because air travel is just so painful for everyone these days due to the airlines.

Not that I don't plan to travel in retirement, I just think 2 trips a year, maybe a week or two each, will be plenty for me. I am more focused on finding a retirement location that provides me with things to keep me happy locally on a daily basis. I also have other plans for retirement like volunteering more and going back to school just because there are things I still want to learn

 

[robinb]

I am retired but my husband is not (yet). We have a bucket list of the kind of travel we would like to do:

2023 - Cruise (in April), WDW (in September)
2024 - Oktoberfest in Munich, visit Auschwitz (my DH's aunt was a survivor of that camp), something else ... maybe a cruise?
2025 - Galapagos cruise
2026 - Egypt, maybe a Nile cruise?
2027 - South Pacific, my DH wants to dive the Great Barrier Reef
2028 - African Safari

 

[tasha99]

I think I'm an exception here. I don't think I'll travel much more in retirement. I've done a lot already, and honestly, it's losing it's shine a bit. Travel is just not as much fun as it used to be, in part because my body is just older and doesn't tolerate what it used to, but mostly because air travel is just so painful for everyone these days due to the airlines.

Not that I don't plan to travel in retirement, I just think 2 trips a year, maybe a week or two each, will be plenty for me. I am more focused on finding a retirement location that provides me with things to keep me happy locally on a daily basis. I also have other plans for retirement like volunteering more and going back to school just because there are things I still want to learn

Same here. The older I get, the less I want to get on a plane and the pandemic set me back a whole lot with regard to agoraphobia. I need my space in a crowd.

I retired at the start of the pandemic and DH is retiring in about 2 weeks. We will likely not travel that much. Trips to the coast or Cascade mountains, yes. Roadtrips to family and national parks in the off season, sure. But I'm not getting on a plane to Europe. Maybe I'd cruise one way to Asia and fly back, but that would take some convincing. We'll probably go on Alaskan cruises every year or two because I love them and it's easy to drive to the ports. I've been cooking, gardening, reading, watching movies, and visiting with my kids, and that's enough. I even sold all my DVC points because the last few times I went, I felt like Disney had lost its shine. It was probably the same as always, but there are plenty of cheaper places that I can go without the crowds, and my kids are in their 30s (they can take themselves to Disney at this point).

 

[georgina]

I am retired but my husband is not (yet). We have a bucket list of the kind of travel we would like to do:

2023 - Cruise (in April), WDW (in September)
2024 - Oktoberfest in Munich, visit Auschwitz (my DH's aunt was a survivor of that camp), something else ... maybe a cruise?
2025 - Galapagos cruise
2026 - Egypt, maybe a Nile cruise?
2027 - South Pacific, my DH wants to dive the Great Barrier Reef
2028 - African Safari

I like your list! Married to a diver who has been retired 6 years, covid messed up a lot of his plans but he is back on 4-5 trips a year. Most are liveaboards I don't go on (hence my solo trips to Orlando) but the St Lucia resort trip I enjoy. Galapagos and African safari are on my radar also. He did a Red Sea trip last year and added on a few days to see the Pyramids and Valley of the Kings. I wouldn't mind seeing Angkor Wat

 

[crisi]

I semi retired years ago for health reasons - and my "job" is a self employed part time thing that I can do when I want more or less. My husband still works, and some of our travel is me tagging along on the trips he takes for work. And most of the time he can work from anywhere, so several of our vacations have been him working for about six hours during the weekday from somewhere warmer. I have discovered that there aren't a lot of last minute deals - airfare gets more expensive last minute from where we are and more than wipes out a lot of last minute savings for hotel rooms and cruises. Its also been really easy to "deprioritize" some of the trips that I've really wanted to take because something else comes up - travel with friends, budget travel - so decide what is important to you so you aren't saying "I always wanted to do London and we never got there." Also, some places/methods of travel are much better places for "younger" older adults, the aforementioned London is difficult to get around in once you slow down yourself, but the aforementioned safari (we just got back from one) generally involves riding around in a safari vehicle all day - its bouncy, but you aren't walking. Do Machu Picchu early in retirement if that appeals - that is a lot of walking and stairs at altitude. London via tour bus is probably easier than self touring London via the Underground as you age. Also be aware of your marital dynamics - it seems a lot of people lose patience as they age (including myself), and for me and my husband, long roadtrips wouldn't be a great idea.