Travel Budget

[Danmar]

I have one question though for those that spend a lot of time living in different areas. When you are at one, do you miss the other? coolsmiley:

We tend to travel to our next place every 3-4 weeks. Always happy to get to the next place but often a little sad leaving the place we are at.

 

[Meadbh]

We tend to travel to our next place every 3-4 weeks. Always happy to get to the next place but often a little sad leaving the place we are at.

So which one is your mailing address? Is there one that you call "home"?

 

[Danmar]

Different mailing addresses for different purposes. US address for all US banking, CC's, US items. Canadian mailing address is in Canmore. Have arranged as much as possible to be electronic. Home is where the heart is and our heart is where we are at that moment. Our friends/family never know where we are.

 

[Bestwifeever]

By the end of this year I anticipate the travel will have cost us 50 percent of our total expenses, a little less than half of the travel $$ for a trip to Japan. Next year should be less. Maybe.

At least most of our travel is optional (travel to our of town DS's home is mandatory for me), so if we need to cut it back, we will. And when it's not fun any more, we will stop.

 

[Bestwifeever]

I do look at it that way. Of course I enter travel expenses in my Travel category. But I realize that I would have been spending money on groceries, gas, etc at home if I were not traveling. For example, in 2016 I will be taking a 13 day repositioning cruise across the Atlantic. For less than the cost of a business class airfare, I will get transportation plus almost two weeks of living expenses. When I get to Europe I will be spending two weeks there, one of which will be at an upscale resort that I am exchanging time with. I will be able to prepare many of my own meals. And because many of my travel expenses will have been prepaid, I expect that my total spending that month may be lower than at home. Looked at like that, I can't afford not to travel. Thanks to ER, I have the time to do so.

This trip sounds amazing!

 

[ShortInSeattle]

We're making some changes to our budget as we prepare for semi-retirement, but the end result will be that travel is 15-25% of our budget depending on the year. Budget for things like groceries will travel with us, so even higher if you look at it that way.

SIS

 

[zesty]

About $2-3k per year, or 10% of my budget.

I am trying to convince myself to raise it because I really want to go to Europe next year.

 

[Moemg]

Just my must do trips to visit daughter , grandsons & mother cost me $4,000 add in a trip for us and we are close to $8,000 or more . That represents 10% of annual budget .

 

[Bamaman]

Bamaman, can I ask why you would not recommend a repo cruise for first-timers? Thanks.

Many people don't feel secure when out at sea. And many don't do well with motion. Going 5-7 days without seeing land wouldn't bother me one bit, but it might bother those that have never been on any cruise.

Heck, I've floated around the ocean 2 days (without propulsion) in 65 mph winds waiting for the Mississippi River to reopen.

I just think those taking a long cross-Atlantic cruise need to have taken a cruise before--so they don't have any surprises.

 

[Bamaman]

Showed Bamaman's post to DW, whose first ship experience was a westbound repositioning cruise Barcelona-Florida; she enjoyed it so much that we took a second one, some 4 weeks later, Civitavecchia-Florida.

Sounds like my wife. We've been home 1 week from our Baltic Cruise out of Copenhagen and she's not ready to stop traveling.

My wife and her girlfriend are going out of Tampa 11/1/2015 week--to Belize and Mexico.

She found a bargain and booked us on a 4/2016 Celebrity cruise out of Rome thru Greece to Turkey and back to Venice. Then we fly thru Berlin and back to London on the way home.

I gotta slow down sometime.

 

[Nemo2]

I gotta slow down sometime.

I'll (hopefully) be 73 a week from tomorrow, and DW will be 63 three weeks and a day after that........so we're ramping it up a bit now, since enforced immobility is only a heartbeat away.

 

[Independent]

For comparison, average annual travel expenses for a US, home-owning couples, both age 60+, in 2013 was $2,744.

That compares to total spending of $58,124, so about 5%.

Note that the average age for those couples is about 70.

 

[Gill]

In our first 10 years of retirement we were spending about $30,000 a year on travel, primarily rather lengthy cruises. Now in our 70s we are spending about $10,000 a year on travel but there is no surplus
because we are now spending about $20,000 a year on a country club.
Bruce


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[tmm99]

For comparison, average annual travel expenses for a US, home-owning couples, both age 60+, in 2013 was $2,744.



That compares to total spending of $58,124, so about 5%.



Note that the average age for those couples is about 70.

Can you share where you got this information from? I am not surprised with their travel expenses, but I am about their total yearly spending.


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[Ally]

We budgeted $8000 or about 10% of our income (pension and our SS) for US trips. Then if we decide to go on some bigger trips, we will fund that out of savings, which so far, we haven't touched. However, since we both retired from our stressful jobs, we are feeling much less the need to get away or escape. So far, we have only used about $3000 of or budget for this year.


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[Independent]

Can you share where you got this information from? I am not surprised with their travel expenses, but I am about their total yearly spending.

The data is from the Consumer Expenditure Survey.

Consumer Expenditure Survey

Scroll down to "Cross Tabulated Tables" and look for "Size of consumer unit by age of reference person".
Unfortunately, the online reports don't break out travel spending (food, for example, is included in "food away from home")

I downloaded the data and built my own report.

More detail here: http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/consumer-expenditures-survey-74306.html

 

[Christine]

YTD since September 2014 it's been 20% of my total budget. Travelling 24/7 in a RV. Not counting ordinary expenses like food and clothes.

 

[flyingaway]

Not retired yet. Currently budget 20-25% of after tax money for travel. So far this year, we have spent about $9,000 on travels to four overseas countries, including Canada, Mexico, Dominica Republic, and China. Already booked tickets for Spain and Italia in May 2016, and looking for tickets to Costs Rico in March 2016.

 

[DEC-1982]

Our travel budget (done mostly on a 2-year basis) is 14% of after-tax spending. It may be 22% one year and 6% the next year.

 

[NW-Bound]

We have no preset percentage or budget for any discretionary item. I only look at the total spending YTD or the past 12 months, and see if we still have extra.

For example, just from looking at Quicken, in the past 12 months we spent only $6.5K on travel, but $35K on other non-recurrent expenses. Conceivably, next year we have that much more to spend on travel if nothing else comes up. It works out OK too, because I have been still recovering from a health problem, and would not enjoy travel as much.

But I doubt that we will ever spend that much on travel. It's partly because we are frugal travelers, partly because too much travel will take the fun out of it.

 

[RobLJ]

15-20k per year (or about 15% of budget). What we don't spend one year, we probably will spend the next. That's about 50% more than we spend now, but some of it will be driving rather than air when neither of us is working.

 

[Cobra9777]

Our annual budget includes $10K for travel, which is enough for one 2-3 week international trip, and two smaller domestic trips, typically to visit family and friends. We've been spending well below this since I ER'd, in part because DW decided to continue working, and in part because we've been spending heavier than planned on other large one-shot expenses like home improvements. Those two discretionary categories are really managed as a single bucket. The $10K is ~11% of our $85-90K total spend, excluding income taxes.

 

[kaudrey]

We are still working; but since you didn't specify....travel is generally 8-10% of our total budget. In retirement, I am projecting it to be more like 25%, at least for the first 10 years. Traveling is a big priority for us in our planning.

 

[Danmar]

I am struck by the consistency of travel expense (as a percentage of total spend) despite wide variations in total spend. Seems like 10-15% is quite normal whatever the total spend is?

 

[athena53]

Our travel budget is insane but can be pulled back in lean years if necessary. This year was a bit crazy- we took a spectacular vacation to Iceland, drove to family weddings in Atlanta and Austin (which included hotel overnights on the road trips and bringing DS, DDIL and DGD as our guests on one, necessitating rental of an SUV to tote all the baby paraphernalia) and will also do a road trip to Myrtle Beach around Christmas to see my parents and go for a long weekend at a favorite B&B a few hours away next month. Oh, yeah- we just sprang for one of the tickets to get DS, DDIL and the baby to Myrtle Beach at Christmas, too.


YTD travel expenses exceed $16K- about equal to the combination of our mortgage and dental health insurance premiums YTD. Fortunately, our spending in other categories is minimal- cars are paid for, we spend almost nothing on clothing, etc. Travel is and always has been a big priority for us.