Willing to share your travel budget?

[gerntz]

No budget, just trying to figure out how to pay for a $27K + airfaire, 7 person trip & cruise to AK in July. This is about 2x our typical, not budgeted, annual travel spending. Besides, I waited to retire so I didn't have to budget.

 

[Danmar]

Low six figures, not including travel between our homes.

 

[Alan]

No travel budget but over the 6 years of retirement we have spent between $20-$30k /year. Travel 5 to 7 months / year, mostly foreign travel.

 

[Nemo2]

Might be more interesting to also know how much of the budget the travel is. $10k travel on $100k planned annual household budget is much different than someone with $50k annual household budget.

Don't have all the numbers consolidated but here's a glimpse:

- Our expenditures for 2015 came out at $40,011 Canadian, including condo townhouse property tax, but not income taxes.

- Included in the 2015 figures, our upcoming repositioning cruise from St. Maarten - Barcelona, (except for 'mandatory gratuities'), our airfares to St. Maarten from Toronto and our return airfares from Porto, Portugal to Toronto. Also included are the bulk of our accommodation costs in Spain/Portugal (and half of our one night in St. Maarten) for our approximately four week trip.

- Also included is a $900 US deposit on our Fall repositioning cruise from Malaga-Miami.

(Our 2014 expenditures came to $43,358 Canadian and included total or partial payments for our two 2015 European vacations, each of which were 3-4 weeks in duration.)

 

[W2R]

$0 for me.

+1

No desire to travel, although I could easily afford it. BTDT

I would rather establish roots somewhere, because when it comes to having roots in a community I *haven't* BTDT quite yet, to my satisfaction.

By now I have lived in South Louisiana a couple of decades, though, and my roots here are starting to flourish which I love.

 

[aja8888]

No budget, but no real long trips in the last few years. DW has severe COPD and we need to be careful to be near medical facilities on any trips that are far from home. Last few trips long were to North Carolina to visit BIL and one trip to Wisconsin to visit SIL. Also went to a wedding in St. Louis last year.

Out of the country trips are not in the equation at this time.

Note to many posters here:

Take your trips/vacations while you are young and healthy as things that can limit your travel have a high probability in happening when you get older.

 

[Nemo2]

DW has severe COPD

Sorry to hear of your wife's condition - as we age we are inundated with news of illnesses & death.

Note to many posters here:

Take your trips/vacations while you are young and healthy as things that can limit your travel have a high probability in happening when you get older.

I'll be, (if I make it), 74 in September, DW will be 64 in October......your note is our mantra.

 

[hnzw_rui]

Note to many posters here:

Take your trips/vacations while you are young and healthy as things that can limit your travel have a high probability in happening when you get older.

Yeah. First six years living in the US, we never went on trips/vacations at all. After seeing a great aunt wheelchair bound due to a stroke, we've loosened the purse strings a lot when it comes to vacations at the expense of reaching FI more quickly.

Dad went to the Philippines last year and got sick there so we were faced with a PHP 4M medical bill (~USD 80K). Thank goodness they had good insurance so even though it took months, we were eventually reimbursed the full amount. Once they're off company insurance and are on Medicare, I think mom is going to limit their trips to within the US only.

 

[GravitySucks]

Budget is $12,000 a year for one, but this is the most fluid part of my budget. If other expenses go up it goes down. If things are going well it goes up.

 

[Alan]

Out of the country trips are not in the equation at this time.

Note to many posters here:

Take your trips/vacations while you are young and healthy as things that can limit your travel have a high probability in happening when you get older.

Couldn't agree more.

6 weeks before our 5 month mostly Canadian trip this year I found myself in the ER with a heart condition, A-Fib as it turned out. We are so pleased to have done as much traveling as we have in this 6 years of retirement.

 

[brett]

That is exactly why we are travelling 4-6 months each year. We can do it now, who knows what tomorrow will bring.

 

[Sarah in SC]

We don't have a budget, really. Mostly we think of something we really want to do, and then figure out how to pay for it.

And follow that wonderful advice to travel while we are comparatively young, in case we can't do some of this stuff when we are older.

 

[braumeister]

Also moving to Florida so cruising will be less costly.

I have a friend who lives in southern Florida. He and his wife love cruising and they take an incredible (to me) number of them every year. He told me his rule of thumb is that a cruise shouldn't cost much more than $100/day per person, and he has no trouble finding such great deals.

 

[Nemo2]

....a cruise shouldn't cost much more than $100/day per person, and he has no trouble finding such great deals.

Our upcoming 12 day trip St. Maarten - Barcelona, oceanview cabin, base price & taxes, but not including 'mandatory gratuities', works out to $29.13 US, p.p. per day. (It'll be our third time on this ship and we love it.)

 

[Teacher Terry]

We retired 4 year ago at 53 & 58 and have been vacationing more because of the same reason others mentioned. Our budget has ranged from $5000-14,000 year. Last year we spent $6000 on a month RV trip and $8000 on a 3 week trip and 2 weeks of it were a cruise. This August we will go on a Alaskan 10 day cruise.

 

[audreyh1]

We have about $20K built into our regular annual budget. Last year we managed to spend about that much on a 4 week Europe trip.

We have about four times that amount set aside as a special travel splurge fund, and we need to start tapping into that soon!

 

[Gone4Good]

We don't have a specific travel budget but last year travel related spending accounted for 81% of total spending.

 

[NW-Bound]

I wonder how perpetual travelers count their travel expenses.

Surely, they pay for hotel rooms, but they have no house maintenance, RE taxes, utility bills, nor the dead money in the house value which can be used to invest to generate income. They also have no cars. What else do I miss?

 

[audreyh1]

When we were living in our RV, constantly on the road, we did not count travel expenses separately. When we resumed living in a house, we also resumed our travel budget.

 

[Gone4Good]

I wonder how perpetual travelers count their travel expenses.

Surely, they pay for hotel rooms, but they have no house maintenance, RE taxes, utility bills, nor the dead money in the house value which can be used to invest to generate income. They also have no cars. What else do I miss?

Hotels and apartment rental, transportation (cabs, car rental, trains, planes, buses, boats), all food, and admissions are stuff I count as "Travel Expenses."

Our next largest expense is Health Insurance & health care; then donations & gifts; clothing and misc stuff; personal care; "utilities" which is mostly SIM cards and subscriptions to stuff like Skype, a VPN, etc; mail forwarding; and finally "entertainment" which is mostly our Netflix subscription and other purchased videos.

 

[NW-Bound]

I never count food costs when I travel, because I have to eat regardless. It is true that a meal at home is usually cheaper, but still. Some other incidental things are also not counted, such as clothes or gifts bought for relatives. However, these are insignificant. I do count hotel costs, RV campground fees, car rental, airfare, etc...

Strictly I count expenses that I would not incur if I stay at home. And my home expenses do not stop when I travel. So, travel expenses are extraneous luxury items that I can cut during economic hard times. On the other hand, if I lived in my RV full-time, it's harder to see what is travel and what is just living costs.

 

[Gone4Good]

I never count food costs when I travel, because I have to eat regardless. It is true that a meal at home is usually cheaper, but still. Some other incidental things are also not counted, such as clothes or gifts bought for relatives. However, these are insignificant. I do count hotel costs, RV campground fees, car rental, airfare, etc...

Strictly I count expenses that I would not incur if I stay at home. And my home expenses do not stop when I travel. So, travel expenses are extraneous luxury items that I can cut during economic hard times. On the other hand, if I lived in my RV full-time, it's harder to see what is travel and what is just living costs.

It's helpful to differentiate between food costs "on the road" and those incurred at home when trying to forecast a budget for either living on the road or living at home. Before we started traveling full-time I wanted some idea what we'd spend on food. My weekly grocery budget where I used coupons and knew which stores had the best prices wasn't a good guide. My travel food spending, though, was a better approximation.

Edit to add: I also tag all my expenses by country, which isn't something ordinary people do.

 

[NW-Bound]

It's helpful to differentiate between food costs "on the road" and those incurred at home when trying to forecast a budget for either living on the road or living at home. Before we started traveling full-time I wanted some idea what we'd spend on food. My weekly grocery budget where I used coupons and knew which stores had the best prices wasn't a good guide. My travel food spending, though, was a better approximation.

Absolutely true. My travel is just not long enough for the difference to matter.

I do spend more than 2 months at a time with the RV, but we do eat just like at home (finding a place to eat twice a day is a chore). Fly-and-drive trips are usually only 2 weeks.

 

[audreyh1]

I count dining while traveling as a travel expense, because we are typically eating all meals out, and it's a lot more expensive, in general, than eating at home. It helps for future planning.

 

[Meadbh]

For simplicity, I include the cost of eating while traveling in Travel. Some of my trips involve self catering accommodation where I can prepare my own meals. Depending where I am, fresh produce may be cheaper than at home. While I am away from home, I am not spending anything on Groceries. It all works out in the end.