Willing to share your travel budget?

I don't count food while traveling as we eat pretty much the same as we do when at home. We rent places for weeks at a time so we can mostly prepare the majority of our own meals and we eat out as frequently at home as we do on our long trips.

Our utility bills at home drop dramatically while we are away as I have the AC set much higher than if we were home, plus the immersion heater (hot water) is turned off.

I just keep it simple and add up all the travel and accommodation costs for a
vacation, and I don't track food, meals out etc, and don't subtract savings like lower utilities costs and gym membership savings that I cancel prior to each long trip. I also downgrade our home internet speed to the lowest possible as I only need internet access at home to monitor the thermostat, web camera and DVR.
 
6,700 USD or 27% of annual spending per typical year. That cost is everything between leaving home to returning plus all the prepaid expenses. I travel alone. No budget. As I have for decades, I track what I've spent, then spend accordingly.

Spending will increase significantly beginning this year. Enjoying it while I can is a prime motivator. Starting SS in 2016 means more time in higher cost countries. Finally, last year I flew business class for the first time. So, as long as I can afford it, all the long legs of future trips will be in biz class. I'm sure my heirs will understand.
 
Gone4Good said:
Edit to add: I also tag all my expenses by country, which isn't something ordinary people do.
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I do too. Not coincidentally, I've rarely been considered ordinary. Did I mention I like spreadsheets?

Seriously, the main reason is so I can compare my pre-trip estimates to actual spending. The value of which is... more fun with spreadsheets.
 
NW-Bound said:
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?
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Health & insurance mostly.

Most of the things you list also don't apply to inner-city renters (some rent including utilities, as I did the past 7 years).

PT's just count expenses in the same categories as everyone else. Transportation, housing, communications, health, food ...

At least those that I've heard of and met. So the only thing they do differently is not treat "travel" as a special occasion or category. Just like people who never travel I guess.
 
Totoro said:
So the only thing they do differently is not treat "travel" as a special occasion or category.
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+1

Whereas a vacationer puts their normal day-to-day life on hold to go somewhere else, we’ve simply incorporated the "somewhere else" into our normal day-to-day activities. :)
 
Nemo2 said:
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.)
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WOW, who is this with:confused:

I eat more than that a day, so it would be worth it IMO....
 
Texas Proud said:
WOW, who is this with:confused:

I eat more than that a day, so it would be worth it IMO....
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French line, English widely spoken, (we're basically unilingual apart, apart from some appalling French on my part)........video mentions 100% all inclusive, but alcohol, on this upcoming voyage, I believe, is extra.....although there are rumors to the contrary.....we don't drink, so it's immaterial to us.
 
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W2R said:
+1

No desire to travel, although I could easily afford it...
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+1
10% of budget allocated to travel and having a hard time spending it. Sometimes I think that budget item is there because I feel "I have to" because every retiree is supposed to just love to travel. Typically don't like international travel until I get there. Lately come to realize there aren't a whole lot of places I want to visit. Some people like external adventures; I like adventures of the mind. It's amazing how many books I've read since I retired.

We'll see. Maybe after a few years I'll just get that RV and be done with the whole subject.
 
Not budgeted per se, but I've been willing to spend quite a lot annually because I still have consulting income coming in. Since becoming semi-retired in early 2013, I've spent between $10,000 and $35,000 a year on travel for one person, the great majority international.
 
Options said:
10% of budget allocated to travel and having a hard time spending it. Sometimes I think that budget item is there because I feel "I have to" because every retiree is supposed to just love to travel.
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I completely understand.

One of the aspects of retirement that I just love, is not having other people deciding what I should do with my precious time. That includes travel. It's nice that after being dragged around the world for most of my childhood, and then having to travel for work later on, finally I am the one who gets to decide how much I travel. :D
 
NW-Bound said:
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.
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This is generally our approach as well. We allocate the expense of travelling to and from our various homes as an expense of those homes. If an expense is incurred only because of that home, it gets allocated to that home. Any expense that transcends a specific location, eg cell phones, clothing, health care, general travel,etc gets allocated to the general section of the budget. This way if we ever dispose of a property we know what the expense impact would be. It also facilitates periodic reviews of whether a particular home is "worth" the expense.
 
One week in January in China, one week in March in Costa Rica, and two weeks in Barcelona and Venice in May for the first half of 2016. We will probably have two more trips in the second half of 2016. Travel spending is likely to be $10K ~ $20K per year in retirement, but we would like to spend more in the next few years. We never had any serious budget for anything, we just spend what we want and save the remaining, under the condition LBYM.
 
When we travel in our RV we don't count food because I cook just like at home except for eating out 1x/week. WE have found that if you want to stay somewhere for a month the RV sites are much cheaper then if you have to pay the daily rate. HOwever, last year we wanted to be on the move for a month so paid the higher cost but most people we met did the monthly thing. With 4 dogs and 2 people in a 27 ft RV I did not want to be gone longer then a month. I am actually surprised at the number of people that live in them full-time.
 
My best guess is that we spend $25K on travel. So that probably means it is a little more than that. Living expenses and travel expenses can be a blurred line at times.

As for day to day expenses...if I had my druthers we would pack up the rental condo into a container and travel independently for another seven months or even better 12 months.

It is so liberating to leave all of your monthly expenses behind (and they really do add up) and just deal with travel and travel expenses. Alas, DW is tied to her friends, our daughter, and grandchild.
 
I could never live in one-even if it was bigger. My hubby would like to go for 3 months at a time but I need my sanity. HIm & the dogs probably wouldn't survive the trip:))
 
audreyh1 said:
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.
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To elaborate - when living and traveling in our RV we were grocery shopping, cooking at home, etc., just like when we lived in a house. So the "travel budget" disappeared. Camping, motorhome:maintenance and fuel:motorhome were new items in our budget, however.

When we bought a new house we resumed our travel budget because now we had items in our travel category like car rental, airfare, hotel lodging resume. Things we didn't spend on when we were living in the RV.
 
W2R said:
... One of the aspects of retirement that I just love, is not having other people deciding what I should do with my precious time. That includes travel. It's nice that after being dragged around the world for most of my childhood, and then having to travel for work later on, finally I am the one who gets to decide how much I travel. :D
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Not just how much, but also where to.

Our business travel rarely took us to where we wanted to visit. A lot of times, it was just the same places, the same plants, and staying in the same motels. Who would want that?

Teacher Terry said:
I could never live in one-even if it was bigger. My hubby would like to go for 3 months at a time but I need my sanity. HIm & the dogs probably wouldn't survive the trip:))
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Yes, I like RV travel, and have gone for longer than 2 months in a 26' class C. No pets though. But I would not want to live full-time even in a big diesel pusher. I am a homebody when I do not travel, and need room for my "stuff". I love my 2 homes.

However, if the market ever crashes and does not come back and the world ends up in turmoil, living in a small RV is still very much superior to living under a bridge.

By the way, because the RV is for me a means to travel, not for full-time living, I am quite happy with a smaller class C. I may even downsize to a B for better mobility.
 
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NW-Bound said:
Our business travel rarely took us to where we wanted to visit.
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I had to laugh when I read that. My business travel frequently took me to places I thought desirable, but I was never able to take extra days to explore them. So now I sometimes find myself going back to those cities just because they're still new and interesting to me. It's also fascinating to see the changes since my first visits long ago.
 
Occasionally, I went to a convention conference center in places like SF or DC, but these are the places that I had visited multiple times earlier for leisure. Most of the times, as our work was project oriented, we got to "enjoy" multiple return trips to places like Clearwater, FL, Irvine, CA, or Armonk, NY, or Almaden, CA. I do not mind going to any place once, but half a dozen trips to the same place? I guess a traveling salesman would get to go to more interesting places than we did.

I now recall in the early 80s, I got to spend 2 weeks in Montreal for a project. That was the first time I went there, and my wife even arranged to spend 1 week there with me. It was OK, but as I was working it was nothing like spending 1 week of vacation. We have since been back to Montreal 3 more times.
 
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braumeister said:
I had to laugh when I read that. My business travel frequently took me to places I thought desirable, but I was never able to take extra days to explore them. So now I sometimes find myself going back to those cities just because they're still new and interesting to me. It's also fascinating to see the changes since my first visits long ago.
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Yeah, business travel <> leisure travel.

My routine business trip . . .

- Wake up at 4:30 AM to get to the airport for the first flight of the day to, say, Boston.
- Arrive in Boston and taxi immediately to a breakfast meeting.
- Taxi to two more meetings at different offices until it was time for . . .
- A lunch meeting.
- 2 or 3 more afternoon meetings before I finally get to the hotel, drop my bags, take a shower and get ready for . . .
- Dinner with clients
- Entertain clients until they were ready to go home to their families (um, very late)
- Day 2 repeat the same schedule, except I get a few more hours of sleep because I don't have to go to the airport
- Day 3, wake up early to catch first flight back to NY and taxi immediately to the office.

Business travel blows. Leisure travel is awesome.
 
Nemo2 said:
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.)
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Can you share when and which cruise line? Is this tied to any program such as casino club?
 
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bobandsherry said:
Can you share when and which cruise line? Is this tied to any program such as casino club?
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See post #57 upthread.......Croisières de France sails from St. Maarten March 28/16.....not tied to any 'programs' that I'm aware of (never heard of Casino Club)......we booked our three trips through Jean-Luc at VTG, it's trip #12105 on their site and currently appears as 'Sold Out', but that may (or not) be 100%.
 
First year of retirement - our budget is $20-25k but certainly travel is one area we would reduce if expenses go up or assets go down.

2016 Plan - 8 days in Costa Rica with kids (Jan), 2 weeks in Western US National Parks (May), 1 week at inlaws cabin in MI (July), 1 week in Siesta Key (Oct) and small trips like DW to Phoenix w/ girlfriends, NYC with sisters and my golf trip with guys in August.

2017 - 1 week Carib cruise + 1 week island (Feb), 10-14 day driving trip to Carolina's to visit friends (May), 2 weeks in Italy (Sep/Oct) + the assorted long weekend trips.

Kind of like planning trips :)
 
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