Travel budgets?

[Nemo2]

Travel is our thing now & we plan to continue when we retire either next summer or the one after.

I appreciate your first list--I am always looking to squeeze every penny out of every dollar we make. Not frugal as much as best value. (ie. Sometimes we might cruise an interior cabin; other times we may take a balcony because of perks thrown in)

You are my retirement travel mentor!

We, (my supervisor & I), are honored!

We are 'frugal', but that's perhaps mainly a reflection of having minimal 'wants', (one of the meals we still talk about, years later, was a 1€ Caldo verde lunch at a stand up bakery in Porto).

With accommodation we prefer to have our own bathroom, although for a duration of a night or two we have stayed at hostels.

Airbnb has, (Covid aside), become our go to site......rough rule of thumb, we choose not necessarily the most inexpensive offering but rather one of the lowest priced, (give or take a couple bucks/night), that we think, (usually successfully), that we'll be comfortable in.........we always read the reviews.

This often results in us temporarily 'living' in back alleys in older parts of town....we love it!

(I recall, on a stay in Paris, we e-mailed friends a link to a unit we'd chosen.....she came back and said she had found one much nicer......and it was......it was also about 10 times the cost! "Oh, I didn't look at the price", she said!)

So, no hotels, no restaurants, no tours, no guides......trains, buses (local & intercity); our most memorable experiences have been traveling with the hoi polloi...of which we are most definitely two of!

"Happy Trails"! (Next stop for us, Inshallah, will be Ukraine, parts of Poland and northern Romania.)

 

[Librarian]

We, (my supervisor & I), are honored!

We are 'frugal', but that's perhaps mainly a reflection of having minimal 'wants', (one of the meals we still talk about, years later, was a 1€ Caldo verde lunch at a stand up bakery in Porto).

With accommodation we prefer to have our own bathroom, although for a duration of a night or two we have stayed at hostels.

Airbnb has, (Covid aside), become our go to site......rough rule of thumb, we choose not necessarily the most inexpensive offering but rather one of the lowest priced, (give or take a couple bucks/night), that we think, (usually successfully), that we'll be comfortable in.........we always read the reviews.

This often results in us temporarily 'living' in back alleys in older parts of town....we love it!

(I recall, on a stay in Paris, we e-mailed friends a link to a unit we'd chosen.....she came back and said she had found one much nicer......and it was......it was also about 10 times the cost! "Oh, I didn't look at the price", she said!)

So, no hotels, no restaurants, no tours, no guides......trains, buses (local & intercity); our most memorable experiences have been traveling with the hoi polloi...of which we are most definitely two of!

"Happy Trails"! (Next stop for us, Inshallah, will be Ukraine, parts of Poland and northern Romania.)

I was looking at AirBNB for Barcelona this summer (our cancelled Med cruise for DD's college graduation). Found a great one--then determined it was on the 5th floor with no elevator...and this was the day before embarkation...and DM75 was going!
Found we could use our IHG anniversary night/points to get a nice hotel in the center of town. (I have been manipulating credit card bonuses for years as our 2 oldest did college visits & eventually went to college--and now live--out of state).

Safety is the biggest issue for accommodations; I do not think I can convince DH to share a bathroom with strangers...

We have cruised for years & haven't taken a cruise excursion since our first couple cruises, instead preferring to do my own research & planning (most places, anyway). I had been doing the same for our Med cruise. Researching is half the fun!

We do like restaurants but we r pretty cheap...bring breakfast bars, grab fast food. I went to France in HS--we bought many meals at stores that were DIVINE. Other parts of the world seem more conducive to that.

Loving this thread. I literally copied & pasted people's notations as incentive for our own future travel.

10 states left to hit in the US. (ND is gonna be a struggle to find a reason...)
Then my goal is nearly every country in the world (we will avoid those not safe ones...). DH would prefer to do Vegas & cruise the Caribbean (oh and Hawaii) forever...but he balked at cruising & Hawaii initially (WHO DOESN'T WANT TO GO TO HAWAII??!!) Yep, he loves them. So I've learned he just needs a shove...and he is always a good sport.

 

[Nemo2]

it was on the 5th floor with no elevator...and this was the day before embarkation...and DM75 was going!

75? A Spring chicken...I'll be 78 in two months, and we search out towers to climb in small towns.

Safety is the biggest issue for accommodations; I do not think I can convince DH to share a bathroom with strangers...

We try and avoid being in the bathrooms at the same time the others are.

We do like restaurants but we r pretty cheap...bring breakfast bars, grab fast food. I went to France in HS--we bought many meals at stores that were DIVINE. Other parts of the world seem more conducive to that.

First morning in Israel, 1982, noticed a woman at the breakfast buffet shoveling stuff into her purse, (boiled eggs, etc)....turned out it was common practice.

Then my goal is nearly every country in the world (we will avoid those not safe ones...).

Guess I shouldn't repeat my story about being detained at gunpoint in Iraq, or riding on the roof of a swaying Turkish truck going through the mountains at night, with one of my arms jammed under the ropes holding the load so I didn't slide off?

 

[Librarian]

75? A Spring chicken...I'll be 78 in two months, and we search out towers to climb in small towns.

Guess I shouldn't repeat my story about being detained at gunpoint in Iraq, or riding on the roof of a swaying Turkish truck going through the mountains at night, with one of my arms jammed under the ropes holding the load so I didn't slide off?

LOL--she wouldn't have minded the 5 flights; it was with LUGGAGE she was worried about (honestly we were wondering if there was a place on the ground floor we could leave it safely!!)
She's a pretty spry 75. She is an RN & was working until just a couple years ago!

Yeah, being detained at gunpoint is NOT on my bucket list!

 

[Nemo2]

Yeah, being detained at gunpoint is NOT on my bucket list!

It wasn't really on mine either.

 

[jcfradio]

We, (my supervisor & I), are honored!

We are 'frugal', but that's perhaps mainly a reflection of having minimal 'wants', (one of the meals we still talk about, years later, was a 1€ Caldo verde lunch at a stand up bakery in Porto).

With accommodation we prefer to have our own bathroom, although for a duration of a night or two we have stayed at hostels.

Airbnb has, (Covid aside), become our go to site......rough rule of thumb, we choose not necessarily the most inexpensive offering but rather one of the lowest priced, (give or take a couple bucks/night), that we think, (usually successfully), that we'll be comfortable in.........we always read the reviews.

This often results in us temporarily 'living' in back alleys in older parts of town....we love it!

(I recall, on a stay in Paris, we e-mailed friends a link to a unit we'd chosen.....she came back and said she had found one much nicer......and it was......it was also about 10 times the cost! "Oh, I didn't look at the price", she said!)

So, no hotels, no restaurants, no tours, no guides......trains, buses (local & intercity); our most memorable experiences have been traveling with the hoi polloi...of which we are most definitely two of!

"Happy Trails"! (Next stop for us, Inshallah, will be Ukraine, parts of Poland and northern Romania.)

+1. I travel in a similar style to you. We often go with friends or another couple and therefore get a 2 or 3 bedroom Air BnB, usually near the downtown areas to avoid the need for a car. We usually did public transit including intercity buses, but we will need to see how this approach will play out in a COVID world. When we do book hotels, it is usually what the local middle class folks would book in that area, so no big chain hotels or resorts. As an example, in Cajamarca Peru, I stayed in a hotel two blocks from the main square for $25 US per night. Not fancy, but comfortable and very handy for everything that we needed to see in town or in the Andean countryside.

For meals, we will usually eat one meal per day in a local restaurant (again not fancy, but it gives us a chance to test out the local cuisine) and then have another meal in our Air BnB. This leaves us money for tours and other extravagances.

This keeps travel costs to less than $150 CDN per day when I am in South America on my own and up to $350 to 400 per day in more expensive places in Europe including air fares, local travel and gifts when the two of us travel. So, we are able to keep a month long trip under $10 K CDN.

 

[Nemo2]

Safety is the biggest issue for accommodations; I do not think I can convince DH to share a bathroom with strangers...

Not a shared bathroom, but here's a link from before you joined:

https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f46/is-12-000-per-year-in-travel-enough-80701.html Post #18

 

[oldphd]

(ND is gonna be a struggle to find a reason...)

We've hit all 50 states and almost 50 National Parks.

Great memories of a month on the road that went from midwest to RMNP, Yellowstone, Glacier, and Teddy Roosevelt NPs, then back home (add in some national forests, state parks, etc.). I believe we drove about 4K miles. Aside from the NPs, we stopped in a few small towns and had good meals at Mom & Pop restaurants.

You could also add in some stops in SD. The western part of the state has some great mountain areas.

 

[Lagniappe]

My travel budget is $30K per year. I have yet to spend it.

2018: 10 weeks in Barcelona, 1 week Chicago; 1 week Cambridge UK; 1 week New Orleans. Prepaid lodging for 2019 Edinburgh trip. Total Spend $19880

2019: 1 week hiking Hadrians Wall; 1 month Paris; 1 month Edinburgh; 2 weeks Prague; 1 week Venice; 2 weeks London; 1 week New Orleans. Total Spend $13000

2020: 3 weeks Egypt (canceled/ refunded); 1 month Edinburgh (canceled with Airbnb credits; 1 month Buenos Aires (canceled/ refunded). Net Spend: $5500 (2021 Airbnb credit)

 

[corn18]

2016 - $35k for 35 day trip throughout Europe for my wife and daughter. I popped over for 10 days. I asked my wife to write a book on how to scrimp by on $1,000 a day in Europe.

2017 - $33k. 4 of us went to a private island in the Bahamas for 10 days.

2019 - $67k. 2 weeks in Africa for 2.

We are budgeting $25k a year for retirement.