Poll: Travel is what % of your ER budget?

[Focus]

There are a couple of active threads right now about what folks are spending on trips annually. Since the numbers vary so widely, I wonder if it would be useful to think in terms of what percentage of our total ER budgets we're allocating to travel. Thus this poll...

[CoolChange]

My 20% vote includes not only travel but also dining out when not traveling.

While I do actually carry these as separate line items, these seem to be closely related for me. I find myself going out more when I have not traveled for a time; and, the converse if even more true: I do not even want to go out for a while after eating a significant number of meals out while traveling.

Conveniently, these two line items on my working budget sum to 20%.

[Focus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CoolChange My 20% vote includes not only travel but also dining out when not traveling. While I do actually carry these as separate line items, these seem to be closely related for me. I find myself going out more when I have not traveled for a time; and, the converse if even more true: I do not even want to go out for a while after eating a significant number of meals out while traveling.

Interesting you should bring this up. I'm a bit torn right now between more thoroughly exploring my own city (a major tourist destination) -- including its restaurants -- or planning to venture out on trips. No reason why I couldn't do a bit of both, of course.

[FIREd]

For us, travel has always been less than 10% of our budget. We already go to Europe at least once a year to visit family and friends, so we prefer to stay close to home the rest of the time. Our trips to Europe are pretty cheap - the only additional expenses compared to staying home are airfare and pet sitting.

[braumeister]

I chose 30% as closest. The category is 27% of our total budget, but also includes the cost of all our hobbies.
Since travel and hobbies are purely discretionary expenses, I feel comfortable combining them into one category for tracking purposes.

[truenorth418]

I am budgeting 38% for travel in my 2015 budget.


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[W2R]

There wasn't a category for "0%" so I went with "10% or less".

I do have extra that I suppose I could spend on leisurely travel if we decided we want to do that. We just haven't wanted to do that in our first five years of retirement. We talked about it but just never got around to it.

So far, our only travel has been a $402 hurricane evacuation to Alabama but that was in the category of hurricane/emergency spending, not the category of pleasure travel. (I know, I know, WHO wouldn't choose Eutaw, Alabama for a dream destination? )

[Walt34]

Very much like W2R we spend almost nothing on travel. It just happens to be very low on the priority list.

[Meadbh]

The percentage will vary, not only with travel preferences, but with other costs. For example, FIREd has a relatively low percentage allocated to travel, but IIRC his housing costs are high.

[FIREd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meadbh The percentage will vary, not only with travel preferences, but with other costs. For example, FIREd has a relatively low percentage allocated to travel, but IIRC his housing costs are high.

True. To clarify, we usually spend less than $5K a year on travel because it is just not very high on our priority list. So, even with our otherwise very generous annual budget, it is still quite low compared to many people here.

[nuke_diver]

Planned budget is 20%. Actual will probably be like it is now (pre retirement) which means there won't be a lot of travel for a long period of time unless we can bring the dog so I suspect that my estimate will be wrong for the first 5+years. There may be some occasional spikes but I think in general there won't be trips to Aus/NZ etc flying 1st class for a while

[rbmrtn]

I'm in the 0% group. No desire for travel, I rank it on par with a root canal. I see peoples travel budgets that are more than my total annual expenses.

[Alan]

Currently we spend over 50% on travel, but that was always the plan for the first few years. It will reduce a lot in the coming years as the desire and energy to do world travel reduces. This year (on which I answered the poll) we are experiencing 3 seasons in 4 countries in 2 hemispheres over a 5 month vacation.

[donheff]

I don't carefully track it so I guessed 20%. That is 20% of total spend including taxes, HI, etc. It doesn't include eating out when home (DW and I eat out for lunch ~ 3 times a week in the middle of bike rides and eat out or order out dinner ~2 times). And it doesn't include expenses associated with our weekend home. When we sell our weekend home the travel expenditure will go up at least 5%, maybe 10%.

[scrabbler1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walt34 Very much like W2R we spend almost nothing on travel. It just happens to be very low on the priority list.

I spend next to nothing on anything related to travel, too. I dont' really like to travel any more.

My 2-week trip to Kentucky back in the summer was an ordeal, especially on Amtrak. But it didn't cost me much of anything. My ladyfriend paid for my train and bus far but I paid for most of my meals and the rental car, costing me about $150. Next month, I will be drivng to Massachussetts with my ladyfriend and my dad for Thanksgiving to stay with my brother and his family. It will be in my dad's car (bigger than mine). He pays for the gas and tolls, I pay for the meals and do all the driving (he is 83-years old). The meals will cost me about $70. Together, that will be about 1% of my annual budget, chump change.

[Live And Learn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walt34 Very much like W2R we spend almost nothing on travel. It just happens to be very low on the priority list.

DH and I are still working but travel is low interest for us. We've been on 2 vacations in the past 5 years - 4 days at Disney and a 7 day cruise. Both were fun but we both found ourselves saying "I can't wait to get home". I have a $5k travel budget for ER but I doubt we'll actually spent it. Just nice to know its budgeted if we change our minds about travel.

[jimnjana]

we spend 10-12k per year on travel lately. This year will likely be somewhat less. DW just mentioned to me about downsizing in a few years so that we can travel more....

[haha]

Most of my travel spending in recent years has been family, so not really expensive. While working, I traveled to get away from the scene of work.

I think that some part of travel budget is spent to get away from boring home areas or to give relationships a boost. There are obviously nicer cities than Seattle in many European countries. But not much nicer, and here I know what's up and there I don't, so unless it were free I am ordinarily not very interested. I see plenty travelers from everywhere a very short walk from my home. They don't seem to be having any more fun than I am. Often middle-aged, clean looking couples will ask me directions. I usually know the route, but generally if I have seen whatever it is they are going to, it is only because I have guided some relative there.

My relationship doesn't get stale, because it is not overworked. Anyway, if it did, lots of relief for me or her right here in Rain City.

Ha

[Walt34]

When we do travel it's local and short. A while back we went on a two day bus tour of the southern part of WV on one of the Coal Country Tours and learned a lot about the history of coal mining, unions (started in the coal mines) and how coal companies treated employees (they put Orwell's 1984 to shame). Pretty interesting stuff and I wouldn't mind going on a longer version for say four days but that's about my limit.

When I was working I traveled for training/teaching about three times a year and that was more than enough. During that time the airlines and TSA successfully killed any remaining slight interest in travel.

[rodi]

It depends on the year. Just under 10% on most years - but every 4th or 5th year we do a "big" trip - and it's just over 20%.

I have a few "big" trips separately funded (a chunk of money set aside from my retirement nest egg). For this calculation - I added the big-trip money to my annual budget as the divisor, and the big-trip money amount as the numerator. eg: (big trip $)/(annual budget + big trip $).