I’ve mentioned on several occasions that I would like to spend my retirement years traveling.  I think that I’ve established a comfortable standard for travel plans, as I look back on this first year.  I found that I’m happiest when I’m home 80% of the time and on-the-road 20% of the time.  This first year I found myself traveling nearly 22% of the time, and it seemed like I was gone a lot. To clarify, being “home” means sleeping in your own bed, so day trips, outings, lunches, and events can keep you very active each day when you’re not traveling.

Traveling can be very expensive.  For my wife and I, a night away from home averages about $1000 when we take into account airfare, airport parking, hotel, ground transportation, tips, dining, souvenirs, admission tickets, pet care, etc.  This, of course, is on top of mortgage, car payments, utilities, home & auto insurance, HOA costs, and taxes associated with simply spending a night at home.  I realize that many retirees are fortunate to have paid-off their mortgages and cars, but that is not the case with us.  When we travel, we’re also paying for a home that occupies a pet sitter and her daily fee.  Without the pet costs, it still probably costs us $125 a day when we’re away.  Being gone for 80 days this past year could have amounted to at least a $90,000 expense, but there were some discounts.

If we plan to travel for 20 years, under the 80/20 rule, it would cost as much as 1.8 million dollars net.  Fortunately, my wife wants to work for 5 more years, and in that time I’ll be able to continue to accompany her on business trips.  This makes some of our nights away from home more affordable, since her airfare, parking, hotel, ground transportation, and meals are business expenses.  We then pay my airfare, meal costs, and any hotel room extensions.  Approximately 10 of our 80 nights on the road this year were paid for in this manner, saving about $800 a night or $8,000.  Companion airfares, Marriott Rewards points, and staying with friends/family also reduce our nightly travel costs, so realistically it probably cost us $70,000 to travel in 2017.   Fortunately, there are cheaper ways to see the world.

When my wife finally joins me in retirement, we’ll be able to stay away from home for longer stretches, and this will reduce the cost per night.  Right now our average stay is about 5 days, and airfare is a big chunk of the expense on these short junkets.  In the future, we’ll be able to stay longer, making airfare relatively more affordable, in addition to taking advantage of resort rentals rather than more costly hotels.  This is why we took advantage of the Marriott Vacation Club that will give us three to four weeks use of vacation condos every year with the sole cost of maintenance.  We’ve even talked of selling our home, and renting for a year in Europe, allowing us affordable access to the countries we’d like to visit.   At this stage, it’s all a dream – and all it takes is a lot of money!