How do you think about budgeting for retirement travel? If you're already retired, have there been any surprises in this area? We'd love to hear from you.

@ianwhittaker3041

5 ай бұрын

Hi gents, love your videos and this one in particular was great! We're at a similar age to you both and my wife and I have similar travel plans for when we Fire in a year or two, so it's very good timing. Can I ask what sort of annual budget you both have for FIRE please, eg which includes travel? It doesn't need to be exact but wondered if you were $40k, $50k, $60k, $70k or higher bracket for your annual spend? Thank you both and great work! Cheers, Ian

In our first three years of FI we’ve hiked the Camino Frances, Camino Portuguese, Via Podiensis, the GR5 and will do half the Via Francigena next year. Two weeks into your Camino Frances, a lightbulb will likely come on that one needs very little to travel and the budget will work out… something I did not anticipate from the warm armchair of preplanning.

@wulfster1234

6 ай бұрын

Sounds amazing...

@TwoSidesOfFI

6 ай бұрын

Awesome! I'm super jealous + can't wait to do it myself. I've really had the urge to do the CF solo sooner but my wife is rather keen on us doing it together... -Jason

Great episode guys. As a guy in my early 60's (as well as my wife) we do a fair amount of hiking. We just came back from a 3 week trip to Argentina. We put in a many miles of mountain hiking. With good health, i am planning on an active lifestyle as long as possible. You both just turned 50, so you are young and have several decades for active trips. Keep up the good work.

My husband and I FIRE'd in 2021 and moved to Porto, Portugal from Seattle. We have approx. 25% of our monthly budget allocated to travel back to US (for visiting family, including elderly parents if the need arises) and other destinations. Returning to Seattle to visit family/friends for 1-2 months per year becomes expensive if you want to do all the things--the dining out, the hiking trips/national parks, rental car, medical and liability insurance (Omg, this is expensive! We paid 960 Euros for 2 months for two of us, aged 47 and 55, FYI). We priced out the trip in detail in a spreadsheet beforehand, trying to overestimate in most categories. We ended up spending less than we thought without feeling deprived at all. We didn't factor in travel rewards and we ended up enjoying eating at home more than we thought we would. The experience taught us that we can plan as much as possible beforehand but still have doubts. We didn't know how it would actually feel until we took the trip. If we had felt constrained on the trip, we would have had to tweak the budget categories or adjust our expectations/desires to align more with reality. I think we had to have faith in the process and trust ourselves that both strategies are do-able if necessary. Bottom line, we will find a way! If we hadn't developed that trust in ourselves, the FOMO would have kept us working far longer than necessary and probably an anxiety-filled retirement. Finally, FWIW personally, I'm finding some Stoicism principles helpful in this season--specifically: taking a broad perspective to be more grounded in reality and also being aware that I ultimately have control of my own desires and levels of FOMO. I'll share a bit just in case this helps anyone else. The reality is, when I compare our early retirement to others, there will always be those who have much larger budgets who can have luxury experiences more often than we ever will. Acceptance of this reality is actually comforting and takes away some of the anxiety and FOMO. I remind myself these feelings are widely shared by many others--they're not unique to me. I have peace when I accept that I am ultimately in control over whether I will be content with our budget/lifestyle or whether I will always crave more. This helps us prioritize the experiences that are in alignment with the values most important to us and not to compare ourselves to others to the point that the dissatisfaction creeps in.

@jessiquilla1

4 ай бұрын

Such an interesting perspective and congrats on reaching FIRE! It’s great to hear your story about FIREing and how you visit family, the insurance costs sounds crazy but glad you are able to make it work for even less than expected! My husband and I are looking to FIRE as well in about 2 years and use geo arbitrage to keep costs low, also visiting the US about 2 months a year to see family. For now I don’t think we’ll permanently move to another country but more so do slow travel by region for 4-5 months at a time. Do you have any other surprises or insights you could share about your experience that might help us? How is cost of living in Portugal?

@drdanakendall

4 ай бұрын

@@jessiquilla1 My apologies for the delay in responding. It sounds like you're on the brink of a fabulous adventure! Slow travel is a great option, and there are really helpful FB groups and communities for that. I guess the biggest surprise for us was the post-covid world that we find ourselves in where prices on almost everything have increased everywhere, including here in Portugal. When we were planning to move here prior to covid, Portugal was very affordable; and there was a great tax incentive for immigrants. Now, that tax incentive for new arrivals is gone (those already here are grandfathered in), and an anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise here. So many Americans and are coming over for a better quality of life, but my anecdotal observation is that many are struggling to learn the language and integrate into the new culture. They and wealthier immigrants from other places are also being blamed for rising real estate prices. I believe this is why there was political pressure to end the tax incentive (called NHR). My perspective is that it's not that simple, but the suffering of many locals is real. And their patience may be wearing thin with Americans who are not prioritizing communicating in Portuguese and absolutely committed to spending the time and resources it takes to not be a burden on the locals when it comes to the language. Honestly, this is something we didn't anticipate fully beforehand--that learning the language must be treated as a part-time job in terms of effort required. We cannot fully control how we are perceived, but effort expending on language learning is one of the few things in our control. American expats often spend much more time talking about (and making KZread videos about) how great the prices are here compared to the US and how great the wine tastes than they spend learning the language. Another thing we didn't anticipate is how much Air B&B would take such a nosedive in terms of quality and do-ability for extended stays in the US and elsewhere. The horror stories, the cleaning fees/requirements, and also the prices have gone out of sight. The locals in many places despise these short term rentals because they perceive them as taking valuable space that local people need to live near their jobs and of course inflating real estate prices overall. We are planning to stay with friends and family and mostly use travel rewards and points to do hotels as long as we can. Travel hacking is a bit more difficult when you live abroad, so we will do our best. (US banks are just ridiculous in how they treat Americans abroad). So, to wrap up, the post covid world looks a bit different from when we made our decision to FIRE here in Portugal. We are still glad we did so because the healthcare is much more reasonable and better quality here, in our experience so far, compared to the US. Until we reach Medicare age, healthcare was just too scary in the US for us to handle. Even with great coverage and ridiculous premiums and copays, you are many times in a complete fight with the insurance companies who deny claims as a matter of practice. They use AI to do it--perhaps you've seen those headlines of late. They will put you through so much hassle. Also, we feel much safer here because guns aren't a thing. Those reasons alone are enough for us to be thankful we don't live full time in the US and give us motivation to work hard to integrate as much as we can here. We love Portugal in many ways and plan to become citizens eventually and then the rest of the EU will be open to us as far as a new home base in the future. Hope this info. has been helpful. Best of luck with all your future plans! ☺

@damansarajaya88

Ай бұрын

Wow, incredible insights. Thanks for sharing. Hello from Malaysia. Asia would be an interesting place for long term stay as well particularly South East Asia you should consider. All the best. Cheers.

I budgeted/planned for luxury cruises, business class flights, long slow foreign stays. The nice thing about it is if we need that money for something else that fits needs instead of wants then we can always scale back the vacations either in scope or frequency. Just retired and first big trip is next March, will have several small trips before that. I retired at 55 so at the edge case of FIRE but sitting very comfortable.

@TwoSidesOfFI

17 күн бұрын

Great! Best wishes to you

This is a very relevant topic for me . Recently retired early i found my wife has less urgency around long travel than previously discussed. In our situation i am 9 years older than my wife. I feel this is a significant driver of her lack of urgency. I see my “ go go” years quickly fading while she feels there is plenty of time. I highly recommend to anyone planning early retirement to make sure you and your significant other are aligned as to expectations in the first 5-10 years of retirement . We are working through it but i learned a lesson in that i should have gained better clarity on this topic before taking the leap

American Expat in Asia (25yrs) semi-retired in Tokyo for the past 7yrs. SE Asia is hyper social generally friendly with plenty to do, relatively gentrified at this point. Social isolation is a relative non-issue. Not as cheap as decades past but $1000mo. will get you a luxury condo in Bangkok. Home exchange/Airbnb are rife with issues.

I really enjoyed this discussion, and the concept of doing the more physically demanding trips earlier on did get me thinking. Thank you for putting together this show--I look forward to each and every episode. As far as budget goes, my husband and I have found that we can spread our travel dollars further if we are willing to employ a few strategies-- statying in youth hostels, alternating nice meals with streeet food or just grabbing a cheap sandwich, economy flights, using local public transportation, traveling off season, credit card points, etc... I realize that the idea of travel is different for some people and that many would not enjoy a budget trip, but it works for us. Another concept we apply is making sure not to overlook great experiences (bucket list items?) that are closer by--for example, a hot air balloon ride or zip lining. Keep up the good work!

@TwoSidesOfFI

5 ай бұрын

🙏

I'm currently sitting by a pool at a hotel in Panama City. Panama with my girlfriend. This is our second trip to Panama, checking it out at a warm weather snow bird destination for future years. I just retired in August. She will work a couple more years. Living in Wisconsin, our winters can be long and difficult. We envision spending 3 to 6 months in a place like this, and budget for it in our travel bucket.

I'm catching up on episodes after like a year of not checking in. All I can say is... ...RELEASE THE PHOTOS!!!

Thanks for the discussion. For me, I've built everything into our monthly living expenses budget so that we can accumulate and build $$ for things like travel, paying for weddings, gifts, roof replacement, etc. We then push these $s to CDs or HYS to allow it to continue to grow. For travel we are planning alternating domestic and international and as you all mentioned lower cost international destinations first which will allow our "travel pot" to continue to grow. One thing we've been looking into is taking repositioning cruises for one of the legs of the trips to/from Europe or Asia. Good luck with your journeys and look forward to hear about them.

The conflict between living your best life (traveling long term) and aging parents back home is huge. I have four parents (due to divorce) with three still alive, so it’s even worse for me. I just have to go live my own life though.

Travel is my #1 goal for early retirement, while I'm healthy enough to do it! Thanks for covering this topic.

You guys should do Philippines vacation. Very cheap places.

Just retired this year - looking forward to using our more flexible time to travel more and longer. There are still budget concerns and limitations - always conscious of the daily burn rate. Having pets and a house ups the burn rate. Also planning the more strenuous travel for our early go-go years - I’ve seen older relatives have regrets when unable to do travel activities due to mobility and health concerns. I’ve also seen friends that passed away in their 50s having never bicycled around Italy like they’d always wished. Time. Money. Energy. None of them are unlimited.

Trying to figure out how to balance travel to family and our own family memories is a constant battle for me. Complicating that fact is that we are in our late 40s with a young child and we want that child to have a strong relationship with their grandparents. I don't know what the balance is, but the struggle is real.

We've been traveling all along, but when retired it's my goal to do longer trips abroad. We've seen a lot of the US and really enjoy Europe. It's my goal to stay annually overseas for chunks of 90 days (as our passports permit) at month long stays in apartments in various regions. We've really enjoyed the south of france and northern italy so far. So more town hopping and exploring those areas to start. We aren't extravagant, but do like to see performances.

Great topic. There are so many variables with travel that make it super hard to budget for. It's also hard to know for sure what type of travel you are really going to like before you take a couple of long trips and see how you and your partner feel. Expectation and reality can be very different. You can dream for years of a certain trip and find you don't really like the type of travel you planned. My husband retired in August 2023 and we hit the Camino de Santiago in September. I think it is a great first trip for extended travel as you will find out a lot about yourself, your travel styles and meet people from all over the world. Then you will have people to visti in your future journeys. Ultreia!

@TwoSidesOfFI

5 ай бұрын

Thanks so much! Can't wait to hit the trail. -Jason

Norway is beautiful and fascinating. Their WWII history is remarkable as well.

I’m still very far from FIRE but I always thought putting my house for long term rental 1 year or 2 year contract out everything in storage and travel for those years. Only expense will be travelling and should make decent profit on the house rental.

Hike Hadrian’s Wall in England 😉 I would be doing SE Asia ASAP. Budget - check out Occasional Nomads or Retirement Travelers. When you run numbers you have to remember you would spend in food or stay where ever you are. Do you really need the house you have?

More podcasts about this subject please!

I do really enjoy your show because it touches on things I have thought about too. One piece of advice I would give you is to take the trip with your parents as soon as possible. I was the youngest kid in my family, and it sounds like my parents were probably older than yours, but I lost both my parents around your age. I wish I had had the resources (money and time) to do a major trip with them while they could still do it. My mother always wanted to go to Egypt, and I would have liked to make that happen for her.

I put 1700 per month starting in our GO-GO years and then at 77 we lower it to 300 per month starting 78. Our biggest issue now is too many friend groups and they all want to start travelling... We have all extended family every year on the beach for 8 days every single year (3000 per trip) so this is also in the budget every year excluding the 1700.

As recent empty nesters/ retired we had ten holidays in twelve months. The trips vary in length and cost. We just book the trips based on how much money we have in our joint account. The transition from saving to spending is hard to get your head round but after 12 months we are getting there.

Eric - don’t be too concerned about a house exchange. Although we have never done a house exchange, we do have a lake cottage that we rent out as a Vrbo/Airbnb rental. We have had over 120 renters over the last 5 years and we have found almost everyone respects our cottage and treats if as good or better than their own. We have never had any real damage other than just incidental wear and tear, and we only have had 3 or 4 renters that we would not rent to again.

@TwoSidesOfFI

6 ай бұрын

Thanks for the experience share, Brad

"Not colonial Willamsburg"...I LOL'd for real

I love the uplifting end to this talking about the heat stroke and death hikes. Love the episode. I have a remote job so been doing the training wheels version of trips where i go stay eith friends or family and work mostly normally. It is a great amount of flexibility that is worth embracing if the business is enabled to be run remotely. I don't think you need to wait for the FI # to do this. Whatever you all decide, best of luck.

@TwoSidesOfFI

6 ай бұрын

Thanks, Mike! Best wishes to you as well.

I traveled twice in my late 30's in SE Asia. Once for 5 weeks in Burma and Thailand and again for 9 weeks in Cambodia, Laos and Thaliand. It was lovely and created memories and encounters that I always go back to. Have your wife look up Angkor Wat or the temples of Bagan. I did cooking courses. Week long guided treks in the hillside villages. A week long stay at an island in Thailand doing yoga and relaxing on the beach. She'll find something to occupy her time! Going back and traveling in that way is part of my FIRE future.

@TwoSidesOfFI

5 ай бұрын

Thanks for sharing...I'm confident she'll love it once we're there. Angkor Wat is definitely on our list! -Eric

The Way is definitely on the list

Awesome Video. Thank you for doing these.

Our biggest discussion point is always centered around leaving our pet behind. The maximum duration is now never more than 9 days. When I was working we were often gone for 14 days. i'm now tending to just stay home as the fight to even go for 9 days isn't worth it 😒.

Eric - I've done some of what you're planning to do and have some advice. Pre-FI I worked a remote job while traveling. It was harder than I thought it would be. Maintaining a work schedule was often a problem - inevitable travel-related delays, hassles, and snafus (e.g. when the internet isn't working at the airport hotel in a developing country) meant missed meetings and stressful late nights of playing catch-up at work. Internationally, some countries will not allow you to enter if you will be working. Your luggage might be searched at customs for evidence that you'll be doing more than just vacationing. You'll be turned away at the airport without a proper work visa, which involves registering to pay local taxes etc. I also lived in New York City, and working from home there was harder than I imagined. Cramped spaces, traffic noise, hassles, landlords, NYC business taxes, regulations etc. all make it an unfriendly to someone like me who was accustomed to the quiet woods of Maine. My recommendation for you and the wife you is to look at the distant suburbs that are near commuter rail stations. A nice quiet home in the exurbs of New Jersey or Long Island or Dutchess/Orange County NY or Connecticut would give you the space to work and the opportunity to take the train into NYC whenever you want to enjoy all it has to offer.

@TwoSidesOfFI

5 ай бұрын

Thanks for sharing! You mention you were working a remote job, which perhaps is different to what I'm planning to do. My goal is to operate the business as CEO remotely, with tax nexus inside the US. I'm currently putting teams in place to run things in my absence with minimal weekly check-ins. I appreciate you sharing your lived experience in NYC. For us, we've lived years in quiet rural locations (Maine) and equal years in the exurbs (NYS + CT). They each have their merits, but we're craving a different living experience. Being able to walk to restaurants, shows, museums, art, and just generally live in the city is exciting to us. We have family living and running businesses in NYC and are presently able to sample that life in small doses. We've found it really energizing and exciting and want to do more of it in our post FI life.

hey. Thank you-nice edition-

Loved this ep. I listened to it flying back from a Zion/Bryce trip. One thing I'm curious about, and I think this only impacts Jason, is the pets! We have an aging dog with some special needs which makes longer trips challenging (and expensive). We retired from full time professional careers at the end of last year and did do 2 weeks in Ireland this year, but at this point we don't know when we can travel for a longer period than that, though we'd love to.

Great insight and Great Show as always

@TwoSidesOfFI

6 ай бұрын

Much appreciated!

Home exchange is an interesting option. We’ve done one side of that by recruiting a house sitter to take care of the cats. It has been fantastic. We’ve met some great people and it’s been a win all around. Anyway, I enjoyed the episode.

Great conversation, and very funny moments too 😂👍🏻thanks for sharing, The "Friendly-Blackmailing" is going to keep things interesting too 🤣

@TwoSidesOfFI

5 ай бұрын

😁

Thank you for talking about this! I have these conversations a lot and they consider the same things you are talking about here.

@TwoSidesOfFI

5 ай бұрын

You're so welcome!

This is a great topic, and one that especially resonates with me. I plan on retiring at 62 in a few years and although I will have enough to be comfortable in the US, and I travelled extensively for work in the past, I will be traveling a large portion of each year for the first few years. The travel bug was not squashed with work travel, and to secure the first few years of retirement I expect travel to central Europe and SE Asia will help extend my finances while I'm still healthy enough to enjoy it. Most people plan for basic expenses and some fun money in retirement, but travel can add much more than you expect depending on your travel destinations and accomodations. It was great hearing how you both think about this type of subject, and thanks for the content!

We're ~10 years from FIRE and I enjoy thinking about travel in retirement. Our current plan is to do 3 week trips 4 times a year. This way we finish a trip and can make detailing out the next trip part of what we do in those couple of months in between. One thing I realized I was missing from a budget standpoint is that I would want to take our kids to at least one of those trips during summer break from college (assuming they want to come). Now I have a few more things to think about. Thanks for another great episode.

I am taking a simple approach to budget an average spend per night (lodging) plus miles traveled x average gas price but you could do the same for trips and airfare. This gives me a rough budget estimate for say 90 days of full time travel each year. I am testing this out in my final year of work and it has been accurate enough so far. I think the bigger points you raised about agreement between spouses on the type and level (luxury or backpacking) and location are better to get right than the money side.

The only surprise I've had is my spouse's hesitation for both of us to be out of the country while our only child is still attending college far away from home. That has required a little adaptation/compromise. The Camino hike is also on my wife's list. I'd rather do one of those Rick Steves type hikes in the Dolomites or around Mont Blanc, or ship a motorcycle to Frankfurt and do annual motorcycle tours. :)

Great conversation. All very relevant to my life as I approach retirement. My family has done several home exchanges, all of which were amazing experiences. Happy to talk about the pros and cons with you and answer questions if that's helpful. Also, I host a podcast on backpacking and trekking routes, and have an episode on the Grand Canyon. I won't mention the name of the podcast here because I'm not trying to advertise here but if you want the name let me know if there is a way to get it to you. Thanks again for tackling these issues. Thinking through our own travel dreams has been a big part of our retirement planning.

Retired early 5 years ago. Travel is 30% of our budget right now. But that is really the one thing we spend extravagantly on. Also we live at the beach so many days feel like a vacation. We’ve had both of our kids in college the last 4 years and we learned time with them whether traveling to them or short vacations with them has been the most important. Also you never know when someone will get hurt or sick and then those travel plans go out the window so do it while you can and just keep an eye on the budget, overspending is not something you will regret if it’s on travel and experiences.

@TwoSidesOfFI

5 ай бұрын

So true! Thanks for sharing...revisiting my own budget presently...30% is close to where I'm landing. Cheers, Eric

Hi gents, love your videos and this one in particular was great! We're at a similar age to you both and my wife and I have similar travel plans for when we Fire in a year or two, so it's very good timing. Can I ask what sort of annual budget you both have for FIRE please, eg which includes travel? It doesn't need to be exact but wondered if you were $40k, $50k, $60k, $70k or higher bracket for your annual spend? Thank you both and great work! Cheers, Ian

@TwoSidesOfFI

5 ай бұрын

We'll both be higher than that for total annual spend but haven't shared numbers with such precision to date. That said, the best assessment of our respective overall budgets can be found here: kzread.info/dash/bejne/n66Gm5p8m6rAn84.html

@ianwhittaker3041

5 ай бұрын

@@TwoSidesOfFI wow that's fat Fire then. Are you in the $80-$100k category net spend?

@TwoSidesOfFI

5 ай бұрын

@@ianwhittaker3041 all depends where you live...

Empty Nesters 😀 My kids didn't leave until 26. (and i have 4 of them).

@TwoSidesOfFI

5 ай бұрын

Ha...sounds like you made the nest too comfortable!

@stevewhite4231

5 ай бұрын

@@TwoSidesOfFI Yes 😂its tough buying a house is so expensive now that i felt i needed to give them a chance to save big..that being said if i see a BMW in the driveway driven by one of my kids..you outta here....

I play golf with 2 guys in their 70’s that are in better shape than guys my age at 45. Don’t FOMO into these trips lol