Taking Your Retirement Around the World

One of the most common dreams many people have for their retirement years is to travel.  So often when you are in the middle of building a career and raising a family, your travel consists of trips to Orlando for Disney World or doing something focused on the kids.  So when you get to that phase of life where your children are grown up and it’s just you and your spouse, now you can focus on trips that are for just you two going places you to go and doing things you want to do.

So if you feel that you will be taking your travel life to a new level when you reach retirement age, there is plenty you can do to get ready.  Obviously, you will need to focus your savings and financial preparations so you have an ample budget for travel when the time arrives.  The last thing you want is to come up on the time when your dream of traveling together can be a reality only to find that you did not set aside the budget for it.

One way you can do that is to take advantage of the years between when the kids all move out and are done with college and the beginning of you retirement years.  This can be as much as a ten to fifteen year time span when both of you can work to payoff bills and build that retirement nest egg.  If your basic retirement fund for you to live on is healthy and you are meeting your financial retirement goals, to take one of the spouse’s salary and put it all aside for future travel can result is a very healthy budget to get out and see the world in your golden years together.

It might feel like it’s a little self indulgent for you to set aside so much money for you and your spouse to have travel adventures late in life.  Well, you have been a good citizen, a good dad or mom, a good worker and in every respect done the right things all these years.  So nobody would deny you the joy of really enjoying the thing you love the most when you do reach your retirement years together.

You can afford a few “training trips” in the years coming up on retirement from time to time to begin to retool your travel skills.  If you have been in your career a long time, you may have sufficient vacation that you can take an extra week a year just for adult travel and still have plenty to go see the kids and do all the family stuff that you must do and you enjoy so much.

It will be during these training trips that you will hone your ability to stay on the road longer each time out.  Traveling for long periods of time is a developed skill.  You will need to learn how to pack, how to manage your international paperwork if international travel is in your plans and how to handle jet lag as well.  These are “travelers skills” that you can be developing leading up to that big moment when both partners are able to retire full time and really start getting out there and seeing the world.

Another adjustment and financial resource that can put some additional funding into your travel funds is your house.  Many people sell their homes late in life when you don’t need so much space to raise kids and you no longer have the desire or take great joy in taking care of a yard and managing the upkeep on a home.  If you know you are going to make this big change of lifestyle away from the home bound mom and dad and toward the world travelers you want to be, you can be preparing the house for sale in the last few years before you retire. 

Because you know well in advance that you have a new life of adventure and fun ahead in your retirement years, you can use the last few years before both of you stop working to get ready.  Then once your retirement is official and you walk out of the retirement party at work, you can walk right onto the jet way and take off on a brand new life of fun and adventure seeing the world together during your retirement years.