Pro Tip: Planning to retire in the coming years? Be sure to read our helpful tips for retiring.
How to Travel on a Retirement Budget
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June 1, 2023
Whether to visit family, natural wonders, or old friends, the vast majority of retirees want to use their newfound freedom to travel; however, due to fixed incomes, they often have smaller budgets than they might have during working years. According to research from the U.S. Census Bureau, the median income for retirees in 2021 was $47,620.
With this in mind, seniors and retirees face the dilemma of simultaneously traveling without depleting their savings. Luckily, if you follow these tips, you can explore the world, even on a strict retirement budget.
Pro Tip: Planning to retire in the coming years? Be sure to read our helpful tips for retiring.
Booking flights and accommodations early can significantly lower the overhead cost of traveling in a few ways. First, it allows you to scope out flights more strategically since the closer you get to the date of the flight, the more the flight prices will fluctuate.
Secondly, free travel cancellations often have a cutoff as you near your travel date, making rescheduling for any reason less costly if you book in advance.
A flight-tracking service like Skyscanner or FlightAware is a must for fliers of any age who want to save money. It gives you all your flight data in one place, including cancellations, delays, and gate changes, to help you stay on top of your vacation before it even starts.
Since the creation of federal airline taxes, airlines nickel and dime you for everything. This is especially true for extra baggage since those fees are tax-exempt. In fact, some airlines now make hundreds of millions of dollars per year on bag fees alone. Plan ahead by packing light to avoid them.
This means not only packing fewer suitcases, but also strategizing based on what you can just buy later. Often, a toiletry bag is more expensive to bring on a plane than simply buying the products you need once you arrive at your destination!
In addition to saving money on fees, packing light is also good general traveling advice since it helps you keep your stuff together, get it to the hotel, and not have to worry as much about lugging it around everywhere.
You may remember being a twentysomething, roughing it on a backpacking trip into a new city, sleeping in hostels, and traveling light. Maybe not all our choices back then were good ones, but that travel strategy is still a good idea!
Hostels may not be as solitary as hotels, but nowadays, you can find travel-focused hostels in many areas that offer private rooms and ensuite bathrooms. As a bonus, you still get the more community-focused feel of a hostel.
This shouldn’t be the battle plan for people who need their hotel amenities, but a hostel can save you a chunk of change if you don’t mind being a little adventurous.
Cruises may seem like luxuries by reputation, but with travel costs rising, cruises have become more attractive. Instead of dealing with airline tickets and fees, food costs, and all the extra costs of traveling, a cruise packs it all into one ticket.
This makes a cruise the easiest vacation to plan, as well as arguably the most relaxing since you have less to decide along the way. Do a little research into affordable cruises. You may be surprised to learn that luxury vacationing has become some of the cheapest.
FYI: Looking to set sail in the coming year? Be sure to check out our guide to the best cruises for seniors.
Another great cost-cutting measure for traveling on a retirement budget is to go with a group. In your group, you can share costs for rooms and food as well as reap unique benefits.
For starters, groups often have tour guides, which is great for people who want the “ideal” experience of a certain place without wanting to plan it all out.
Best of all, you can meet like-minded travelers and other couples just looking to explore the world. You may make lifelong friendships or even find a soulmate in a senior travel group, so don’t discount this as a travel strategy.
Voluntourism is vacationing with a purpose. Voluntour groups often visit other countries to offer their services and experiences to those in need of them. It’s a great way to get something more out of your vacation than luxuries and give back to the world a bit.
Examples of voluntour excursions include hospital visits in Guatemala, orphanage volunteering in Sri Lanka, and relief efforts in Indonesia. Voluntourism can send you around the world through groups like Save the Children and Hope of Life.
Visit the organizations’ websites to get started if you want to turn your vacation into something more meaningful. Note, however, that voluntourism doesn’t change the cost of travel since you’ll still be responsible for transportation, accommodation, and meal costs, plus a registration fee with the organization, though they tend to visit more affordable areas.
Credit cards often give you the chance to make money back on what you would spend anyway, so why not use that to your advantage when you travel? Travel credit cards like this Chase Sapphire Reserve card give you bonus points on purchases you make connected to your vacation, such as hotel costs, car rentals, taxi fees, train tickets, and more.
Frequent travelers can max out their points, which they earn per dollar spent on travel expenses. You can then use those points to get perks like room upgrades and food credits, free bags at the airport, priority boarding, and free breakfast at participating hotels.
The downside is that all these perks come with high annual card fees. Remember that the company doesn’t give away those benefits for free. If you travel a lot, you may be able to come out in the black with a travel card. Otherwise, it may not be worth the price.
This is another travel strategy that works at any age and for any vacation. You don’t have to see the most expensive sites to enjoy yourself. There are always free attractions that can be just as fun as the paid stuff, so long as you look for them.
Many museums offer a day per week for the public to visit for free. This goes for historic parks too. You may have a better time walking through a new city and sitting on the pier as the sun sets than paying through the nose to see an expensive show or gain admittance to a theme park.
Keep an open mind about your travel activities, and you’ll find that you don’t have to spend a ton to have a ton of fun.
Pro Tip: Another great affordable option is our national parks. To learn how seniors can get discounted lifetime passes to these parks, read our guide to the National Parks Pass for Seniors.
On that note, you can choose less popular destinations for a cheaper vacation. There may be fewer tourist-focused attractions, but you may have a more enjoyable, more authentic experience because of it.
A trip to Paris or Rome will cost a lot, but if you change your destination to less-traveled cities like Trieste or Nice, your getaway will cost a whole lot less. And if you aren’t sure where you want to vacation in the first place, consider some of the cheaper countries to travel to, like Thailand, Greece, or Hungary, instead of China, Italy, or France. In places where the dollar is worth more than the local currency, you can get more for the same budget.
This one is likely for people who plan on traveling for at least a month, though anyone can rent out their home while they’re away to recoup some of the costs.
Turning your home into a rental with a service like Airbnb helps you keep control over your things while making extra money while you’re away. Make sure you lay out your cancellation policy and house rules and schedule a cleaning service before and after the person’s stay.
Thankfully, you can add this to their bill. Airbnb lets you itemize services and figure out the schedule that works for you.
Many networks charge a fee for using your phone abroad, sometimes as much as $10 per day, which can add up quickly. To avoid getting stuck with a huge phone bill when you get back from your trip, buy a local SIM card when you arrive.
The card’s cost will vary depending on where you’re traveling, but it will always be cheaper than being fined by your phone network. Check out this website to learn more about buying specific SIM cards in different countries.
FYI: Many of our favorite cellular providers will give you a free SIM card to use in any phone. To learn more, read our guide to the best phone plans for seniors.
Travel insurance and health insurance are two important considerations when budgeting for your trip. Travel insurance gives you a safety net if you need emergency medical coverage, lose your bags, or have to pay fees for canceling. Health insurance also gives you valuable coverage in case something happens.
However, not all plans have network coverage that extends to out-of-country visits. Check with your insurance provider before leaving to see whether you have coverage where you’re going.
Certain Medigap plans also offer emergency health coverage while traveling.
Pro Tip: Not all Medigap plans are created equally. To compare the top providers and see which ones offer coverage for international travel, read our guide to this year’s best Medigap plans.
Traveling on a retirement budget can be worrisome, but it’s absolutely doable with the right strategies. The tips outlined here prioritize thinking outside the box of normal tourist behaviors to save money in unexpected ways, such as booking in advance, signing up for group tours, opting for less popular cities, and using local phone service.
Remember to always research the details before traveling, such as airline cancellation fees, phone network fees, health insurance coverage, and credit card benefits, to make sure your vacation fits your budget (and is still a ton of fun).
