Balancing Travel While Still Working - Do it now, or put it off?

I stopped working a few years ago to help take care of my parents. Before that, there was no money and no time to do any significant travel (a few days here, a few days there) but we always went to our family camp in Maine each summer, and fit in a few memorable trips to destinations near us – one night hotel stays. So while I wish we had been able to take our kids more places, I’m not beating myself up over it.

DH is still working and will be for a few more years. Because of the nature of his work and workplace, it’s difficult for him to take time off so we tend to save that time for things like weddings, long weekend trips to see our kids, etc. We are taking a trip this fall, just the two of us, and will be gone a whole week. And we travel to see our 900 miles away kid twice a year. That’s about it for us, and we don’t have much in the way of plans for after he retires. I know bucket lists are a legit thing for lots of people but I don’t believe in them for myself; I guess our main goal is to spend some time at a beach, doing nothing, and see our children much more than we are able to right now. We hope to provide funds to do a family weekend at various locations, though. Our oldest wants to have a pile of kids as soon as possible, and I know once grandchildren are in the mix travelling becomes more complicated for everyone. I admire everyone’s plans!

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We’re in the TRAVEL NOW! camp, even when we shouldn’t, ha. We had one dear friend, vital and healthy, who passed away unexpectedly at 64. Her husband was devastated and we never hear from him anymore. My other friend, who I’ve mentioned, developed early onset Alzheimer’s several years ago. She and her husband never traveled - they saved every penny. So he has a big investment account but will never go on trips with his wife. :frowning:

Although at 71, my husband is healthy, his dad passed away at 73, so I don’t know how much time I will have with him. Since we work for ourselves, we can work weird schedules and take off when we want to.

I think I caught the travel bug from my parents, who traveled all over the world. We would go on a vacation somewhere in the US every summer when I was growing up. Those are some of my fondest, most vivid memories of my childhood.

We don’t have any grandchildren yet (and may never, to be honest), so that’s not a complicating factor for us.

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I took my kids on international trips since they were 6 months old. I usually planned 2-3 overseas trips a year. I have always been good about combining my vacation days with federal holidays to stretch out my vacations. We have been to many countries. Now they are grown, they love to travel with their own families (and with me sometimes). D1 has a 4 year and 10 month old. We all went to Cancun when GD2 was only 10 weeks old.
I wouldn’t put off traveling if that’s what you want to do. I am not one for waiting to do anything.

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I’m also in the do it now camp. We’ve tried to travel a bit each year when the kids were growing up and I’m thankful we made that happen. Had it been up to my DH it probably would not have - a well traveled person before we married - he is a saver by nature and had I let him have his ways there would have been no travel fun. Looking back he’s happy we did what we did. He still works and has loads of PTO, maybe 8 weeks/yr?

So we do one overseas trip a year, probably two next year. We also do several shorter within the US. I encourage my kids to do as much as they can now. I watched my grandparents and parents put fun things off and then when health failed they never were able to see the places that had talked about going.

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I am in the mostly do it now camp. Starting with my husband saying yes to a post-doctoral fellowship in Germany. Once we had kids our regular vacations were to family cabins, or visiting family, but my parents once took all of us to stay in a house in Normandy for a couple of weeks one summer which was fabulous, and we had Thanksgiving in Saint Johns, VI a couple of times. We tacked on extra weeks when my husband had conferences in Japan and Scotland. When a former post-doc of my husband’s asked if he’d like to do a 3 month sabbatical in Hong Kong we said yes. Now that we are both retired we are making a point of planning two hiking trips a year - usually combining them with visits with our son who is currently stationed in England. We also did a big trip to Japan when he was there.

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We have mostly traveled in the US but are grateful there’s so much to enjoy here. We started traveling with the kids from when they were 6 months old. We generally combine work (where some traveling subsidized or at least deductible) with visiting family or loved ones.

We have been to Asia — Japan, Okinawa, S Korea and Taiwan. We also had one trip to Europe. Hopefully will travel more once H’s health permits.

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I already answered the question for how we handled travel “now” vs “when retired” but the things that really impacted along the way include -dementia running in my family
-a 52ish year old friend going home on Friday, getting up to go to the bathroom, falling down/suffering a brain aneurysm and dying a couple of days later
-a friend dying of cancer at 64
-a work acquaintance working “too long” and dying 4 months after he retired
I could go on, but the message is you never know what tomorrow will bring and when your health will decline, so if you really want to do it, sooner is better than later.

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We took babies, toddlers and kids with us. Turned them into good travelers.

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It may depend on the kind of job, how flexible one can be working remotely. My DH is about to “retire“ from one company, but it’s most likely he’ll do consulting or something else with others. In the past several years, we have done a lot of travel. He has still managed to be on business calls, handle work- related issues of high and low severity, etc. He was even handling them from the Serengeti

Despite our having no money to travel ( except to see family) when our kids were young, they are both excellent travelers and have always been.

Amount of PTO and other factors are in play when working. Years ago, remote work was not possible and for some jobs ( my late husband’s job for example) it has never been an option.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I exhausted most of my PTO when my mother was in AL. ( we did take one family trip during that time- S was graduating from university in England). Family obligations of all kinds can quickly take up a lot of PTO. People who live near extended family have the option of taking a few hours off or no time off for events such as family weddings/ funerals , etc. For us it was taking off a few days for travel time.

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This! Our first trip with older S was when he was 1.5 years old. We took a week trip to the beach (4 hours away) and split a condo with the in-laws/SIL’s family. Those were my first hours of leave time in 2.5 years! I had to save every minute for my non-existent maternity leave, saving for the next one, errands, kid getting sick. I didn’t get another chance for real leave time for another couple of years. There was no way I could have had 3 kids. I was just mentally and physically done with juggling everything and having no time off.

And H was a teacher. He couldn’t just use an hour here or there to meet the cable guy, the boiler guy, the plumber, etc. unless it happened in the summer - which is never seemed to do! It’s either a half day or full day - and he got 3/year. So it all fell on me - who got a whopping 2 weeks/year for 5 years, and 3 weeks for years 5-15. But I can take mine in 15 min. increments, so that helped.

But now that my kids are grown - now I get 6 weeks. Sigh. It is nice now, and I appreciate it that much more. And I also am lucky that I can - and have - just pick up and leave at a minutes notice.

Edit - and both of my kids are great travelers with incomes that allow them to travel. I’m so thankful! H is the tough one to travel with. He’s a perpetual toddler. Must feed him at exact intervals with specific food, and always keep an eye on him so he doesn’t wander off. At least I don’t have to worry about someone stealing him…

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Do it now!

When the kids were in school, H traveled a lot. But he also got this one week mandatory vacation around July 4th. So, we made it a habit to take a family vacation every year. My second grader’s teacher thought he was embellishing when he wrote an essay on all the places he had been to. He had to take his penny passport in to show her that he had actually been to all those countries!

As the kids got into high school and college, it became harder to do the family vacations, As with many other posters, I had to fly often to take care of my parents too. But we did manage to get at least one, if not a couple short trips in, mostly within the US.

Over the last ten years or so, H and I have been traveling quite a bit. We mix it up - a few trips inside the US, a couple outside. Usually, our longest trip is only about two weeks. Both of us are still working, but we have the flexibility to tote our laptops and work from wherever. So, last year, when H was at a conference, I tagged along. We worked Monday-Thursday of that week, but used the two shoulder weekends to visit national parks in Utah.

I’ve seen some of our friends put off travel for one reason or another - and now, they are finding it hard to travel even though they want to. He had booked a trip to South Africa but had to cancel after a heart attack a few months before the trip. They are supposed to join us on a cruise in a couple of months, but she has been having several health issues lately, so I am kind of expecting them to cancel. Very sad.

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When the kids were home, the annual vacation almost always revolved around family visits on east coast. We did do two trips to DC area, both revolved family weddings. One year, before the oldest went to middle school, we splurged on a Feb Disney World trip that required missing some school days. As pre-retirees and retirees we’ve really enjoyed international travel.

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H and I have been traveling a lot over the past few years. We are both still working and making good money so we are using that to fund travel. H’s company was sold off and he started with a new company (owned be a Swedish private equity firm) July 1st. H now gets 7 weeks of PTO per year. I only get 4 weeks of PTO, but can take time off without pay.

As avid snow skiers we spend 25 plus days per year on the slopes. For next season we are back to the Ikon passes and are already planning a couple of big trips for the winter.
We leave next Thursday for 12 days in Scotland with H’s family. Then we head to Paris for 5 days.

We don’t normally travel in the summer, but our nephews have school aged kids and we all wanted to get together so this is when we could all do it. Summers here by the beach in San Diego are lovely (especially after the tourists leave in September!). This weekend we will be downtown checking out everything Comic Con.

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H never let us accompany him out of country when he had to travel. He was always subject to having his travel canceled or rescheduled at the last minute. We did travel with him most of the time when his travel was in the US (I liked that his plane fare and a hotel and sometimes a rental car was covered by his travel budget). We traveled from when our kids were 6 months old. They have always been amazing travelers. They would often nap on the plane and arrive raring to go. Us oldsters would arrive barely rested and tired and ready to go to sleep. Somehow we made it work and have no regrets bringing them along. S didn’t want to travel during the school year after 5th grade when the teacher gave him a 2 inch stack of homework (which he completed on the airplane) and then was bored when he got back to school and the class took weeks/months to catch up. The tough part for H was that he would be at conferences and doing a LOT of collaborating so he’d be pretty tired after the days of conference but we’d be pretty rested and happy to go on another vacation after his conference was over.

We didn’t do much international travel, but S is certainly doing so with and without his wife. They are pretty flexible about traveling together or alone.

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I would love to travel more, but am feeling a bit trapped. Our oldest (24) is living with us and brought two more cats (we had two) plus a very high-needs, high flight risk rescue dog. And our oldest has some mental health challenges. And our younger kid is finishing up college so we are feeling a financial bite. H’s mom is elderly (87) and her live-in boyfriend is having some health issues (just worn out body, really, from many years of hard physical labor). We try to get in a family week at the beach each summer and some weekends at H’s mom’s mountain vacation cabin, but it’s been trickier than usual this year. I haven’t been up to the mountain house since mucking it out after Hurricane Helene last October. H has been dealing with contractors and doing a lot of cleaning and minor repairs and mitigation himself. Just seems like it’s always something, but I hope once the older kid is a little more stable and the younger kid is done making money hemorrhage out of our bank account we can do a little more traveling. I think I might be up for more travel than H is. He has gotten so he just does not enjoy driving much. (He’s fine at it, it just annoys him). I would do more weekend trips w/in driving distance, but I don’t know if I can get him to.

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Ever since I married my H our big, once a year trip was spent with his five siblings and their families at a large beach house that the oldest sibling arranged, for a week. All the logistics were handled by the sibling group.

Occasionally we had a camping trip with the immediate family.

It was only as my two kids became adults that I finally realized - if I want a family trip with the four of us - I have to arrange it, find it, and make it happen. (Wish I had realized that during the years when I would kind of resentfully complain about the ‘extended family only’ trips while wishing for something more!).

Now I try to arrange (and mostly pay for) a fun trip for the four of us each year (Italy, Mexico, CO skiing). I’d definitely like to continue this as long as possible.

I’ve also made a commitment to do smaller trips once or more a year too. Waiting for husband to express something more than perfunctory enthusiasm but in the interim have traveled with a friend to AZ and with kids to remote CO.

Not sure what the future holds (would love to see more in the US!). However, the main thing I’ve learned is not only ‘don’t wait for retirement to travel’ but ‘don’t wait for your partner to travel’, either.

I don’t have a ton of extra spending $ now but can say I have not regretted one dollar spent on travel in the past few years!

I’m still working but have seen too many friends debilitated by illness (theirs or their partner’s) shortly after retirement to wait.

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Good statement. :+1:

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We took lovely long car trips with the kids in the summer- usually with relatives homes as the final destination. We did take a month-trip to Europe, when the kids were in their teens, and stayed in hostels and traveled by train and public transportation, and a two- week visit to Turkey when they were older, but those also included visiting relatives. Now that we live in a beautiful Massachusetts town, and both the kids and grandchildren are close by, I really don’t want to do any big travels!! If I never had to get on an airplane again, that would be FINE with me!

Except for an upcoming trip to England to visit an elderly relative, my plans are to travel to all the lovely places that are within a few hours drive. Day trips!

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I’ve shared that I am one who has a husband who doesn’t like to travel. And while I don’t need to go wild, I’d like to travel SOME.

I am not fully here yet myself, but I think if I’m this situation we have to remember….the H who doesn’t want to travel is getting exactly what he prefers by NOT traveling - but are you?

We all should get our needs/wants met if possible! And that might require being willing to travel alone or with parties that are not our partner!

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