I am watching GrandD, age 3, this week as preschool is off for the summer. Library trips, ice cream, quiet play…she is just so happy to go with the flow. One of her favorites is folding laundry. 
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We would love to have a grandchild or more and have a role in their lives. We are seeing what life brings us. Meanwhile, we love lovable grand nieces & grand nephews.
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We are getting ready for a long road trip. Maybe a month long, though not precisely sure of the tail end plans. We’ll be busy visiting much family and a few friends, mostly on the East coast. This time we have a new car… MY car at home, so this time I hope to do some of the driving.
We’ve done this kind of trip three previous times since retiring. (We did skip 2023, for wedding of our son… I convinced my husband that I preferred to fly, not have the road trip variables.) We do two lonnnng days of driving east, losing an hour each day due to timezones. Then yay, two nights in Columbus while visiting family. Then another lonnng day to NY. After that it becomes a patchwork quilt visiting friends/family in NY, MA, CT, NJ, MD. The first year we did it was 5500 and 93 hours in the car… and yay, we were still married at the end of the trip!
We plot it out with a Google doc, including hotel info and confirmation#. This is the kind of thing we could not possibly done when working. So hip, hip hooray for the flexibilty of retirement!
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At one point I thought that when my husband retired (he was 2nd) we might spend up to about a year “on the road” with both driving and flying trips. Various things made that no longer a realistic goal, and we haven’t talked about it in quite some time.
We haven’t done a long road trip, but still might do that, for weeks to a month. We do drive up to several hours for “short” biking trips, and we’ve visited family/friends up to about 10 hours away.
I had this “vision” of us taking a trip with our bikes on the back of the car, and kayaks (we don’t own kayaks) on the top of the car, driving around the country, stopping where we felt like it. If it happens, it won’t be soon.
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My H retired late last year. We’ve always been campers, hikers and bike riders. So far we’ve gone to Acadia, Shenandoah. The panhandle of Florida, Assateague, Cape Henlopen in DE and other places. In August we are going back to Old Quebec. We are in the planning stage for a September trip to Colorado. Our goal is to take a trip with our camper every month, even of only for a few days.
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I’m going to admit that I find traveling exhausting.
We are good with one big trip a year. Planning more than that is just exhausting. We like our house, we like doing things in our area. My husband has a fused neck and he is uncomfortable in a house that isn’t ours. It’s uncomfortable seating, it’s uncomfortable turning his neck all the time. He’s hard of hearing and a house with all hardwoods is hard to hear in. I’m not complaining about that, we all have some health concerns as we age but going isn’t something he wants to do for an extended period of time.
My family is scattered so there are trips to see the kids. They rarely come here so the travel comes from our end, we are retired so our time is flexible. My mom is not traveling anymore and can’t really navigate steps so we need to plan trips to her. The in laws are 100 miles away, it seems that trips there are becoming more frequent and that’s tiring. We do it in one long day.
Because of travel to family who are all over, a pleasure trip is one more thing I have to plan and execute.
Our daughter and her husband are coming for my husband’s milestone birthday this fall. I’ve rented a place near us in the area we vacationed during the kids childhood. My husband’s brother is joining us. We asked our son’s family and will see if they can make it. Got a place right on a lake, it should be fun. Our sil has never been so it will be fun to show him our area.
Don’t think this is a complaint because it’s not. I’m happy we love our house and our area. But I’m not looking to go somewhere all the time.
Seriously though, it’s exhausting!
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I love that you’re going back to the area your kids used to vacation in when they were kids. They just may gain an appreciation for the beautiful, non-big city place you live in!
I guess we are both semi-retired here. I retired from my FT position end of 2024 and am working part time at a job I love - basically 3 days a week, at home with occasional planned-on-my-own short road trips. That’s part of my traveling. :). H retired something like 7-8 years ago and he has since had an EBay business that is quite profitable for him. It’s really job/hobby because it takes something he has always loved- second hand stuff/antiques - and 
- haha, so he spends A LOT of time doing that.
We too are homebodies and I don’t think I ever really thought of retirement time as travel time. Not with H anyway! He didn’t do much traveling growing up except going to the family cottage and he has no interest in a car or plane trip. We have catered to him enough that he is willing to go on a week long family trip once a summer in 
where the family cottage used to be. He will do that cause it’s familiar - he really likes familiar and a routine he is comfortable with.
I wouldn’t mind traveling a LITTLE more. But being honest, if I die without having seen multiple countries abroad I won’t be disappointed.
I have considered a women’s travel trip. I do take short trips to visit my daughter’s a couple hours away. Appreciate these and the change of scenery! And my youngest, not yet married still asks for a “mommy and me” trip each year - we will do a 3-night in September.
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OK Team. I have been thinking about my Health Care Directive and would love to get thoughts. But, should I do that here or in the Money and Retirement thread?
If this is to be only a positive thread, maybe in the Money thread?
DW and I are 10 years from retirement, but we are making strides now to be able to enjoy life in retirement. We are both getting healthy. We have lost weight and mobility is a lot better.
We didn’t travel much early in our marriage mainly due to funds. Then the kids came along. We took some trips with them, but we always felt we needed a vacation from our vacation when we got back. The kids are now grown so we can do more. Also we are in a better situation with funds.
We are trying not to fall into the habits of our parents who didn’t travel as much as they could in retirement. We would love to take a long road trip seeing all the tourist traps. DW loves the world’s largest XXX items.
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If you want to talk about it here, there’s no reason not to. Only discussion that’s off limits relates to investments or investment strategies. If people want a “good and happy news” only perhaps they should start another thread.
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H and I are not yet retired, but plan to be in less than 2 years. For the past 6 years we have been doing a lot of traveling since it’s something we enjoy. We bought yearly Ikon ski passes 6 years ago and have been aiming for 20 to 25 ski days each season. We look forward to retirement when and hopefully increasing our ski days to 40 or more each season. We love road trips as well as vacations abroad. My H grew up traveling all over the world and has also traveled for business for many years. He still loves to travel and plans all of our trips.
Since we live in a Southern California beach town we normally don’t do much summer travel and just enjoy all we can do here at home. Our biggest issue right now is finding reliable cat sitters when we are away. We are heading to Scotland at the end of July for a family reunion. H’s nephews have school aged kids so this is when they can travel and we decided to go this year even though we don’t love the summer crowds.
I love that some of us enjoy travel and others here enjoy their time at home. The best thing is doing what you like with your time!
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I married a guy who grew up going to the family cottage, so I knew that would be our primary “vacation.” It’s not a second home or vacation home … it’s a perfectly fine but definitely cottage-y cottage. We had many years of hanging out with the extended family that owned the cottage across the street.
Flash forward to now. The extended family sold their cottage after the matriarch died. Our easement is on that lot, and the new owners are not people with whom we have anything in common. The fun is gone, but the upkeep remains. Our boat is 45 years old and while in great shape, it gets swamped by the Tritoons and wake boats that the overwhelmingly wealthy people who now own homes on the lake must have. The 3+ hour drive each way is getting old.
H actually said that he is considering selling. He owns it with his mom. I am 100% for selling, but it’s not mine. I told him that I don’t care what he does, as long as there is enough money from his mom’s estate to pay the share he owes his sister and to pay for the costs associated with the cottage. H has a lot of trouble with this sort of change, so it won’t happen soon, if he does decide to sell.
Personally, I would like to see the many parts of the U.S. I haven’t visited, to rent a house on the east coast by the ocean, to stay “up north” once in awhile, that sort of thing. I’m hopeful it will happen before I’m too old to enjoy it.
I have always wanted to go to Europe, but I don’t see that happening until at least 2029. I’m sure it’s fine, but I’d rather stay stateside for now. There’s plenty I haven’t seen yet here.
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THAT is a great goal!
We got a kitten a couple of months ago now, knowing it would require us to stay home for a couple of months. Our next vacation isn’t until August.
We TRY to shoot for 5 week or more vacations each year plus some shorter trips now that we are both retired.
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Our cottage stories are SO similar it’s freaky!
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I think that would be a great topic for a new thread; it’s a significant topic with a lot to ponder, and having it organized within one thread would be helpful to everyone who wants to discuss it.
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Husband and I are both loving lots of travel in our early retirement… (known by financial advisors as the GO-GO years, to be followed by the Slow-Go years… and probably eventually the no-go years)
If you don’t need the money from a part-time job I recommend volunteer work. There is always a huge need and you probably can find something that interests you. I’ve been volunteering at our Friends of the Library used book store when I need some out of the house human interaction time. When the sign up comes out I pick several shifts and put them on my calendar.
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This is my H. I don’t know if I consider him to be retired, because he is now working FT. He retired from teaching last year, but he can NOT stay in a house without going stir crazy. Even when he worked part time on the weekends 6-1, by 2pm he’d be asking me “What’s the plan? I don’t want to sit here all day.” It drives me nuts! I like to do things too, but I can most definitely entertain myself at home for a good long period of time. We live in a place where there’s just not a lot TO do outside of the home.
One thing to think about with a PT job is that many PT jobs are still more “intense” than what we would prefer. The place he was originally going to work PT would have had him on a schedule of every other day, 8 hours/day. If you wanted any time off, you had to ask two weeks in advance or get demerits. Ummm… That’s not what we were looking for.
Planet Fitness, OTOH has been perfect for him. Even though he is FT, he can take off whenever. The manager is very laid back. It has zero stress for him. Controlling members’ bad behavior comes naturally to him after 32 years of teaching. He loves to be out on the floor straightening everything up and cleaning. It feels like he’s taught half of the members, and probably the kids of the other half.
But just something to think about when you want to work PT. I hadn’t really considered still having to stick to a real schedule and limiting what we wanted to do!
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I may be the opposite of your husband. I thought I would volunteer as part of my retirement, but I retired during COVID. We were very cautious during that period. Now I really like not having to answer to any “employer” of any kind, so I’m not sure I’ll become a volunteer of any significance. I have not problem with “free time”/finding things to do on my own.
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Maybe we can get married? 
He’s always been this way. When the kids were growing up, at least we had their activities to do! After the nest was empty, he still kept asking me every single day “What’s the plan?” After awhile I exploded “There is NO plan! We have NOTHING to do! Stop asking!!!” But then he won’t travel for long periods of time (like I want to do) either because he misses the cats. I can’t win!
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