Enjoying a vacation destination is easier if you love the accommodations that you book. With the availability of so many online travel companies and applications, it can be difficult to narrow down the wide array of listings or to be sure that you find a property that suits your needs and preferences. 

Also, what happens when your booking isn’t what you expected or your host doesn’t fulfill his/her end of the bargain. Not all companies screen their listings carefully, and you may even find that some hosts are not exactly honest in representing  their listing. Moreover, the policies of some of the larger booking companies could leave you high and dry without much recourse. We have some strategies that can increase your odds of finding a lovely vacation booking that meets your needs and helps you avoid unhappy experiences with bad bookings. .

First, book your vacation rental with a credit card, whether it’s an apartment or a hotel.  If worse comes to worse and the booking is a disaster...

In planning your retirement budget, it’s easy to factor in fixed expenses, but travel is a discretionary expense. It’s not like paying for housing or health care. The very first thing to consider when budgeting for European travel is how much you’re willing to spend on enjoying new experiences. It’s impossible to say how much of your retirement budget should be allocated to travel. It’s also hard to measure your return on investment in travel. The rewards are experiences, rather than financial gains. 

There’s probably not a fellow retiree who doesn’t think about how to balance spending versus conserving their wealth. For our household annual spending plan, we go through a very specific process, developed over years, that works very well for us. We thought we would share our process with you since it has allowed us to travel extensively while feeling confident that we will continue to conserve enough money to maintain a high quality of life for the rest of our lives.

A first ste...

When I first retired, I frequently asked my still-working friends when they would retire. They usually said they didn’t know what they would do with their time. Golf, tennis, and other hobbies only take up so much of the day. What do you do with yourself all day long? And, perhaps more importantly, who are you once you’re no longer working?

 In the US, we have a cultural tendency to define ourselves by our job titles. Whether you worked at an office job, on an assembly line, as a retail or hospitality associate, or as a stay-at-home parent or home-keeper. Once you’re retired, what do you do all day and how do you describe yourself?  

When we’re working, a job title is helpful because it provides a starting point for conversation, for finding commonality, and for establishing bonds that might lead to friendship. It provides a label that conveys lots of information about lifestyle, education, activity. Once retired, you may begin to wonder how to concisely describe yourself in a ...

If you’re like many retirees who are now considering international travel and want to plan your own travels, your foremost question is, ‘where do I begin?’ In our twenty-plus years of international travel what we found most frustrating about the planning process was that no one book or website contained all the answers to our queries. As we planned and traveled, we cobbled together information, finding a little bit here and little bit there. We found guide books by Rick Steve’s and Frommers to be very helpful in learning about destinations, but what we still needed was a guide to help us with each step of the planning process. 

To plan and manage our own travels, we began compiling our notes along the way. We documented what worked and what didn’t. After years of traveling, we’re confident in our planning process and actually enjoy putting in the time and work, knowing that it will result in an enjoyable trip. 

We’re sharing our notes and insights to help you, our fellow retiree Euro...

Using a checklist can reduce the anxiety you may feel about forgetting to take care of something important before you leave on your retirement travels. Here are a number of useful tips to consider before you ever leave your homebase.

Keeping your US home safe

Part of the joy of travelling in retirement is not using up your allotted vacation days! For many reasons, your travels in retirement may be significantly longer than when you had a few weeks of vacation to use each year. In fact, you may find that it’s most economical to plan longer trips since the most expensive cost may be your airfare, and you’ll want to make the most of the investment in getting to Europe. 

A downside is that you might feel uncomfortable leaving your US home vacant while you’re traveling. Here are some ideas to address this issue. 

• Last fall, we asked friends and family to check on our house and hired the Community Watch to stop by every few days. That’s a decent option if you’re gone for a mon...

Living abroad for a period of time may be a life-long dream for some retirees. Knowing some important parameters regarding time away and length of stay can provide peace of mind during your travels. For in-depth information, consult the US Department of State’s website Travel.State.Gov.

Absence from the US

Regarding length of absence from the US, there is no time limit if you are a US citizen (native or naturalized). For permanent residents or conditional permanent residents, check with the state department, but the length of absence is usually 6 months.  

Length of stay in European countries for US Citizens

All countries have rules for length of stay and the rules vary for citizens from different countries (e.g. US citizens versus South Korean citizens). It is essential to learn the rules for the country you are visiting to avoid deportation. The rules vary across European countries. A number of countries are members of the Schengen area (an area made of 26 European co...

Key take-aways

1. Identify the travel insurance coverage options that you will need 
2. Buy the insurance early in the trip planning process
3. For self-planned trips, consider a package plan rather than paying the extra fees for each individual travel booking
4. For tour operated trips, consider the insurance provided by the tour operator

Travel insurance is an excellent way to make sure you are not blindsided by the unexpected. Travel insurance options include trip cancellation or interruption, emergency medical care, and repatriation, among other things.  There are a number of ways that all or part of your trip can be insured. In general, you probably want travel insurance that covers medical emergencies as well as trip cancellation if you’re worried that something might interfere with your ability to carry through on an expensive trip. Good travel insurance will cover you when your regular health insurance doesn’t.

For US retirees who are over 65, you may wonder if Medicare covers yo...

During work life, you may have noticed that each day is or was somewhat repetitive. You probably awakened at about the same time each day, completed a set of morning routines, like checking email, showering, dressing, and drinking coffee. 

Going to work may have meant commuting to an office or shifting to your in-home office. You got through the work day doing many of the same tasks each day and then commuted back home. 

Evening commitments may have varied but, for the most part, followed a routine...maybe dinner, gym, TV, reading, sleep. 

During retirement, do you find yourself creating a similar daily routine, albeit one that has more freedom and “fun”? We’re creatures of habit, right? So when we travel, we may not feel comfortable just letting every day unfold willy nilly. We’ve found that we really enjoy our travels more when we have a framework for each day. The framework allows us as a couple to have shared expectations about the types of things that we’ll do and when...

How much and what kind of cash to have on hand, how to find an ATM, which credit cards to use, and what to expect with regard to foreign transaction fees are all important things to know when you’re traveling overseas. We’ve learned some things over the past several years that might help you save some money and make sure that you have the right cash and credit cards in each European country that you visit. 

We learned early on that it is better to use a bank-affiliated ATM than others that you might find in a market or on a street corner. We’ll talk more about that in a minute. We also found that some cities and towns have more and/or easier access to bank ATMs. For example, Jon and I found ourselves looking for a bank ATM in Verona, Italy. We had most recently been in the similar-sized Tuscan town of Lucca where bank-associated ATMs were plentiful and easy to find. To our surprise, we were unable to locate one in Verona by wandering around the city and consulting the internet. Luck...

There’s not a fellow retiree I know of who doesn’t think about how to balance spending and conserving their wealth. Jon and I go through a very specific process, developed over years, for each major spending decision. We thought we would share our process with you since it has allowed us to live our dreams now and feel confident that we will continue to conserve enough money to live our dreams for years to come.

Here’s how we maintain abundance while using our financial resources in a way that creates joy for us in retirement. Indeed, we want to 

• spend without trepidation, 
• to have a solid understanding of our spending habits and flexibility, 
• and to sleep soundly each night knowing that we are spending in a very responsible way. 

In other words, we’re happy about our spending and it gives us joy to think about the ways that we’re spending our money. We work with a certified financial planner to achieve these goals and recommend that you consider doing the same.

How ...