You’ve worked hard and saved your money to ensure you can enjoy a comfortable and fulfilling retirement. Ideally, it’s fun too, as this is the time to finally take those trips and vacations you’ve always wanted to. But will the savings you’ve built allow for these larger expenses?
Every retiree has different budgets and expenses, and different means of attaining passive income. No matter the size of your nest egg, with the right saving and strategic budgeting any retiree can afford both a comfortable living and the occasional fun getaway.
The following key tips for optimizing your retirement finances and nest egg will go a long way towards creating easier retirement living and making room for vacation escapes.
Start with your daily spending
The first place in which most budgets get made or broken is in the daily expenses of life. Because these are so frequent, common, and often individually small, they can be quite insidious in draining a whole annual budget much more than necessary.
By scrutinizing your daily expenses with a critical eye, and seeing what you can remove, it’s possible to create an optimized daily living budget. The purpose of this will be to let you live comfortably each day, while also saving aside an extra amount that can go to the cost of traveling. Over the course of months, this subtracted extra can be used to pay for a genuinely unique vacation.
This daily budget allocation from your fixed income is a good idea even if you decide to forego annual or regular vacations. If you are indeed able to put a daily amount aside, it can come in handy later for other unexpected expenses. Or it can be continuously put aside for something larger and better further down the road.
Ask yourself key budget questions
When reviewing your retirement income sources, savings, and spending requirements for the sake of vacation planning, also ask yourself several key questions that can help clarify your prospects and plans:
- What’s the least expensive ideal vacation trip you could honestly enjoy and look forward to? Is it possible to achieve these travel plans even more affordably?
- Can your current cash flow, either just prior to formal retirement or what you can expect after entering it, sustain discretionary expenses such as regular pleasure travel?
- What unnecessary or unwanted things can you sell or forego to create a larger pleasure budget for yourself during your retirement years? Examples could include expensive possessions you no longer use or have an interest in.
- What additional sources of income can you assemble to augment your existing nest egg and cash flow? This could also include adjusting your investments for a slightly higher yield (while keeping risk in mind)
Establish goals and specific steps
Aside from taking aside cash for vacation planning, and asking yourself key financial questions about your vacation prospects, you should also set goals and the concrete, segmented steps to reaching them.
Establish a cost breakdown of your ideal affordable vacation getaway and then plan how much of your daily cash flow or your savings you can allocate towards it. If this requires a bit of delay until the funds can be large enough, establish exactly by when you expect to have them ready. Then start putting together parts of your trip.
Planning your vacation ahead can also reduce its cost enormously. The prices for airfare, cruise excursions, hotels, and many other travel luxuries are often far lower if arranged weeks or months in advance.
As an additional tip, make maximal use of your credit card travel points for sometimes enormous discounts on flights and hotel stays. Certain card types and banks offer truly useful point systems that can be applied to airlines or hotels for incredible discounts on extremely luxurious accommodation options.
Keep your health in mind
Do not forsake medical planning during vacation adventures. One of the largest unexpected costs of a trip to a distant place is commonly a sudden medical emergency. When considering your vacation plans and budget, add in the cost of the best possible travel medical insurance you can find. Be sure to clarify how these policies, or your own personal health insurance policy, cover medical expenses overseas.
Create your dream retirement with Solivita Living
One way to ensure you enjoy your retirement is by moving to a home and community that offer the lifestyle and amenities that active adults are seeking right in their design. The picturesque Solivita Community in Kissimmee, Florida is like a resort destination that makes every day in retirement feel like the vacation of your dreams.