Travelling in Early Retirement

In our book Retired at 48, I write about how it is almost as important to plan socially for your retirement as it is financially.  Those who don't have social activities, interests or hobbies outside of work will find it difficult to adjust to retired life.  Those like me (or am I unique?) who were born to be retired and have practised enjoying it since the first day on the job, will relish the new-found freedom of time and opportunity.

So many people have asked us how we could possibly fill our days if we retired at such a young age.  I then proceed to bore them for multiple minutes as I rattle off our seemingly endless list of hobbies and interests which include tennis, cycling, walking around the city, theatre, movies, arts, photography, knitting, crocheting, writing, blogging, cooking, dining out, hanging out with friends and family, learning new skills such as speaking French or playing the ukelele, ... see what I mean?

 But the biggest itch that we have been able to scratch with our early retirement is our love of travel. While we were working, our ability to travel was severely restricted by the demands of our jobs.  Being in sales, Rich could not be away more than 6 business days at a time, had to avoid the last and first weeks of each month due to month-end processing, and the entire months of March and September, which were the "year-ends".  This really limited which destinations we could travel to, since there are some locations that just were not worth going to for a mere 7-9 days.

Now we can travel whenever and wherever we choose, as long as we have the funds to support the trip. This is something else we considered when planning for our retirement.  We made sure we set aside a healthy travel allocation in our annual budget that we track closely against.  There may be some years where we will travel more modestly and locally to offset larger trips abroad in other years.  Both will be fun, so that is no big sacrifice.

One major way that we keep travel costs down is by home-swapping. Staying in someone else's home for free while they stay in yours is a great way to not only to reduce expenses, but also gives you the opportunity to live like locals.  We are about to embark on a 7-week trip to France that will include a 6 week home swap in a little town called Bargemon.  I will be blogging about our trip in my travel blog, so check out the link below if you want to follow our adventures.

Annie and Rich's Travel Adventures - http://arenglishtravels.blogspot.ca