Top Tips for Travelling as a Senior
Reaching pension age can be a worrisome time, and especially so if you haven’t been planning for retirement as ardently as you ought to have. Retirement always feels a world away, even when it is on your doorstep – a truth which has led to many failing to properly plan for their retirement today.
There are a great many things to consider when reaching retirement age, but the more fun parts of retirement are often forgotten in lieu of housing and later-life care decisions. Retirement should be a joyous thing as opposed to a burdensome thing, and fun should take precedence where it can. Travel is a particularly accessible opportunity to the newly-retired individual, and the planning stages of a big trip can be fun enough on their own. What should you be considering, though, as you put your bucket-list travel plans together?
Planning Ahead
As with practically any retirement-age planning, advance planning is the key to a successful travel engagement. This extends far beyond thinking about destinations (more on which later) and accommodation, as your planning needs to go to the core of your trip – finances and funding. If you’ve been shrewd about your pension and savings, you might have enough fun-money saved to one side to fund most of your day-to-day holiday costs, and some souvenirs besides.
For major and long-term trips, though, the cost of travel and accommodation can be prohibitive to even the shrewdest of retirement-age savers. For situations like this, equity release can be a powerful option; equity release gives you access to part of your home’s value, and does so without you needing to sell or lose any stake in your home. As such, your home can work for you in the short term.
Age-Friendly Destinations
Acknowledging the limits of your age is no fun, but no less important when it comes to picking a destination for your travels. Nowhere is off-limits for your post-retirement holiday by any means, but some locations may be less wise than others; do you really want to test yourself against the oppressive, humid heat of North Africa? In this vein of thinking, you might even consider pre-planned holidays to take the administrative bite out of your planning.
Packing Smart
Whatever you settle on, you need to be shrewd about packing. While it may be tempting to pack comprehensively, you also need to remember that you are responsible for shuttling your own luggage around. In the interests of your own ease-of-travel, consider packing light, and packing a day-bag you can use to carry the very basics as you explore your destination of choice.
Keeping Healthy
Finally, and again on the subject of later-life health, the best thing you can do for yourself generally is to keep fit and healthy. Regular cardiovascular exercise can keep you limber, and make the endurance test that is exploring your favoured holiday destination a much easier one to ace!
