Boomers Are Booming!

I loved that the WSJ pictured Avebury rather than Stonehenge and coined a new term "Middle class Millionaires"

I loved that the WSJ pictured Avebury rather than Stonehenge

The first photo captioned "Jean Chow at Stonehenge"? That sure looks like Stonehenge and not Avebury.

I'm glad someone told me in my early 40's to travel while I'm "young" and encouraged me not to wait until retirement.

Can’t take it with you. Hopefully the markets don’t melt down. That would put an abrupt stop to discretionary spending on things like travel for many people in the boomer age range.

From the article;

They want to keep traveling as long as they are able, and stretch
their budgets by finding airfare deals, staying in midrange hotels and
using carry-on luggage.

My wife and I could be them, although we're not quite considered Boomers and we think 20 weeks away from home may be too many. We're taking baby steps into retirement planning and trying to figure out what works for us. The biggest challenge is the mentality of spending the money; the math says not to worry, but the mind says to worry because we spent a lifetime saving and old habits are tough to break.

From the survey referenced in the article;

International travel continues to be most popular in the spring, with
bucket list trips still the main motivation.

Note to self, prioritize Fall over Spring.

I'm not surprised that bucket list are the primary motivator for new retirees that may be travelling the world for the first time. It's still a primary motivator for us even though our 1st European adventure was 12 years ago. But we're also starting to mix in other things as well. For example, the bucket list said go to Rome for the two blockbuster sites, but now we have time and money to linger and smell the gelato.

The biggest challenge is the mentality of spending the money; the math says not to worry, but the mind says to worry because we spent a lifetime saving and old habits are tough to break.

Well said, Allan. My wife and I are working on that. We are still frugal as hell, but adding a lot of travel to the equation.

Same as Dave. I can't forget a conversation I had with a patient who had promised travel to his wife when he retired but she had a very short battle with cancer and he still hadn't retired when she died. So I'm traveling now and being responsible with saving for retirement without expecting to be alive or healthy enough to travel then. But I'm genuinely happy for those who can travel in their more senior years.

It’s also about priorities.

$50k for a new car? Plus insurance, taxes, service etc etc. The old Toyota runs great. Granite countertops in a designer kitchen? They don’t make food taste better. Eating out locally? I’m usually underwhelmed, by the quality, experience and the price.

Also, going on tours or cruises as opposed to DIY travel. Understandably not everyone is cut out for independent travel and would rather pay to have it planned out, but you can save some money DIY.

Never regretted blowing money on travel, “vacation money”. Money doesn’t grow on my trees, so I cut back in other areas to be financially responsible.

Staying busy is good for you as you age.

These days we are burning through 4 trips a year, and while we're going to keep up that pace for a while, we are finding that it may not be easy to maintain for too much longer - though admittedly some of our trips are heavy on "adventure" (occasionally demanding) and not so much just easy sightseeing in big cities. At the end of a long trip (for us, trips vary between 12 - 28 days), we are glad to get home and need some time to recover. Case in point, we recently concluded a fairly intense (physically demanding) trip to Iceland in July. I got quite sick right after getting home, so I'm just now getting back to something like full strength - and we leave for Greece in just 3 weeks, our travel gear is still spread out all over our living spaces - plus I'm more than busy trying to wrap up or fill out plans for the next 4 trips (I need to book flights to Bali later this week). The planning helps keep me mentally sharp (like a good, complex game) and keeps me out of other trouble.

Last year we did Mexico, Shetland, Easter Island & Chile, Puglia & Budapest.

In 2026, so far we've done Philippines (a SCUBA diving trip) & Thailand, and Iceland; still coming up next month some Greek islands, and in November Tohoku (a region in the north of Honshu, Japan's main island) for 2 weeks of leaf peeping.

In 2027 we've committed to (and booked) Egypt, Peru, Indonesia (a dive live-aboard to Komodo, with a few days in Bali as a bonus), and a longer trip New Zealand to round out the year.

In 2028 we're tentatively planning Uzbekistan, some Indian Ocean islands (Mauritius & Reunion), Northern Italy, and possibly Cape Verde in the winter.

For 2029 and beyond we've got a bunch of sticky-notes on a calendar, but nothing written in ink or etched in stone yet.

So we are certainly keeping busy. We definitely do have some bucket-list items mixed in there (our buckets have some unconventional choices, but also some popular ones) along with less well-known, occasionally obscure destinations. We are able to manage all this with the help of a lot of frequent flyer points (we use them to get almost everywhere, plus some can be used for hotel stays...this helps a LOT). I'm pretty much our full-time travel planner now (my wife refers to me as her travel agent).

As we age we are trying to hit some of the more physically demanding adventures sooner rather than later (climbing things like volcanoes in Iceland, ruins and mountains in Peru, SCUBA diving where conditions are more challenging, etc.). We have not been limited yet by mobility challenges but if we keep up this pace I can see that coming (wife is starting to grumble about 4 adventures a year might be too much, maybe we'll just do 3 in 2028....but then she keeps giving me assignments to figure out...what's that? Humpbacks in Réunion? Sure, honey. Lemurs in Madagascar? OK. French Polynesia? Um...alright. The Dolomites without crowds? Hmmm. I'll put that on the list and get back to you...).

You never know when the next pandemic or major war will roll downhill. You can't take it with you, so do it now or soon, as you can figure out how to make it survivable. Boom.

joefarnacle, yes to priorities. Our cars are over 20 years old and we don't eat out in the USA. My husband does our house projects except for a few components he outsources.

I was going to redo the kitchen this year. Instead we’re going on a bucket-list trip for our 50th. I’ll continue on hands and knees to dig stuff out from the back of those lower shelves for another or two instead of getting easy sliding roll-out drawers. This boomer’s priorities.

I’m sure you have all heard retirement characterized into 3 phases.
Go-Go years
Slow-Go years
No-Go years

I tell my family I am go-going while the go-going is good!

Most of us baby boomers have watched our parents age, and sadly lost them. We know first hand that those no-go years do arrive. We also know that a house full of stuff becomes a clean out project. I’d rather spend money on experiences, often shared with family, than things.

We are front loading our retirement. Yes, that means we are spending more than 4%. If you are having trouble spending what you spent many years earning and saving, I highly recommend a book called Die With Zero.

Thanks for the tip Tammy. I'm going to check the book out.

While I think this forum is not a great representative of the population at large, I do LOVE that folks are actively approaching travel in their later years. I definitely had that "mid-life reset" when I hit 50 and as my parents died. I realized that "if not now, when?" really made sense. Kicking the can makes less and less sense as every year goes by.

And we explicitly stated to our financial adviser that our goal was to die with zero. Sure, there's a fudge factor/safety net in there, but the aim is to spend it all down while we are the ones to do it.

Boomers are currently aged 62 to 80. GenX are 46 to 61. I'm GenX and it bugs me when I'm called a Boomer.

This article is interesting, but really is only applicable to a small minority who are financially stable and love to travel. Lucky them.

To Emily in Austria,
Yes, I get bugged when called a Boomer. Not because I dislike Boomers, but because of hearing the "Okay Boomer" snark that is, thankfully, disappearing. I am of the "Silent Generation" and proud of that. Getting linked to the Boomer generation assumes I have characteristics (good and not-so-good) that don't apply to me, and I prefer to be ME, not a cog in some giant wheel of the very large Baby Boomer demographic. And I bet that many Boomers don't appreciate some of the assumptions made about their generation as well.
Interesting though these types of articles are, I would rather presume that people each have their own track in navigating the world, and I am glad so many people are getting out there to widen their own experience. (Although I confess to not liking the crowds one can find in various locations!)

Whenever you read an article in the WSJ, you have to consider that their target demographic for lifestyle articles, is people with above average income and tastes. The articles about Gen X - Z not being able to afford housing are less rosy.