6 Travel ideas for your retirement plan
We might be in the middle of a global pandemic; with lockdowns and travel restrictions aplenty, but can we dare to dream? Why not whet your appetite for travel – plan your retirement treat!
We’ve costed up some retirement celebration travel adventures. With a good retirement plan, the very best should be affordable. When you stop work and enter full-time free-time, you’ll want to explore a little. Think about where you’ll want to go and start plotting your retirement escapade.
We’ve come up with six ideas for retirement celebration holidays. Expect to spend anything from £2,500 to £25,000 dependent on the levels of luxury and experience you desire. Remember, your pension can release a 25% tax free lump sum at retirement; what better way to celebrate stopping work than spending a little on yourself?
We’ve chosen destinations with a mixture of luxury and experience. You’ve worked all your life; it’s time to explore the world… at a relaxed pace. Hopefully, by retirement you’ve cut back on the hazardous sports and risk taking. The bones are a little more brittle but you’re not old yet!
If you’re retiring in the next couple of years, think about what your travel-treat will be. At retirement, you won’t travel quite like students. It’s nice to settle, explore for a couple of days and move on to the next experience without having to go home in-between.
In retirement, you’ll have the time to take longer trips abroad; emergency-lie-down package holidays will become less appealing when you’ve stopped full-time work!
Of course, we’ve given an estimate of cost, ready to fit into your retirement cashflow plan…
Meet the animals
Anything from £3,000 per week for a genuine and unique experience. It’s important to put the research in when seeing animals in the wild. Make sure you check out the reviews and look out for scams. Reputable and ethical sanctuaries have high online presence and typically hold links to worldwide educational and government bodies.
Whether it be walking through the jungle to the orangutan sanctuaries of Borneo, living in a treetop hotel on African safari, or visiting the lemurs in Madagascar, meeting animals in the wild will be a life comforting experience.
Like any activity adventure, make sure you get this done in your early retirement years. Seeing animals in their natural habitat often involves a long walk with less home comforts and healthcare! There are some great package-style trips available, but look out for opportunities with charities and nature reserves for a real grass-roots experience.
Explore a few European towns
There is a lot more to Europe than its capital cities and package holiday hotspots. Our best tip is to search for places where locals staycation.
Try Annecy, Montreux, Lecce; get the trip adviser map up and explore virtually before booking.
Think about where we go in the UK; you don’t see so many foreigners walking in the Peak District, exploring the lochs of Scotland, investigating National Trust buildings or ambling around the beautiful villages across the UK, but they’re our best assets.
With the ease of online reservations, for flights and hotels, it’s stress-free to plot your mini-adventure across the beautiful little towns of Europe.
Staying in 4* hotels with local transport for 2 weeks, plus 6 short-haul European flights. Eating out every night and paying for entry to museums, galleries and experiences; budget £5,000 for two.
Experience the luxuries of the new Middle East
The Middle East is no longer about stinking camel rides and desert safaris. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Muscat offer luxurious holidays for all ages. If you’re looking for somewhere to feel safe, clean, and away from the riff raff, you can’t go wrong with the modern Middle East.
Luxurious hotels come as standard in Dubai, you don’t have to choose a 5-star hotel to get a 5-star experience. Taxis are cheap, but eating out and shopping is very expensive! With Muscat (Oman), Bahrain and Qatar just an hour or so’s flight from Dubai, you can spend a couple of weeks exploring the Middle East by plane.
For Brits, visas can be obtained upon arrival for a small fee (usually about £10 each), and last-minute hotel and flight bookings are easy and readily available. Flights across the Middle East are cheap, expect to pay less than £100 for a short trip with baggage and take comfort in a reputable short-haul airline like Oman Air or Fly Dubai. Explore at your leisure, and make sure to visit traditional mosques, souks and villages in-between brunching and sundown cocktails.
First, fly to Dubai, the hub of the Middle East. The luxuries of Dubai aren’t cheap, but everyone speaks English and everywhere uses 3-pin plugs.
From the UK, you will find an Emirates flight for less than £400 return, each. Look for hotels direct using booking.com or hotels.com; sign up for their membership if you’re staying in hotels for a couple of weeks; you can see the discounts and deals straight away.
Road-trip America
Look for American road trip route ideas online. The internet is a great help in planning overseas expeditions, and with so many local treasures across the US, you can plan a hit-map in advance. US road trips aren’t just about Route 66.
Drive across the red states, stop and start as you like, enjoy the freedom and escape amongst the locals. Make things interesting by hiring a classic American Cadillac or Meet the Fockers-style RV. You can even rent a Ghostbusters-style hearse if you like!
A classi Cadillac will set you back upwards of $7,000 dollars for two weeks. Dependent on your RV, you can pay what you like. Rental firms offer a range of RV-types, from a typical campervan to a luxurious moving hotel. With costs from $200 – $500 per night. If you opt for an RV instead of hotels/motels, budget for high quality self-catering, campground pitches, gas and insurance.
Visit a World wonder
What would this essential bucketlist be without mention of the Taj Mahal, the Colosseum, the Chichen Itza, Machu Picchu, Christ the Redeemer, Petra, or the Great Wall of China.
Not to be done at once, there’s nothing wrong with a one-a-year financial plan to ensure you tick them all off. Naturally, these are tourist hotspots, but as a new retiree you have the luxury of choice over time. Choose a less popular time of year to ensure the queues are manageable. Start with Petra, combined with your quick tour of the Middle East.
Each trip to a wonder for two people will cost at least £6,000, or it wouldn’t be worth doing.
Ensure you book with a good airline, for a reasonable time of day and settle into a hotel with security, comfort and a late bar! Cutting costs on a life changing retirement holiday isn’t even palatable to your financial adviser!
See the Northern Lights
The hotels available in regions popular to see the northern lights are widely shared on social media; for good reason. Just type ‘northern lights hotel’ into google and you will be flooded with idyllic glass igloos.
The Northern Lights are notoriously unpredictable… but as part of your retirement treat, book the best hotel to ensure you get the very best frosty experience in a good location.
A once-in-a-lifetime experience, seeing the northern lights from bed! Flights to Finland are cheap and quick, but for the best hotel experience for 2, expect to pay over £300 per night for the standard of Hotel Kakslauttanen.
Put travel into your retirement plan
Start planning your retirement as soon as you can. Dare to dream and take audit of your assets. Plug your wealth into our online calculators and think about what how you’d like to live. Think about when you will stop work and what you’ll want to achieve with all your free time.
When you’re ready, contact us and we’ll put you in touch with a regulated and trusted financial adviser, wherever you live.
