4 easy ways to stretch your retirement travel budget

How to travel more for less

Post-retirement vacation.
(Image credit: iStock)

The 50-plus crowd has a serious collective case of wanderlust. The average 50-something makes five trips every year, according to AARP's Travel Trends survey, accounting for nearly half of all vacation spending among U.S. consumers, and 80 percent of the nation's luxury travel budget. That's about $120 billion a year!

If you fit into this demographic, and are thinking of taking a trip soon, it can be tempting to build a travel fund and then blow it all on a big, ambitious getaway. But if you follow some well-tested cheats, you might be able to stretch your budget, and spend even more time on the road than you hoped. Here are four ways to travel more for less:

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.