It doesn’t matter what generation you’re from, there’s a very high chance that you’ve heard somewhere that you need to work while you’re young and travel when you’re retired. Who wants to spend every waking moment of their young adult just working only to enjoy something once you’re too old (and probably too unwell) to even enjoy it, right?
Photo by Link Hoang
You don’t need to struggle between either picking travel and living your best life or just saving for retirement. It’s so important that you know that you can do both. So how exactly can you unwind for great vacations while still feeling like you’ll have a cushy retirement? Here are some ways you can do just that.
Take a look at some of your biggest costs
What are some things you are trying to lower the cost of in your household? You may be thinking “I’ve cut all the cost down I could in my household, what else could I even do?” and this is something very fair to think about. Everyone knows about all the basic ways to cut costs at home such as lowering the heating, using less water, unplugging appliances, washing clothes in cold water, skipping out on coffee, but what else could be done?
You could take a look at your groceries, or even take a look at some of the insurance you pay and see how you can keep your insurance costs down. If you have some big costs, look thoroughly into why you’re needing to pay so much each month.
Photo by Christine Roy
Get an additional job
Unfortunately, there may be a very high chance that your employer is underpaying you. Look into the average salary of someone with your position and your experience and see how much they make. You could either look for a new job (which admittingly can be too difficult) or look for a side hustle that generates passive income, freelancing gigs or a part-time / weekend job.
Get an idea of what you want from retirement
What do you want to do for your retirement? Do you plan to move to a home? Travel the world? Hire live in care for elderly? It’s also best to think about this extensively and how you plan to continue funding this idea of a lifestyle. Once you have this idea, you can then plan more accordingly to it. But, you also need to be very realistic with yourself too. Think about the family health history, and think about your current health and lifestyle. What are the odds you’ll have an early retirement? You need to be completely honest with yourself.
Cut down your travel budget
There is a lot of beauty in getting to travel, but maybe you can have your cake and eat it too. This means looking for cheaper means of travel so you can still fuel your passion while also saving up nicely for retirement. If you own a property, but want to travel the world, one option could be to sell it and buy your first motorhome with which to travel low cost.
Another way to lower for monthly travel budget is take luxury hotels and expensive restaurants out of the picture. Instead, you can find plenty of decent travel packages from your local grocery store, but there are also more than enough travel agencies that provide all-inclusive packages that are very cheap as well.
Photo by Kevin Schmid
Disclaimer: this is a collaborative post.
