I used to have a very specific vision of retirement. It looked like a pharmaceutical commercial. You know the ones. Silver-haired couples holding hands in bathtubs on a hillside. Or walking a Golden Retriever on a beach at sunset.
That was the “Deferred Life Plan.” You work hard for forty years. You miss the soccer games. You eat lunch at your desk. You bank your vacation days. And then, at 65, you are magically rewarded with health, wealth, and the energy to see the world.
But my wife and I started looking around at our peers and our parents. We realized that travel before retirement wasn’t just a luxury. It was an insurance policy against a future that might never happen.
We realized “Someday” is not a day of the week. It is a vague, dangerous concept that allows you to procrastinate your actual life until it is too late. Here is how we broke out of the trap.
The Wake-Up Call
It wasn’t one dramatic moment. It wasn’t a heart attack or a winning lottery ticket. It was a slow accumulation of math and reality. We are Gen X. We were raised on the idea of company loyalty and pensions. But we watched those pensions vanish. We watched friends get sick in their 50s. We saw people finally retire, only to spend their “golden years” managing chronic pain or sitting in doctors’ offices.
I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my wife one Tuesday night. The house was quiet. The bills were paid. On paper, we were successful. But we were exhausted. We were running on a hamster wheel, trading our best physical years for a payout decades down the line.
We did the math. If we waited until traditional retirement age to travel, we might have the money. But would we have the knees? Would we have the back strength to haul luggage up a staircase in Italy? Would we still have the curiosity?
We decided we didn’t want to be the richest people in the graveyard. We wanted memories while we could still remember them.
Why Travel Before Retirement Make Sense
The traditional model is broken. It assumes a linear path that simply doesn’t exist anymore. Prioritizing travel before retirement required us to flip the script. It meant we had to stop valuing “stuff” and start valuing “time.”
We looked at our house. It was full of things. Nice things. Things we had worked hard to buy. But those things were anchors. They required maintenance. Insurance. Cleaning. They kept us tethered to jobs we tolerated so we could pay for a house we barely spent time in because we were always working.
It is a cycle that is hard to see until you step back.
We decided to trade security for experience. That sounds romantic, but let me be real with you. It is terrifying. Selling the house. Selling the cars. Watching your friends upgrade their kitchens while you are downsizing into a suitcase. People looked at us like we were having a mid-life crisis.
Maybe we were. But I would argue that a mid-life crisis is actually a moment of clarity. It is your brain waking up and screaming, “Is this it?”
The Reality of “Mini-Retirements”
We stopped thinking about retirement as a finish line at age 65. Instead, we started looking at life in chapters. Why not take a mini-retirement now? Why not travel while we can hike a volcano without needing three days to recover?
The world is changing fast. Places are becoming overcrowded or environmentally damaged. Waiting twenty years to see the Great Barrier Reef might mean there is no reef left to see. Travel before retirement allows you to see the world as it is now. Not as it might be.
Confronting the Fear
The biggest hurdle wasn’t the money. It was the psychology. We are wired to seek safety. A steady paycheck is a powerful drug. Walking away from it feels irresponsible.
I had nights where I stared at the ceiling, convinced we were making a massive mistake. What about health insurance? What if we run out of money? What if we hate it?
These are valid fears. I won’t sugarcoat it. But here is the counter-argument we used to calm our nerves. The biggest risk isn’t running out of money. The biggest risk is getting to the end of your life and realizing you never actually lived it. You just managed it.
My wife was the anchor here. She reminded me that we are resourceful. If the money runs out, we can work. We have skills. We aren’t disappearing off the face of the earth. We are just changing our address.
The New ROI
We invest in 401ks for a Return on Investment. But what is the Return on Life?
Since we left, the ROI has been incalculable. It is waking up in a new city with no alarm clock. It is having coffee with my wife and actually talking, not just coordinating schedules. It is navigating a foreign train system and feeling that spark of triumph when you figure it out.
We aren’t saying everyone should sell everything and become nomads. But I am saying you should question the default setting. If you are waiting for a magical “Someday” to start doing the things you love, you are gambling with high stakes.
Time moves on and stops for no one; don’t wait for the ‘someday’ that may never come. Instead, make the time to do the things you want to do now, so you don’t have regrets later in life.