This article originally appeared in HumbleDollar
I am not a particularly well-traveled man. I will be turning 65 at the end of this year and I’ve never been to a Caribbean island. I’ve never been to Hawaii or Bermuda. Heck, I’ve never even been on a cruise.
I’ve never been to Canada or Alaska. I’ve been to a couple of the U.S. National Parks but have yet to visit the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Yosemite.
I have been to Europe quite a few times, mainly to London, but most of those were business trips and I didn’t have much time to wander and explore. On my European bucket list: Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
I went to Tokyo once on a business trip but otherwise have not been to Asia. I have never been to Australia, New Zealand, or Africa. Likewise, I’ve never been to South America, although I did get to Cancun five years ago on an all-inclusive vacation and can’t wait to get back.
I’ve always longed to travel, especially to those glorious Caribbean islands with the sparkling turquoise water that I see on people’s Instagram feeds. But let’s face it: Traveling is expensive, and as a single father of three sons, I’ve had other priorities for my money over the years, like saving for my kids’ 529 college plans and putting away for my own retirement.
The bulk of my personal travel up to this point in my life has been on camping and hiking trips with my sons. I’m a big nature lover and camping, I’ve found, is a cost-effective way to introduce kids to the Great Outdoors. The plan—the one that I’ve had in my head for as long as I can remember—has always been that the exotic travel adventures would come later when the kids were out of college and I had enough money stashed away to splurge a little.
So it went through thirty-some years of working and saving. At last, when my youngest son graduated from college five years ago, I thought that now, surely, I would be able to travel.
Then, unexpectedly, my father’s health went downhill and my siblings and I needed to take care of him for six grueling months before he passed away. Soon after that, Covid hit and global travel came to a halt.
Be patient, I thought. Just a little longer. I had visions of lying on the beach in the Turks and Caicos, sipping on strawberry margaritas while looking out at those gorgeous blue-green waters.
As the pandemic lockdowns started to loosen up, my fiancée and I started to make plans to do a Caribbean vacation. Then my mother had a stroke and needed to be moved into a senior living community. The Caribbean is a long way to go when your mother’s health is in question, so we nixed the trip.
Two years on, Mom thankfully is still with us, but she is growing frailer and needs constant care and attention. How can I go away on a weeklong vacation in the Caribbean and leave my siblings here to take care of her? I can’t do it. Conscience doth make cowards of us all.
And so, Rachael and I are focused on taking short trips. At the end of July, we will go down to Key West for an extended weekend stay. Even with that, I am being careful to arrange for refundable fares and hotel stays because, well, you never know what might happen.
I haven’t given up on my fantasies of spending serious beach time in the Caribbean. I still hope to get back to Europe and maybe take a river cruise down the Danube. I’d love to go to New Zealand one day and see the country where my favorite movie trilogy, the Lord of the Rings, was made.
But as I approach my 65th birthday, I have accepted the fact that I will likely never get to even half the places on my bucket list. My health, knock on wood, is still good, but that won’t last forever. My window for traveling is closing quickly, and I’ll need to tightly prioritize which places I really want to see and which are not so important.
I say all of this not to depress anyone, but only to inject a dose of realism into those retirement fantasies. The responsibilities and obligations don’t magically disappear when the kids get older; they only change form. There may never come a time when your horizon suddenly clears for travel, and even if it does, there’s no guarantee that it will stay clear for long.
My advice: If you really want to travel, don’t wait. Make a priority of doing it when you’re young and healthy, before the children come along and before the parents run into health issues. If you already have kids, take them with you to the places on your bucket list. Heck, take the parents with you too.
Spend the money, even if it means, for a time, not putting it away in investments. You will always be able to make more money. What you won’t be able to do is buy the time you need to do the things you burn to do.
Life is for living. Squeeze the orange for all it’s worth, ideally on a white-sand beach with a view of the Caribbean.
P.S.: After writing this article, I took my own advice and scheduled a trip with Rachael to the Florida Keys. At this moment (Friday, July 26th), we are getting ready to head out to the beach. It's going to be a great day. Carpe diem!
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