Even if you’re not ready to start packing your bags yet, there’s no harm in taking stock of your bucket list destinations in the meantime and making sure you’re ready to travel when the time comes.
Your immediate travel plans may have been put on hold this month (or for the remainder of 2020), but analysis shows some Americans are starting to think ahead to their next getaway.
Even if you’re not ready to start packing your bags yet, there’s no harm in taking stock of your bucket list destinations in the meantime and making sure you’re ready to travel when the time comes.
And whether you decide to travel this year or next, bucket list destinations typically have one thing in common: high cost. For a closer look at how Americans of all ages finance and prioritize their travel, The Senior List surveyed over 980 people to understand what Americans are willing to sacrifice to check off one more city, state, or country from their list of most desirable destinations.
Getting to their top travel destinations
With more years under their belts to travel, baby boomers indicated having already visited 43% of their bucket list travel destinations, on average.
Compared to Generation X Americans (32%) and millennials (29%), baby boomers had seen more of their bucket list locales but were also less confident they’d get to see every destination on their lists. Instead, more than 1 in 3 millennials (37%) expected to accomplish every travel goal at some point in their life.
Millennial travel frequency
Over the past year, 66% of Americans didn’t leave the country, and more than 1 in 4 didn’t visit a new state. When asked about their travel frequency, millennials identified having seen more cities, states, and countries in the last year than any other generation: 91% of young Americans traveled to a new city in the last year, followed by 80% who visited a new state and 38% who traveled to a new country.
What’s holding some people back? More than anything else, 63% of Americans identified a lack of savings as the biggest barrier between them and travel. Like not having money saved, a low income (48%) and high cost of living (42%) were other common reasons people weren’t able to get away.
While just 1 in 4 Americans indicated their credit card debt was a stopgap in their travel itineraries, millennials were more likely than other generations to list credit card debt and current living costs as reasons they couldn’t afford to travel. Millennials were also two times more likely than Gen Xers and five times more likely than baby boomers to list mental health as a reason they didn’t travel more.
Affording travel plans
If you love to travel, it may not be a matter of how much money you make so much as how you decide to spend it. Americans earning $47,000 a year or less reported traveling just as frequently as those earning over $47,000 annually.
People who’d traveled the most in the last year put nearly 10% of their income into savings every month, averaging $356. Frequent travelers were also more likely to track their expenses (65%), manage their debt (56%), and make financial goals (54%) compared to those who traveled less.
While those earning less than $47,000 a year traveled to just as many new cities and states within the last year, Americans earning over $47,000 a year were twice as likely to have visited a new country in the last year.
Still, not everyone saves ahead of a major trip. Close to 1 in 5 millennials admitted to spending outside their means to check more items off their bucket lists. These respondents identified feeling the negative financial consequences of this decision for four months, on average.
Save more, travel more
People who looked for new ways to save money on their adventures managed to go on twice as many trips (eight) in the last year compared to those who didn’t try to save at all.
How do you save money and travel at the same time? People who vacationed the most were more likely to book their trips in advance (74%), use travel credit cards (51%), collect miles or points (42%), use loyalty programs (42%), and use travel hack websites (27%).
With most people saving money specifically with their travel goals in mind, the most common ways to put away extra funds each month included cooking at home (73%), working out at home (42%), and living below their means (40%). More than 1 in 3 people (35%) started a side gig to afford their travel passions, and more than 1 in 4 (27%) sold their personal items to fund dream trips.
