The Go-Go Years: Why Front-Loading Travel Can Make Sense
Retirement spending usually isn’t flat. Here’s what the research shows, why spending more on travel early can be a sound plan, and how to do it without putting your later years at risk.
Most retirement plans assume you’ll spend the same amount, adjusted for inflation, every year for 30 years. Real retirees rarely do. The years right after you stop working are often the most active: more trips, more time with family, more of the things you postponed. Later, travel slows down on its own.
Planning for that pattern on purpose, rather than spending the same amount every year, can let you do more while you’re most able to enjoy it.
Go-go, slow-go, no-go
Financial planner Michael Stein described retirement in three stages, and the names stuck:
| Stage | Typical ages | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Go-go years | Roughly 60s to mid-70s | Active travel, hobbies, the bucket list |
| Slow-go years | Roughly mid-70s to mid-80s | Shorter trips closer to home, more time with family |
| No-go years | Roughly mid-80s on | Little travel; health care becomes a bigger share of spending |
The ages are only a guide. Health, not birthdays, decides when each stage starts.
What the research shows
Researcher David Blanchett studied the actual spending of retiree households and found that inflation-adjusted spending fell by about 1% a year on average between ages 60 and 90. Spending didn’t fall in a straight line: it dropped faster in the middle of retirement and leveled off late, when medical costs rise. Planners call this shape the “retirement spending smile.”
The practical point: a plan that assumes flat spending for 30 years may be asking you to underspend in your 60s and early 70s to pay for travel you’re unlikely to take in your 80s.
A worked example
A couple retiring at 65 expects to spend $6,000 a year on recurring trips in today’s dollars. They want to do more while they’re healthy: an extra $6,000 a year for their first 10 years, then back to their normal $6,000.
| Ages | Recurring travel | Extra go-go travel | Total per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 65–74 | $6,000 | $6,000 | $12,000 |
| 75 on | $6,000 | $0 | $6,000 |
Ten years of extra travel adds $60,000 in today’s dollars. Because it ends at 75, it costs far less than raising the budget by $6,000 for life.
Why front-loading can make sense
- Health is the real deadline. Long flights, walking tours and active trips get harder with age. Spending earlier matches money to the years you can use it.
- Spending tends to fall anyway. If your later spending is likely to drift down, a plan with extra early spending may cost less over a lifetime than it first appears.
- Regret runs one way. Many retirees underspend early out of caution, then find their health limits travel later.
Spending more early has a catch. A big market drop in your first years of retirement, while you’re also withdrawing the most, does more lasting damage than the same drop later. The answer isn’t to stop traveling. It’s to fund the next few years of spending from safe, stable money so a downturn doesn’t force you to sell investments at a loss. The Sequence-of-Returns Risk lesson explains why order matters.
How to plan the go-go years
- Set your normal travel year. Price the trips you expect to keep taking for as long as you can. That’s your recurring budget.
- Add a go-go layer with an end date. Decide how much extra you want and for how many years, for example $6,000 a year until 75.
- Put the most demanding trips first. Long-haul and active travel early; cruises and shorter trips later.
- Test the whole plan. With taxes and inflation included, does your income still cover everything, every year, including the late years when health costs rise?
- Revisit every year. If your health or markets change, adjust the go-go layer, not your essentials.
How Blueprint approaches this
- Your recurring travel goes in the Lifestyle line of your Budget, in today’s dollars. Blueprint adjusts it for 3% annual inflation and builds the taxes into your monthly retirement paycheck.
- Your recurring budget rises with inflation but doesn’t taper on its own. To plan a go-go layer, add the extra travel as Future Large Purchases (Plus) in the years you expect to take it.
- Large purchases are paid from your Growth Engine, while your monthly paycheck comes from the Liquidity and Income Engines. If Growth can’t cover a purchase, Blueprint flags a Funding Gap before you commit.
- With Plus, a what-if scenario lets you compare “travel more early” with your baseline side by side, without changing your saved plan.
Planning your go-go years:
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Plan your go-go years
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Blueprint University →Sources: David Blanchett, “Exploring the Retirement Consumption Puzzle,” Journal of Financial Planning (May 2014); Scott Burns, “The Many Stages of Retirement” (on Michael Stein’s three stages).
Blueprint Tomorrow provides educational planning tools, not individualized investment, tax, insurance or legal advice. Nothing in this lesson is a recommendation to take any specific action with your accounts.