What a Trip in Retirement Really Costs

Real prices for real trips, read at each travel company’s own website in August 2026. What the price leaves off, how many trips a year your money can actually cover, and where that money comes from once your paychecks stop.

What’s the one trip you keep saying you’ll take?

Most people have one. Italy. Alaska. A river cruise down the Rhine. A week on a beach where somebody else cooks every meal.

Now here’s a better question. What if you could take one every year? What if you could take two?

Most people never ask that question, because nobody ever showed them what a trip actually costs or where the money for it would come from. They end up taking the one big trip, feel guilty about it for six months, and go back to talking about the next one.

We can usually change that answer. Not by telling you to spend more of your savings. By turning the right amount of your savings into income that shows up every month for the rest of your life, so the trip comes out of a paycheck instead of out of your nest egg. Later on this page we’ll show you how much that changes things, using our own numbers.

First, the prices.

Why we priced real trips instead of quoting an average

Search what retirees spend on travel and you’ll get a number around seven thousand dollars a year.

We went looking for where that number came from. We could not verify it. The survey everybody quotes doesn’t publish a dollar figure at all. Two other numbers float around the internet, they don’t match each other, and neither one is measuring people over fifty. Take any national travel average you read with a grain of salt, including one we might have printed.

We did it the other way. We picked real trips, opened each travel company’s own website, and wrote down what they charge. Every price below links back to the page we read it on.

Then we did one more thing. For each trip, we also priced the thing you’d actually want to do while you were there.

A week in Italy is a week in Italy. A week in Italy where you spend four days in a farmhouse kitchen learning to cook from a Tuscan chef is a completely different vacation, and it has a completely different price. Traditional retirement planning doesn’t really ever price that part, because hardly anybody in the financial business ever asks what you like doing.

What does a week in Italy cost?

Between $2,745 and $6,795 a person for a guided tour, and every one of those prices leaves off your airfare.

Rick Steves publishes his prices right on the page, which most travel companies do not. Here is what his Italy tours cost, per person, for the land part of the trip only.

Look at the nine day tour. It’s $3,395 to $3,945 for one person, so a couple is at $6,790 to $7,890 before either of them buys a plane ticket to Europe.

That’s the first thing to understand about travel pricing. The number on the page is almost never the number you’ll pay.

If you love to cook, price this instead

A cooking school in Tuscany called Tuscookany sells a week where the cooking is the trip.

Seven nights in a villa, four hands on cooking lessons of about four hours each, breakfast every day, lunch and dinner, Tuscan wine with dinner, and a full day trip out to see the countryside with lunch and dinner included. $4,950 a person for 2026.²

Here’s the part we did not expect. They sell a second price for the spouse who has no interest in cooking. $3,750. That person still gets the villa, every meal, the wine and the day trip. They just skip the kitchen.

A couple where one of them cooks pays $8,700 for the week, and only one of them ever picks up a knife. Flights and tips are extra.

What does a river cruise in Europe cost?

Starts at $2,499 a person for eight days, and the extra days on either end cost more than most people expect.

Viking’s Rhine Getaway runs eight days from Basel, Switzerland to Amsterdam, with six guided tours in four countries. Viking’s own fine print says the price is cruise only, per person, based on two people in the room.

What’s included is real. One guided tour in every port, all your meals on the ship, beer and wine with lunch and dinner, port taxes, and Wi-Fi.

What’s not included is the flight to Europe. And the ground transportation between the airport and the ship is only included if you buy your airfare through Viking.

Then there are the extra days. Viking sells add-on trips before and after the cruise, and they are priced separately.

Three extra nights at Lake Como costs $1,599 a person on top of a $2,499 cruise. You flew all the way to Europe, so of course you’re going to think about it. Just know that the cheapest add-on trip on that list costs about a quarter of what the cruise itself costs.

What does an Alaska cruise cost?

Starts at $1,214 a person for seven days, and the fishing trip you’d take in port can run a third of that in one afternoon.

Holland America’s seven-day Alaska Inside Passage sails round trip from Vancouver. We looked at the July 24 to 31, 2027 sailing on the Koningsdam. An inside room, meaning no window, starts at $1,214 a person, and the page says all taxes and fees are included.⁴

That’s cruise only. Vancouver, British Columbia is not a cheap flight from the middle of the country, and that ticket is on top.

If you love to fish, price this too

The ship docks in Ketchikan for the day. A charter captain there called GO FISH Ketchikan publishes his 2026 rates for people coming off a cruise ship.

A couple stepping off the ship for one six-hour halibut and salmon trip spends $850 in an afternoon. The whole week on the ship cost $1,214 for one of them.

If fishing is the reason you want to go to Alaska, that’s money well spent. Just don’t find out about it at the dock.

What does a week at a Caribbean all-inclusive cost?

Between $2,926 and $5,964 for two people for seven nights, plus your flights.

Sandals publishes a starting price for all seventeen of its resorts, which most all-inclusive resorts do not. Their own footnote explains what the number means: it’s the price for one person for one night, based on the lowest priced seven-night stay available, and it already has their current discounts baked in.

Read that again, because it matters. That’s a starting price with the sale already applied, not a regular rate.

The gap between the cheapest and the most expensive is about three thousand dollars for the same seven nights.

If you’ve always wanted to dive, this one pays you back

Every Sandals resort in that table lists scuba diving as included, as long as you’re already certified.

Getting certified is a one-time cost. Two dive shops in Key Largo, Florida publish a flat price for the PADI Open Water course, which is the beginner certification.

Rainbow Reef charges $525. That covers your certification card, the rental tanks, regulator and vest, and the online coursework, which they value at $195.⁷ Key Largo Dive Center charges $549 with a $250 deposit.⁸

Both of them make you bring your own mask, snorkel and fins.

Pay that once, in your sixties, and the diving is free every year after that at a resort you were already paying for.

What does a national parks trip cost?

If you’re 62 or older, the entrance part costs $80. One time. For the rest of your life.

The Senior Lifetime Pass is $80 for anyone 62 or older who is a US citizen or permanent resident. It covers your entrance fee and day use fees at the national parks, the national forests, the wildlife refuges, the Bureau of Land Management land, and the Army Corps of Engineers sites. At a park that charges by the car, it covers the whole car. At a park that charges by the person, it covers you plus three more people.

It also knocks 50% off some camping, boat launch and swimming fees.

We did not bother comparing that to what a single park charges. Anybody interested in the national parks is going to visit more than one of them, and $80 for the rest of your life is a no brainer. There’s also a $20 version that’s good for one year if you’d rather try it first.⁹

The pass does not cover lodges, guided tours, or anything run by an outside company inside the park. Those are full price.

We’re bringing this up because a lot of people have never heard of it. Kurt hadn’t, until this year, and he’s 60 and pays attention to this stuff.

If you love photography, look at this

Yellowstone Forever, the nonprofit partner of the park itself, teaches small photography courses inside Yellowstone and publishes the tuition.

Three days of photographing birds, group capped at six people, $532. Five days in the fall photographing wildlife, $1,062.¹⁰

That five-day course was already sold out in August for a class that doesn’t start until late September, with a waiting list.

What will the plane tickets cost?

For flights inside the United States, figure about $430 a person round trip, and know that when you go moves that number about 10%.

The government tracks this. The average round trip domestic ticket was $427.81 in the first quarter of 2026, taxes and fees included. Call it around $860 for two people to fly anywhere in the country and come home.

Here’s something interesting a retiree can definitely take advantage of. The third quarter, July through September, is the cheapest quarter almost every year. The fourth quarter is the priciest. In 2025 it ran from $370.02 in the third quarter up to $404.57 in the fourth.

Working people take what they can get. You don’t. Picking your month is worth about 10% on every ticket you buy, every year, for the rest of your life.

One thing we are not going to do is pretend we can tell you what your flight will cost. We don’t know where you live, where you’re going, what month you want to travel, or how far ahead you’ll book. Those four things impact the price more than anything else.

A flight to Europe is a different animal, and we did not price it. Those fares swing too hard by season and by airport for any number we printed to still be true when you read this.

If you were on a virtual call with Kurt and you said you live near Kansas City and your daughter lives in Tampa, he’d pull up that exact flight while you sat there and you’d both look at the real number. That’s what you should do. Look up your own trip, write down what it says today, and build your budget on that.

Why some of these companies won’t show you a price

We tried to price a Disney trip with the grandkids. Disney will not show a ticket price until you enter specific dates.

We tried to price a night at the Old Faithful Inn inside Yellowstone. That page describes every single room type and never once gives you a price.

We tried Club Med. Their own resort page says “up to 40% off” and “up to $300 instant savings” and never tells you off what.

Notice the pattern. The companies that publish a real number are the smaller ones and the tour operators. A charter captain in Ketchikan puts his rates right on the page. So do Rick Steves, Viking, Sandals and the National Park Service. The ones that make you hand over your travel dates before they’ll show you anything are some of the biggest names in the business.

When a company won’t show you a price until you’re halfway into a booking, that’s on purpose. Slow down and get the whole number before you give anybody a credit card.

Kurt will tell you he’s not an expert traveler. If he were planning one of these trips with a lot of add-ons, he’d use a travel agent. Most of us book our own trips now, but on a trip like these, a good agent still earns their money.

Where does the money for these trips come from?

This is the part of the page that matters more than any price above it.

A trip is not one bill. It’s a bill you want to pay again next year, and the year after that, for as long as your health holds up. Shoot, you may want to take multiple trips a year while you can.

A boat works the other way, because you pay for it whether you go out or not, and we priced one all the way out on its own page.

Pull $8,700 out of your savings for a cooking week in Tuscany in a year the market is down, and you didn’t just spend $8,700. You spent that money and everything it would have earned back for you later. Have that happen three years running in a bad stretch in the market and it shows up in your balance for the rest of your life.

Or maybe worse, you don’t take the trip. How many more “we’ll go next year” trips do you have left before your health turns these into more work than fun?

That’s why Lifestyle-First planning doesn’t recommend funding the trips out of your savings. We fund them out of your income. Guaranteed lifetime income!

We also recommend planning what you want to do in retirement, the trips you want to take and all the things you want to do that make life worth living years before your actual retirement date. Why is this important?

Money moved into guaranteed lifetime income earlier buys you more income per dollar. A couple aged 58, planning to retire at 65, moving $100,000 into a travel and lifestyle budget, produces roughly $12,340 a year for life. Wait until 65 to move that same $100,000 and it produces $7,680 a year for life. Same hundred thousand dollars. That’s $4,660 a year less, every year, forever.

Now put both of those against the trips on this page.

Read the bottom two rows again.

The seven-year head start, and we call that your runway, is the difference between “we can go to Italy this year” and “we can’t.”

And look at the top rows. $12,340 a year is not one trip. It’s an Alaska cruise this year, a Caribbean week next year, and a river cruise the year after, out of income that arrives whether the market is up or down, without touching the savings that pay for everything else.

If you’ve been successful in saving for retirement, maybe you want to allocate more to traveling. The math is pretty easy to estimate. $200,000 creates $24,680 if you plan ahead by 7 years and $15,360 if you wait until you retire at 65. (Quick note: a 10-year runway creates even more income, as does postponing your retirement age.)

Keep in mind that the travel budget you would use in your go-go years, when you’re healthy enough to enjoy travel, continues for the rest of your life, no matter what the market does, no matter how long you live, and, if you’re married, as long as your spouse lives.

Nobody ever asked you what you wanted to do with the money

The reason your advisor never priced out a week in Italy for you isn’t laziness. It’s that the whole traditional retirement planning business is built backward.

The standard retirement plan starts with your savings and lets that balance decide what life you get. Typically, it is based on some “safe withdrawal rate” or retirement success score or a guardrail strategy. Nothing concrete, nothing guaranteed. Just a plan built on hoping the market agrees with your retirement date.

That is more of a business model than it is a plan for a person.

Lifestyle-First planning starts at the other end. You decide your life first. Your essentials, your adventures, your experiences, and the memories you want with the people you love. Then we build income underneath all four that arrives in your bank account every month for as long as you live. That’s your Protected Lifetime Income.

Never all of your money. The right amount for the life you picked, with the rest left liquid and still growing. And if you plan your income earlier you can either use less money to create the income you need or you can create more income for the money you’re allocating to create income for the rest of your life.

There is a trade-off with having the right amount of Protected Lifetime Income and we’ll show it to you before you decide anything. The protected part is less liquid, and on its own it leaves less behind. The liquidity piece is something traditional planning tends to emphasize without fully disclosing the cost of you using that liquidity.

What you get for that trade-off is pretty powerful: since the income covers your life, the rest of your money isn’t being drained to live on. You’re not forced to take income from your retirement account when it is down due to the market. Instead it’s left alone to grow, and the luxuries, the emergencies and what you leave your kids all come off that growth side.

Here’s how Lifestyle-First income planning works.

First your life, then your money.

A trip is one line on a longer list. Here is what the retirement you want actually costs, with every piece of it priced.

Related reading

• What the Retirement You Want Actually Costs
• What Your Retirement Hobbies Actually Cost
• What a Boat Actually Costs in Retirement
• What a Bucket List Golf Trip Actually Costs
• What a Country Club Membership Actually Costs
• The Retirement Spending Smile Nobody Told You About
• Afraid to Spend Money in Retirement

Run your own number

Put in your savings, the income you want, and the age you’d claim Social Security, and see what your own picture looks like. It costs nothing and asks nothing of you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

1. Rick Steves’ Europe, Italy tours. The 2026 and 2027 per person prices for every Italy tour on this page, from $2,745 for Best of Rome up to $6,795 for Best of Italy, each listed by the company as plus air. Read August 2026.
2. Tuscookany, cooking vacation prices and dates, Tuscany, Italy. The $4,950 per person 2026 price for the seven-night Tuscany cooking week and the $3,750 rate for a companion who does not cook. Read August 2026.
3. Viking, Rhine Getaway 2027, Basel to Amsterdam. The $2,499 per person starting fare for the eight-day Rhine Getaway, what the fare includes, and the separately priced pre-cruise and post-cruise extensions from $799 to $2,999. Read August 2026.
4. Holland America Line, 7-Day Alaska Inside Passage. The $1,214 per person inside cabin starting fare for the seven-day Alaska Inside Passage sailing on the Koningsdam, with all taxes and fees included. Read August 2026.
5. GO FISH Ketchikan, 2026 charter rates, Alaska. The 2026 charter rates from $265 for a four-hour salmon trip up to $450 for a full day, priced per person based on four anglers. Read August 2026.
6. Sandals Resorts, all-inclusive starting rates. The published starting rate for each Sandals resort on this page, and the company’s own footnote defining that rate as per person per night on the lowest priced seven-night stay with current discounts already applied. Read August 2026.
7. Rainbow Reef Dive Center, PADI Open Water course, Key Largo, Florida. The $525 flat price for the PADI Open Water certification course, including the certification card, rental tanks, regulator and vest, and the online coursework valued at $195. Read August 2026.
8. Key Largo Dive Center, PADI Open Water Diver course, Florida. The $549 flat price for the PADI Open Water Diver course and the $250 deposit required to book it. Read August 2026.
9. National Park Service, entrance passes. The $80 America the Beautiful Senior Lifetime Pass for citizens and permanent residents 62 and older, the $20 annual version, what the pass covers at per vehicle and per person sites, and the fact that it does not cover concessioner lodges or tours. Read August 2026.
10. Yellowstone Forever, photography course tuition and dates. The $532 tuition for the three-day bird photography course capped at six people and the $1,062 tuition for the five-day fall wildlife photography course inside Yellowstone. Read August 2026.
11. US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, quarterly national domestic average air fare series. The $427.81 national average domestic round-trip fare for the first quarter of 2026 and the quarterly series behind the seasonal pattern described on this page. Read August 2026.

The income figures are from KJ Financial’s own carrier quote records, verified last August 2026, and are illustrative and hypothetical.

All figures on this page are illustrative and hypothetical and were read at each travel company’s own website in August 2026. Travel prices change constantly, and cruise and resort fares change daily. Check the linked source before you book anything. This article is for general education, not personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. Kurt H. Jackson is Life and Health Insurance Licensed in MO, NE, KS, IA, and FL, and is not a securities broker, registered investment advisor, or CPA. Guaranteed income strategies involve real costs and require careful planning based on your individual circumstances.