Key Takeaways
- I love highlighting reader stories. I want people to realize that they aren’t weird or crazy and that lots of people from all different walks of life
- But I’ve seen a lot of older couples on the road, and today’s reader story is from Jeff, who at 50, along with his wife, sold everything and went on a
- Nomadic Matt: Welcome Jeff! Tell everyone about yourself. Jeff: I’m currently 53 years young, living in Houston, TX, and married to my lovely wife, T
Updated: 12/05/19 | December 5th, 2019
We love highlighting real traveler stories at Route for Less. Our goal is to show readers they’re not alone — people from all ages, backgrounds, and life stages are choosing long-term, meaningful travel. One of the most frequent questions we hear from travelers over 45 is: “Do people my age really do this?” Too often, adventurous travel is wrongly assumed to be only for the young.
Yet we’ve met countless older couples on the road — and today’s story comes from Jeff, who, at age 50, sold nearly everything and set off with his wife on a life-changing round-the-world journey.
Route for Less: Welcome Jeff! Tell everyone about yourself. Jeff: I’m currently 53 years young, living in Houston, TX, and married to my lovely wife, Tamara. I was raised as a Navy brat, so I got used to traveling very young. Our two biggest moves took us to Hawaii for three years, and Athens, for two years.
After settling in Alexandria, VA, I went to Virginia Tech before heading off to the world of corporate America for 27 years. My wife and I travel frequently (no kids) and enjoy seeing mostly different places each time.
Our first “big” trip together was in early 2000. We found $300 round-trip tickets to Paris — and got them! A week later, we were engaged at the top of the Eiffel Tower.
What inspired your big trip? For my 50th birthday, my wife planned a surprise trip for us to Easter Island and Torres del Paine in Patagonia. That trip was in October, and it triggered our RTW trip.
Once back home in our normal lives in November, I came home from a run one evening and said, “Let’s do it.”
We had NO plans for such a trip, but we knew we had the means. After some contemplative itinerary planning with a huge world map on our kitchen table, we made the call to the airline’s “special” RTW office to cash in our frequent flier miles.
It was mid-November, we’d just purchased two RTW plane tickets, and we were leaving in January. In two months. That was when the serious trip planning began!
Where did you go on your trip? We went around South America, Europe, China, Southeast Asia, and Egypt.
Did you feel that being 50 was a hindrance in any way? No way! Age was never a concern. We might have used the age-old phrase “do it while we’re young” in talking about it (to encourage ourselves!), but it was not a hurdle in our planning or going or the experience. We’re both very active to begin with and during our almost-year of traveling, we had little more than one or two minor “stomach issues” for a few days.
Did your friends and family think you were crazy? They didn’t seriously think we were “crazy,” but when we first told them they were shocked. I had been in my corporate job for 16 years and am clearly the more conservative of the two of us. Imagine saying (or hearing), “we’re quitting our jobs, putting all our ‘stuff’ in storage, renting out our house, giving our two cats away (for the trip), and cashing in all our frequent flier miles for two round-the-world plane tickets!”
It’s a mouthful to just say, but almost everyone ended up shifting from thinking “crazy” to excited, thrilled, jealous, encouraging, and anxious to follow us along the way online.
How did you save money for your trip? We both had good-paying jobs for years, we’re both rather averse to debt (none beyond our mortgage, which was paid by our renters), and we’ve always made sure to save as much as we could. We’ve always traveled, but never consciously planned long-term for a big RTW trip.
I think it was perhaps because I turned 50 that we sort of backed into making the decision to go round the world (kind of a “lets do it” revelation) after a spectacular two-week trip to South America.
What was your travel style? Were you staying in hostels, guesthouses, hotels? All of the above, and more. With a lot of saved up frequent flier miles and consolidated credit card miles for the same airline, our six primary RTW flights were business class.
Some were really sweet, while some ended up being little more than coach. But it was all good. That was the fanciest part of the whole trip, and we sometimes did look forward to the airport lounges.
We lived out of our backpacks the entire time. Sometimes I’m sure we looked out of place in the front of the plane with our hiking boots and t-shirts, but it was fun being up there at the time.
A lot of older couples and people feel that round-the-world trips and backpacking are for young people. What would you say to them? I understand and have heard that, but age is just a number. There are ALL ranges of ages traveling all over and around the world. We’ve seen several people older than us hiking up and down the mountains of New Zealand, there were all ages climbing up Mt. Sinai to see that sunrise, and there were all types carrying just backpacks through airports and bus and train stations.
It’s a cliché, but you’re not getting any younger, so just go for it. You don’t have to plan to go all the way around the world in one trip either. Start your adventure small and let it grow from there. My wife got a t-shirt somewhere on the road that says, “If you don’t go, you won’t have a story.”
Did you have any fears about your trip? We didn’t plan much in advance to go round the world, even though we had verbalized it from time to time, so there wasn’t too much time for fear. Besides, for years now we’ve tried to abide by a “No Fear” rule, whi
