Travel delays are never fun but recently, I was reflecting on why I went from someone who was almost furious when delays happened to now being a chill little cucumber. And I think it all stems from retirement and my new freedom of time and money. So let’s get into it and see why travel delays suck a lot less in retirement.
No Rushing Back To Work
When I made the not very smart decision to blow 77% of of all the cash I had to my name in my second year of work to fly around the world in Emirates First Class, there was a travel delay on one of our return flights that made my Mom and I miss our flight to the US.
And when this happened, I wasn’t concerned that we were stuck on the main island of the Maldives for who knows how long waiting for a literal landline phone call from the airline to decide our fate, which led to us not leaving our room and me feeling like I was in a particularly bad state of limbo.
Nope – that wasn’t my main concern. My main concern was that I was missing work. This was back when I gave way too much of a shit about my marketing job and believed the hype about promotions being based on merit in my industry (ha!) and face time being important.
I had already obviously taken time off for this trip and now I was going to miss more time while messing up project timelines that were obviously more important than me being stuck on the other side of the world 😉 .
No Missing Vacation Time
On the other side of things, when a travel delay would happen at the beginning of a vacation I would be pissed because I was essentially watching my already embarrassingly small 2 weeks per year of vacation bleed away in front of me. Did I spend 1 day in an airport instead of trying to relax on a beach before getting back to the grind? That’s 14% of this vacation gone up in smoke and 7% of my annual vacation time just gone.
This would also lead me to be pissed at idiotic US productivity culture and the ridiculousness that is an annual 2 week vacation, but I digress 🙂 . Even a relatively small delay cut into the small amount of time off that I had and that infuriated me a bit.
In contrast, in retirement I’ve done a complete 180. I literally don’t care about delays these days and that’s for a few reasons. One is that I have a clear head so I can understand that delays are inevitable and at times, they are to protect the safety of the passengers (thank you!) but also because…I have nowhere to be 🙂 .
Another reason is because I usually travel to a location for a month or more, so missing one day is much less of a big deal. I’ll still have all of the time I want to explore, relax and see everything I want to see even if there’s a travel delay.
No Spending Concerns
Maybe this one is just me 😉 , but my retirement has gone way better financially than I could have ever dreamed and as a result, I don’t really “care” about money and optimizing every penny like I did during some points of my journey towards retirement.
During that frugal time, I would have been looking at the cost of different solutions instead of focusing more on the most comfortable or convenient one over the cost. For example, now in retirement, sometimes the flights I want to take leave early or arrive late and so I just book a hotel for a night. Instead of waking up at the crack of dawn and trudging across a city, I awaken at an airport hotel a short distance from my terminal.
Similarly, when something goes wrong during travel, I no longer need to look for the cheapest way to fix it. I can weigh each option based on how much easier it would make my life and how much I would enjoy it instead of how much it will cost. As a result of that mindset, when encountering delays, I’ve booked last-minute hotel stays and taken ride shares to other states for example. Money isn’t my only concern anymore.
One thing that has also helped with this mindset is my beloved Chase Sapphire Preferred Card. I use their Trip Delay Reimbursement as trip insurance and so far it’s more than paid for this card’s $95 annual fee. Their reimbursement offers $500 per person after a long delay. I’ve had my last-minute hotels, room service meals and taxis paid for through the Chase reimbursement and it further reduces any stress I might feel about delays.
Conclusion
And that’s it! A quick post to explore what I’ve been feeling lately. I’ve changed in a lot of ways since retiring, but this change might be one of the most stark.
I went from white knuckling my luggage in a busy airport while catastrophizing possible outcomes during travel delays, to settling down with my stuffed Kindle, putting in my noise cancelling headphones and having a fine time until my adventure resumes. Safe travels!
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I wish I didn’t relate to this post as much as I do!
I am still on my journey to financial freedom and travel a lot for work. Because I’ve spent so much time in airports, I don’t even get that thrill of heading to the airport to take a vacation. It just feels like another trip.
I appreciate how you now look at travel delays. I think your perspective will help me and others who are not quite at your level but are hoping to get there soon!
Thanks,
Matt
Yaaaas this mindset shift is so awesome. Life is about more than optimising things and getting angry about things out of our control. I’ve done the same during my travels: my flight lands after 11pm or leaves super early? Airport hotel. My accommodation sucks for whatever reason? Find something else and leave the same day.
Things are much more bearable when you know you have time and energy to handle it, and to make it work for you.
Sounds like a dream. Happy for you. Living vicarious for now. Wish I had a partner. As a single all of this would more expensive and I am not financially there, yet.
Wow, I didn’t know about that Chase benefit!!! Would have been useful a few times recently. I totally agree with you about centering more comfort and less about cost (definitely slept in a few airports because I didn’t want to pay for a hotel in the past!) Crazy how it used to feel like a big deal to get back to work.
I admire this mindset. I need to practice my chill.
Being FIREd, using up precious vacation days isn’t a problem anymore. However, I still catch myself getting more frustrated than I should over small inconveniences.
Now that I can do anything I want with my time, I want to make the best use of it. When something messes up my plans and stops me from doing what I want, it feels like a bigger deal – like that day “should” have belonged to me, and now it doesn’t. I didn’t have that mindset when I was working and my time wasn’t my own anyway.
For future reference, what kind of documentation did Chase require to prove the canceled flights? Did you have to get any paper at the ticket counter?
T hank you!
Love this! I hadn’t heard about that benefit so just dug in. Sadly, I think they might have changed it from 6 hours to 12 hours, which is a pretty big difference.
“Trip Delay Reimbursement
If your common carrier travel is delayed more than 12 hours or requires an overnight stay, you are covered for unreimbursed expenses, such as meals and lodging, up to $500 per covered traveler.same page link to benefits footnote^”