Older people are spending more of their retirement money on holidays, and that is starting to reshape how much they expect to leave behind. Abta said 82% of over-65s took a holiday in the past 12 months, up five percentage points from two years ago, as many baby boomers choose trips and experiences over preserving cash for their children.
Mark Tanzer said the surge is being driven by a generation that is “probably fitter than it used to be,” with mortgages paid off and pensions kicking in, leaving them “quite cash rich.” He said they now have more disposable income and want experiences, not just savings accounts that will eventually be passed on. The shift is being watched closely because the Great Wealth Transfer has long been treated as a financial backstop for younger generations.
The money at stake is huge. The expected $124 trillion Great Wealth Transfer is already being tested by retirement spending, and that drain is not limited to holidays. Standard Life found that one in seven British parents plan to prioritize enjoying their money in retirement over leaving an inheritance, while the Institute for Fiscal Studies says older people’s disposable income keeps rising. Nearly half of over-65s also said cost-of-living worries will not change their holiday plans over the next 12 months.
That is where the picture gets awkward for younger adults. A Northwestern Mutual survey of 4,500 U.S. adults found just 22% of baby boomers expect to leave an inheritance, and more than half said they are explicitly planning not to leave one. Only 11% said leaving something for the kids is their top financial goal, even as more than half of Gen Zers and nearly 60% of millennials say they are depending on an inheritance to retire comfortably.
James Beckett said it is a shame when people reach the end of working life with money they never enjoyed, describing the way some people drift on “autopilot,” building wealth without thinking about what it is for. The gap between those assumptions is now the story: older savers are using retirement to travel, while younger heirs are building plans around money that may never arrive.
What comes next is not whether the inheritance debate exists, but how much of that $124 trillion will still be there after more retirees decide the money should fund their own later years instead of the next generation’s retirement.
