Do you really need to take a vacation when you are retired, since every day is like a vacation?  Why yes, yes we do.  Retirement has many similarities to a vacation, such as sleeping in if we want and the freedom to choose how to spend your time.  We choose what we want to do and what we need to do.  And there in lies the rub; when we are home, even in retirement, there are things we need to do.  When we are home, whether we are retired or not, we still need to clean the house, wash the cloths, shop for groceries, plan and prepare meals, mow the lawn, pay the bills and meet our responsibilities to others.  A vacation frees us from those responsibilities for a little while.   

According to AllinaHealth and Selecthealth, taking a vacation has several benefits:

• Improves mental health
• Provides a greater sense of well being 
• Boosts happiness (After all, isn’t planning and thinking about it half the fun?)
• Decreases your risk for heart disease (We have the added benefit that we walk A LOT when we travel.) 
• Increases productivity & creativity (While this may be referring to paid work, it can certainly be applied to retirees as well.)
• Strengthens relationships (My husband and are just lighter together when we travel.  Not physically, but emotionally.  And when you travel with or visit others, you build shared memories.)

My husband and I just got back from a micro vacation last week.  We have jokingly categorized our vacations into mini, micro and macro.  Mini vacations are quick, sometimes spur of the moment trips that are close to home and we can drive to.  They last between 2-5 days.  Micro vacations are more planned trips that last 1-2 weeks and are usually in the continental United States.  Then there are the macro vacations that take up to two weeks or more.  These are often outside of the continental U.S.  Our goal is to take at least one macro trip, two micro trips and numerous mini trips per year. 

While retirees no longer need to escape the time commitments and stress that exists with work, we still need the benefits that vacations provide.  I would have to add a few more items to the list of benefits that I gain whenever I travel.  Whether it is a mini, micro or macro vacation I always come home with: 

• A new appreciation for home.  The old sayings, “it is good to leave home and it is good to come back” is so true.  I love to travel, but there is always a peace about coming back to the sanctuary of our home.
• A new appreciation for our friends and family that live near us.  It is good to step away, as it refreshes relationships and it makes us appreciate them more when we meet up again.
• It sparks my creative juices.  Seeing new sights and experiencing different cultures broadens my thinking and makes me look at life from different angles.
• Shakes up our routine.   I am a big believer in having a loose routine or structure to our retirement days.  We need that.   But we can also get complacent with our routines, or dare I say, even get in a rut.  Vacations shake us up and awaken our senses again.
• I come back with new recipes I want to try.  Our recent trip to New Orleans has put us on a quest to make a really good gumbo. 

While traveling can be exhausting, it also refreshes and expands my outlook on life.  It makes me eager to come home and try out new ideas.  So yes, yes we still need vacations when we are retired.  However, we really don’t need staycations anymore because, well… we ARE retired.