Traveling with a purpose might include helping someone learn to read

Given the current economic climate, cutting back has become a way of life for a broad sector of the population. Retirees, in particular, are looking at ways to stretch the shrinking dollars in their portfolios. Common techniques for reducing expenditures include eating out less, incorporating energy-saving devices and routines in the home, and eliminating or curtailing such things as club memberships and season tickets.

Exacerbated by increased travel costs, one extra that often falls away when finances are tight is travel. But it is travel that is so often listed as an aspiration of retirees—and not just “some travel” but “more travel.”

Travel with a purpose

A growing number of retirees and pre-retirees have found a more affordable way to satisfy their wanderlust, while making memories and feeling good about themselves. Voluntourism, or “vacation with a purpose,” is gaining greater and greater acceptance amongst people of all ages.

Alison Gardner, in her guidebook, "Travel Unlimited: Uncommon Adventures for the Mature Traveler" (Avalon Travel Publishing, 2000), contends that older people generally sign up for volunteer service for at least one of three reasons:

• A strong interest in a particular cause, project, or subject area, often related to a longtime hobby or an earlier career.

•A desire to visit a region in a “grassroots” way not easily accomplished by just passing through as a stranger, either on an organized tour or as an independent traveler.

•A wish to give back something significant to a world that has been, by and large, economically kind and physically comfortable to them in earlier years.

These are, indeed, solid reasons for joining