Stuck for a number one? You are not alone. The hardest part of a bucket list is often the blank page. So here are fifty ideas to get you moving. You do not need all fifty. Read through, mark the handful that make you sit up a little, and then go find the affordable way to each. Every one of these is doable after 60 on a normal budget, which is the whole point of this site.
Once in a lifetime journeys
- Fly first or business class at least once
- Ride a famous rail journey from end to end
- Take an ocean crossing or a small ship cruise
- Sleep a night in an overwater or treetop room
- Watch a rocket launch in person
- Travel somewhere with no fixed date to come home
- Take a hot air balloon up at sunrise
Natural wonders
- Stand under the Northern Lights
- See a total solar eclipse
- Walk into a canyon, a cave, or onto a glacier
- Watch the sun rise from the top of a mountain
- Snorkel or dive a coral reef
- See one of the great migrations of animals
- Sit beside a waterfall you have only seen in photos
Cities and culture
- Visit a wonder of the world in person
- See a show in a city you always meant to visit
- Spend a day in a museum you have read about for years
- Attend a festival that only happens once a year
- Walk an old town with no plan and no map
- Learn a few words of a new language on the ground
- Go to a place your family came from
Food and drink
- Eat at a market where you know no one
- Take a cooking class in the country the dish comes from
- Try the meal you have been curious about for years
- Visit a vineyard, a coffee farm, or a tea estate
- Have a long lunch that lasts the whole afternoon
- Learn to make one dish you can bring home
Slow travel and living abroad
- Live in another country for a season
- Rent an apartment and become a regular somewhere
- Teach or volunteer abroad
- Learn a skill on the road: photography, sailing, a language
- Stay long enough that a place stops feeling like a trip
- House sit somewhere you would never book a hotel
Adventure and the outdoors
- Do the one thing that scares you a little
- Hike a trail you have wanted to walk for years
- Get in the water: a reef, a wreck, or the open sea
- Cycle a stretch of coast or countryside
- Camp under a truly dark sky
- Take a road trip with the windows down
Reward yourself and reconnect
- Book the room you would normally walk straight past
- Return to the place you were happiest and stay longer
- Take the whole family somewhere that lasts in their memory
- Travel with an old friend you have not seen in too long
- Go back to a place that meant something to you once
- Do the trip you keep saying you will do next year
- Give yourself the trip you have quietly earned
Now pick one
Fifty ideas are useless until one of them has a date next to it. Choose the item that made you sit up the most. Spend two weeks researching the cheapest honest way to do it. Then set a month and a year, and write it down where you will see it every day. That is the whole method, and it works.
Want the step by step version? Read how to build a bucket list that happens, or grab the free starter guide.
