In August 2021, Barbara Talisman quit her job working for a nonprofit in San Diego and sailed into a new lifestyle. “I guess I was part of the ‘great resignation,’” she said. “I just looked at what I had in the bank and investments and retirement and said, ‘I’m out of here.’”

Her first move was a seven-day cruise down the Mexican Riviera, which she booked for four weeks in a row. “Ships had just been allowed to start sailing again, so the prices were just so cheap,” Talisman said. 

Since then, Talisman has lived in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico; Chicago; Melbourne, Australia, and other cities through a combination of cruises, housesitting gigs and short-term apartment rentals. 

“I am not a retiree who has millions of dollars in the bank,” she said. “So I think there’s a balance.”

Travel spending by older Americans like Talisman is contributing to a growing generational divide in consumer behavior. 

Bank of America released internal data this month suggesting that while Gen Xers, millennials and zoomers might be pulling back their spending due to high housing costs and student loans, baby boomers are finding ways to live it up. 

“I guess I would stop doing this when I run out of money,” she said. “But I’m also looking at less years ahead of me than I have behind me. … I’m at a point where I want to enjoy my life.”

For Talisman, this lifestyle feels somewhat familiar. In 1973, her mother sold many of the family’s possessions, bought an orange Volkswagen Vanagon and took her and her sister on a monthslong road trip. 

“Everybody thought she was nuts,” Talisman said. “I mean, we’re living in Shaker Heights, Ohio. You do not do that — a single woman with two girls doesn’t travel across the country.”

But travel they did. The three of them journeyed across the southern border of the U.S. and eventually made their way through New Mexico, Montana and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, staying mostly in KOA campgrounds. 

“Her line was, ‘There is more to life than Shaker Heights, girls, and you’re going to see it,” Talisman said. “So I think that fearlessness started for me then.”

As for what’s next in Talisman’s current journey, she doesn’t quite know.  

She’s committed to housesitting in Northern California through the summer and has booked a cruise that leaves from Buenos Aires, Argentina, in March. “I’ve also applied to work in Antarctica for their austral summer,” she said. “It’s a highly competitive process … so we’ll have to see.” 

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