How did you decide to take a mini-retirement?

[Scio5]

I'm having major analysis paralysis and would love to hear other people's stories!
I'm currently at about 16x my 2021 spending, which isn't enough to pull the trigger forever but seems to be enough to make interesting life choices - go back to school? Take a year off and travel? Switch careers completely because I feel stuck and bored at current day job? Coast or BaristaFIRE? We have no kids and are currently renting, so it feels like we have a lot of flexibility. Of course complicating factors are that COVID makes travel difficult right now, and I'm not sure what to do with our cats if we decided to do slow travel for a while.

If you took a mini-retirement (or downshifted, etc.), did you have a triggering event like hitting a net worth milestone? Did you have any issues getting back into the workforce? Anything you would have done differently?

[ixtap]

We had planned to take a sabbatical when we hit a certain taxable goal. However, research on how to handle our money lead me to FIRE and MMM and we started diverting funds to MBR. As a result, we ended up meeting our taxable goals at almost the say time as we reached FI.

Sorry to say, this is pretty much the reverse of what you were asking. But one of the deciding factors was that my brother took a sabbatical right around the dot com bust and it was years before he was able to get back into the work force. Of course, his savings were basically just enough for the year, he even expected to pick up contract work while traveling.

[SailingOnASmallSailboat]

took 2 mini-retirements. 1 3 years after college (3 year long) and then 1 from 2009-2010. Triggering event for #1 was hitting a certain number in our bank account, and at 25 didn't think a thing about getting back into the workforce. Took about 5 minutes in 1997 to get a job which shifted in 1998 when we moved geographic locations to be somewhere we wanted to be.

Second mini-retirement was triggered by the downturn. Not because we lost jobs but because we just said screw it. Final factor was DH being confident on doing consulting if he couldn't get back into the workplace (which turned out not to be any issue at all - his old boss jumped immediately with an offer when he wrote to say he was heading back in a few months)

Now fully FIREd at 52. Would we do anything different? Can't see what, honestly.

[BlueHouse]

I took a mini-retirement in my thirties after the 2000 crash.  The small tech company I worked for went kaput, then my next job lasted 6 weeks before it also went under (big company with decent severance package even for people who had only been employed a few weeks), then my next job offer was delayed and delayed and delayed after a verbal offer, until they finally admitted there was an indefinite hiring freeze.  At that point, I knew things were going to be rough for a while where I was located, so I sold my house, and did some slow traveling through Africa.  Spent 6 months there.  When I finally returned, I wasn't interested in going back to my old career, so I did a version of barista by working in a wine store (I wanted to learn about wine and wine tastings/pairings).  Retail is hard and after 6 months on my feet, I was ready to go back to a cushy office job.  My travels made me a more-rounded person and because I did some volunteer work through one of those "volunteer vacation" outfits, I worked that time into my resume as a "project" that I worked on.  It made my interviews more memorable and made me a more interesting person, which I think helped in my job search. 

I finally FIREd for good last year at age 53.  My mini-retirement is something I have never regretted and I wish I had done more because now my knees cannot do as much as they did in my 30s.  Do all of your adventure-traveling when young, just in case you physically cannot after you FIRE.

[thesis]

I'll be starting my year off fairly soon. Last year, I realized that because I'm not married, have no dependents, work in a high-demand industry, and have roughly 5-6 years of expenses saved up, there will probably never be a better time to take a year off (I'm in my early 30s). My greatest hesitation has been the opportunity cost of the savings I'll forgo, as well as how much I will spend, but you only live once, and the circumstances are perfectly reasonable to allow this. Although I plan to do some travel, I also plan to refocus my career in a better direction, so as to make the remainder of my working years much more enjoyable (and probably more lucrative). I'm excited.

[hoodedfalcon]

I quit my job in July 2021 the moment my student loans were forgiven under PSLF. I'd been operating at burnout levels for quite some time. I am technically CoastFI - I have enough in retirement accounts that compounding should be sufficient. I am in my early 40s with a long-term partner who is still working FT and loving it. I have some rental income and some periodic income from tradeline sales. At my current spend rate, I could make it 4-5 years before I need to go back to work of any sort, but what I will likely do is just find some part-time supplemental income to stretch that into forever. But for now, I am just trying to deal with all this burned-up crispy stuff in my brain with solo travel, visiting folks, and gardening. It's glorious.

[DaTrill]

There is no way to calculate this decision, it is pure gut. 

I've had 6 mini retirements lasting 3 months to 3+ years, where I grow tired of one field and rather than play the "grass might be greener" game, retire, take some time to adventure, take on hobby jobs that pay the bills (completely ignore all spreadsheets) and wait for butterflies to land on my shoulder to guide my next steps.  It is almost impossible to see opportunities while you are neck deep in a normal corporate job, time off provides the perspective.   

I've probably taken off 10+ years in a 25-year working career and always found new opportunities that pay more for less work.  Numerically, could have fat-FIRED years ago but prefer to coast FIRE taking on jobs/careers that might be interesting.  For example, I'm in the process of maximizing a severance with current job, and after traveling for a few years, will explore being a bookie/pit boss using my stats knowledge.  I don't think there's a single job I would stay interested in for 20 years but preferred my random walk where the longest career was less than 10 years with the longest individual employer was 3.5 years.  At interviews the most talented people will say something like "I wish I could have taught surfing in Costa Rica for a few years" while total idiots would say "Why did you leave ABC corp cubicle land and work in the 3rd world country".               

A good sign is when you have a new supervisor, they ignore all your previous annual evaluations and start making action plans or other buzzwords in your "new" review.  Rumors of mergers is also a good time to start looking as some severances are good but some are not.  I would have left my current career in the Spring of 2020, but Covid WFH made the job more enjoyable (can ignore everything) and travel restrictions make free time not as interesting.             

[Scio5]

Thank you everyone, I love these stories! I particularly like the point that some physical adventures are best done while younger (I'm mid-30s, husband just turned 40).

[SailingOnASmallSailboat]

Coming back in to add - how did we decide?

Especially on the second mini-retirement, it came over dinner, with a shift in conversation to "Why go" to "Why NOT go?" The latter made us argue/dispute every point, and by the end of that dinner we were committed to taking another mini-break.

"Kids school? We'll homeschool. House? We'll rent it out. Jobs? We'll get new ones. Pets? We'll get friends to take care of them."

[Fish Sweet]

One day I just decided I'd had enough of a my job. It really was a gut decision - one too many days of unpaid overtime and one late phone call on top of months of burnout and dissatisfaction that pushed me over the edge and had my drawing up a timeline to quitting within 6 months.

The original plan was to chill and decompress for a couple of months, and then go back to school for a career change. None of that happened (thanks pandemic!)  Now I'm coastFIRE and self-employed and much, much happier for it.

[DoneFSO]

The decision to take a “mini-FIRE,” as you put it (others have called it a “sabbatical” or “trial FIRE”), was, in my case, somewhat unique to my circumstances as a federal employee at an agency that approves Leave Without Pay (LWOP) in a relatively-liberal fashion.  There have been times in the past – in the 90’s, for example – when my agency did not routinely approve LWOP, but these days, with bidding being so competitive and without enough job openings for all the FSOs, my agency appears to be routinely approving LWOP.  That could change in the future.

As in any fast-paced environment, we face risks in taking time off, but we are at least guaranteed our jobs when we come back.  Leaving… actually leaving… is serious and usually definitive in the Foreign Service.  I know of only one person who formally resigned and was later allowed back in.  He was and is an absolutely stellar FSO, and he had left the FS to go to law school, but a legal career ultimately didn’t please him.  He said it was difficult to get back into the FS, and he had had to repeat A100 (thus being a rare individual with two A100 class numbers).  The State Department’s general attitude toward people who resign from the Foreign Service, as I have understood things, is that any malcontent who leaves must not have appreciated the opportunity he had had to breathe such rarefied air, and so why would they let him back in when so many people would like the chance to demonstrate superior appreciation?

A lot of FSOs underestimate themselves and their potential in the private sector, consulting, teaching, NGO and IGO work, etc., and so FSOs are often nervous about leaving the FS.  The FS is such a particular occupation that nothing is really like it, but you can certainly leave with marketable skills and broadly-applicable experience.  Still… how do you translate that to the prestige, income, and security you once had if you decide to leave?  Especially since the average FSO receives his commission at age 32 or so, so if he decides to resign at 35 or 40, he is “starting over” in midlife, usually with a family in tow, including – usually – a “trailing” (nonworking) spouse.  The golden handcuffs issued by the State Department are very powerful, and the normally-definitive nature of resigning just makes those handcuffs shinier… and also tighter.

If there had been no formal LWOP option available to me, I would not have taken a “sabbatical.”  I would have simply had to make the very hard decision:  stay or leave. 

But I did have the option, and the nearly two years of LWOP changed my life and my perspectives on myself, my work, and the world around me.  I came back to the FS understanding myself better and looking forward to the years ahead.  Only seven years to full retirement at this point.

As for the “triggering event,” in my case it was my heart, as I think it is for a lot of people.  I needed the “sabbatical.”  Regarding the heart, I was burned out, depressed, unhappy at work, uncertain and unhopeful about the future… the works.  Everything else (money, job consequences, etc.) was a factor that needed to be worked around this reality. 

If you have no kids, your partner is game, and you are interested in leaving your current industry, anyway, it might be a good idea for you.  Epiphanies are not guaranteed, and one cannot predict what level of personal growth one might experience.  Something will happen, though, and the deliberateness and intentionality of the very act of taking the sabbatical, as well as the time and distance of the experience, will lead to something.  What?  Who knows?  That’s the reason you go on a sabbatical.  You’ll find out! 

Your perspective will shift, for certain, because it has to; you are in the middle of the storm of your life right now, so your perspective is limited to the view from inside the storm.  It takes getting outside your life, i.e. taking a break, to be able to view your life from outside the storm – to analyze the storm’s form, to deduce where it came from and where it is going, and to see your home surrounded by its wrath from an outsider’s perspective.  In order to view things as an outsider, you need distance.  In order to gain distance, you need time.

One final consideration:  no one seems to ever regret taking a sabbatical.  I never met a college professor who ever went on sabbatical, came back, and reported regretting the experience because he felt left-behind in his field afterward or because he viewed it as a waste of time.  I never met a fellow FSO who regretted taking LWOP.  That said, people tend to report their successes and positive experiences more readily than their failures and negative experiences.

[GoConfidently]

I’m six months into my first mini-retirement (late 30s) and loving it! The deciding factor was a deadline to sign a renewing 1 year contract and I was burned out. Quit my job, sold my house, moved 1000 miles away to a state I had only visited once and rented a house without neighbors.

The pros -
I have had time to reassess everything in my life in a really good way, my mental and physical health is so much better, I have been able to be more present and helpful to friends when they needed me, I’ve been on actual vacations in great new-to-me spots for the first time in too long, I’m more in touch with my actual needs and have become even more of a minimalist, I have learned that I can live on even less money than I thought possible, and it gave me a real enthusiasm for new experiences and appreciation for simple things that I had lost when I was stuck in the daily grind. I feel younger, happier, more confident, and at peace than I have since college.

The cons -
I now know that the career I always said I could go back to is something I never want to do again so I have some uncertainty around what is next for me work wise when I do decide to get another job (like you, my retirement is set but I will eventually need something to bridge the gap). I’m clueless about what kind of work I’m even interested in as I move forward. My relationship fell apart, and while this certainly could have happened either way, my partner was explicit about the fact that he has plans and doesn’t want me to “just follow him” because I don’t have one right now. The things I thought I would spend my time on in mini-retirement have not been the things I have actually wanted to do, which has led to some anxiety around identity and change and accepting where I am in terms of my “passions.” Lastly, I wish I didn’t think so much about money. The downside of all the years of tracking and counting and watching every dollar for me has been that those habits didn’t disappear even though I know I’m secure and have money and I’m not going to become homeless in four months. Seeing funds going out and not coming in has been interesting.

Overall - I’m so glad, despite the cons, that I made the leap. I don’t know what or where I’ll be next year, but I feel so much more like myself than I have in a long time.

What would I have done differently? Probably discussed my anxieties with a therapist before making the move to get some coping strategies beforehand. The things I’m anxious about now were always there under the surface of the immediate stressors around exiting/selling/moving. If you have the resources to do so, I would say some therapy around planning for such a huge life change can’t hurt. Treat you mental and emotional planning with the same care and importance that you give your financial planning.

[Anette]

Love the ideas of mini retirement, Coast fire...
We have five ( youngest turned 18) children, DH nly started working full time at 30, and we didn't start saving until about 10 years ago. Found MMM about five years ago and have been increasing our savings rate since.

I feel torn between saving  and living now. We love to travel and I was able to take an eight week brake in Africa in 2019 which really helped but just made me want more...

We will be turning 52 this year and I think I am developing some anxiety about the time we have left and what to do with it. I am clearly not happy with my work but still to comfortable to make a change.

Anyway, love reading your stories and getting inspired to find the right solution for us.

[FLBiker]

I've enjoyed reading this thread.

I spent my 20s working part-time, teaching English in Asia, playing in bands, scuba diving, etc.  It was great, and I managed to save a little bit of money as well (~$70K by the time I was 30).  Perhaps because of that, I didn't think much about mini-retirements once I started working full-time in my early 30s.

Now I'm 45, married, 1 kid (age 6), with about $1.4M in investments.  I'd intended to downshift / take a mini-retirement once we hit $1.2M, and I'm basically just waiting until I don't like my job.  I WFH and get ~40 vacation per year.  I like my boss, my colleagues and my work.  Honestly, I get more frustration from DIY projects around the house than from my job. :)  I don't earn a ton of money compared to some on here (~$80K USD) but it's a great salary for where I live (rural Nova Scotia) so I'm hesitant to give it up as it's almost guaranteed I'll never earn that much again.  And I have plenty of time during my work days to take care of things around the house, work out, etc. 

I guess what I'm saying is, if that changes, I'll quit.  If it doesn't, I'll probably just ride it out until $2M.

[Dicey]

Great thread. My story might not be helpful, but I'll toss it on the pile, because everybody loves a good FIRE story, right?

I was putting myself through junior college in the late 70's. I realized if I took a year off and worked, I could declare myself "emancipated" and thus be eligible for greater financial aid at a good university. I was working in retail part time, so I applied for a job with one of my vendors, based on my experience. I beat out a bunch of other candidates and a whole new world was opened up to me. It was a sales support job that included salary, benefits, travel and a company car. My friends were green with envy. Most people at NewCo were college graduates, but doing the job effectively was valued, so I did fine. The sales person I was teamed with was a single mom, maybe ten or twelve years older than me, returning to work after her husband had died of cancer, exacerbated by a misdiagnosis. She had a preschool child and was starting over. We got on well and she became kind of a life skills mentor/role model to me. I learned a ton from her. I loved the job, but was getting some pressure to join the sales team, which I did NOT want to do, because I planned to go back to college...

About six months into the job, we were at a National Meeting in Acapulco. One evening, our large group herded onto multiple charter buses en route to a fancy Awards Dinner. Ours was so over-air conditioned that all the windows were fogged and condensation was dripping down them. The bus drivers started passing each other on a winding road, playing chicken with oncoming traffic. I was scared shitless and freezing. I leaned forward, tucked my hands under my knees and...felt a lump. My mentor was sitting next to me, also trying to stay calm, so I mentioned it to her, kind of as a distraction. She freaked out, because that's how her husband's cancer had started. Thanks to her dire concern, I took it seriously...

Yup, it was cancer. The company was incredibly generous with me as I recovered, so I decided to stay at least until the five year mark out of sheer gratitude. I could finish college later, right? For now, I had new goals. I wanted financial security, I wanted to own my own home, and I absolutely could never, ever go without health insurance. My very rare cancer unfortunately, had a "propensity to recur", especially in the first five years. Plus, in the course of treatment, a heart problem had been discovered. Shit.

I went back to work and was eventually pushed into sales. I was good at it, but it didn't feed my soul. I felt trapped, because I needed medical insurance. I reluctantly decided to forgo the college dream, focus on financial freedom and retiring early, which was not a "thing" back then. I also promised myself I'd stop and smell as many roses as possible along the way, which I did.


~~~~~~~~~~
[Omitting many interesting-to-me life stories here; this is already too long.]
~~~~~~~~~~

Fast forward almost thirty years. I had accrued a growing 'stache and expensive property. I had traveled and adventured as much and as frugally as possible. Did I mention I lived in a HCOLA? And that I needed healthcare? And that "Obamacare" didn't yet exist? I was reasonably successful in sales, but no longer enjoyed the grind. I wanted out. In 2012, I decided I wanted OUT and determined to do so at the end of 90 working days, come hell or high water. I made a 90 link chain out of pink construction paper and festooned it around my home office. My vague plan was to rent out my house, buy an RV and travel my ass off, but I still needed healthcare. (Do you sense a theme here?)

ACA wouldn't come into being for two more long years, but health coverage for domestic partners was now a thing. I decided to explore that angle. I discussed it with one of my close single woman friends, who was in academia. She said she'd do it for me in a heartbeat, but her cousin was in HR and would know it wasn't real. Couple of days later, she was at my house when a contractor I'd previously used came by to give me quote to paint, in preparation for renting it out. My nosy friend asked him tons of questions about his day job. When he left, she said, "His company's benefits are way better than mine. He's a widower. There's your potential domestic partner." W-w-w-hat?

Next time the contractor was over, I broached the subject with him. I'd known him for a decade. I had done a significant favor for his family years ago and we'd kept very loosely in touch. I'd also referred him to several friends. I knew he was a good guy. I had worked with men most of my career and grew pretty adept at spotting the cheaters. I knew he wasn't one. I also knew he was recently widowed after 25 years of marriage to his high school sweetheart.

We had a funny conversation. Since this is already too long, the short version is that he agreed quickly, adding, "What you did was so important to my family that I'd even marry you on paper if it helps you out." What???? We decided to have dinner together a couple of days later to talk about it. At dinner, he explained that his healthcare premiums for his immediate family were 100% paid by his employer. I could get healthcare for zero cost! And, he had an RV! We kept talking. One dinner led to another and just like that, we realized were dating! We eloped a couple months later and I quit my job a few weeks after that. Lest anyone think it was a marriage of convenience, we've been happily married for nine years. We still sometimes joke that we can't believe it. Neither of us ever had a clue our lives would turn out this way.

So, after years of struggle, of scrimping and saving and kissing frogs in search of my prince, I finally found him. Sure, it sounds like a crazy fairy tale (and it is), but it turns out that getting married instantly blew us way past any "Magic Number". For [reasons], he kept working, but will be pulling the trigger in March. We are now richer than either of us ever thought possible and we are so excited to begin this new chapter together. Funny, we bought a new (to us) RV right before the pandemic started. We're looking forward to exploring the world soon. We had a nice practice run at last October's Moab Meetup.

To circle back to the original question, I always wanted to take a sabbatical and/or retire early. I "failed" because I didn't actually retire until I was 54, but it was completely worth the wait. Life is crazy, unpredictable, and wonderful.

[Anon-E-Mouze]

Although it's a different beast than a sabbatical, I'd like to speak up for the benefits of "working sabbaticals".  I took a 12-month working sabbatical in 2001-02 and combined it with 10-week break at the end before I resumed my old job, and that experience was life-changing.

Before the sabbatical, I was working for a government agency in a demanding, supervisory role with fairly long hours (usually 8:30-6:30 or 7 pm, frequent weekend work and frequent crises that translated into much longer weekday workdays). My boyfriend (a professor) was planning to take a sabbatical in London for a year (where he'd be a visiting professor at the London School of Economics). He invited me to go with him. I couldn't afford to quit my job or take a fully unpaid leave, but I did have the capacity to take a different, less stressful (and less well-paid) job. So I explored some options and managed to get a one-year contract with a similar government agency that was starting up a new division. I would have a non-supervisory role and would be making (when cost of living was factored in) about 40% less. I managed to rent out the condo I owned (with all its furniture and my cat!) to a new grad who was looking for a one-year place to stay before she relocated again to Ottawa. (I couldn't take my cat to London because I would have had to put her in a quarantine kennel for 6 months.)

As it turned out, the sabbatical year ended up being different than I expected. First of all, my second day of work was 9/11 (and I was working for a UK government agency that was dealing with a number of knock-on crises that flowed from that event). Second, my boyfriend and I broke up about a month after we arrived in the UK. But on a positive note, I got an opportunity to get very involved in international affairs work in my new job, which opened my eyes to new career paths and gave me skills/experience that made me very hireable later on. I also met some people who played a key role in my future career, as well as making lasting friends. I also took some of the spare time I had (due to a less demanding schedule and my single status) and started re-learning French again and also picked up some Spanish. I travelled a lot on the weekends in the UK and Europe and had a great time. And at the end of my secondment, I spent most of my 10-week break doing an intensive French language course, followed by a few weeks of Spanish immersion. My language skills ended up helping me get some interesting jobs later in my career including a contract in Paris working for an international organization and a supervisory role at another organization that included managing the Americas (including Latin America) division.

At the end of my sabbatical, I was in about the same place financially as when I had left. I didn't save any money that year, but I didn't spend any savings either. I had developed skills and experience that turned out to be very useful to my career in the future, while also opening up potential opportunities that I hadn't considered before. I also felt truly rested and recharged by the break. In addition, I was able to compete for and obtain a new role at my employer (managing international affairs) that I wouldn't have been qualified for without the sabbatical year. And I had discovered how much fun it was to travel and to learn new languages.

By the way, one key thing I did before I left for the sabbatical was successfully negotiate a "re-signing bonus" with my Canadian employer. I explained to them that because I was effectively taking a pay cut to go work in the UK, I needed an incentive to return to my Canadian employer, which would benefit from my experience and contacts developed during my sabbatical year. Somewhat surprisingly, they went for it. I got a significant re-signing bonus (about 15% of my base pay), prorated bonuses for the two stub years where I worked partly for my Canadian employer and partly for my UK employer, and I moved up a year in seniority as if I'd never left. (Ordinarily, I wouldn't have been entitled to any portion of a bonus amount for the "departure year", because I wasn't there on the date bonuses paid out, and I wouldn't have been entitled to a bonus in my return year because I wouldn't have been in the job long enough to be entitled to a bonus.) I was also given the option of buying pension credit for the year I was in the UK. (I regret not doing that.)

[Scio5]

Wow, these stories are all inspiring and amazing, thank you so much for sharing!

[alcon835]

I am a very big fan of this thread!! Hoping more folks see it and add their two cents.

Right now I am planning on taking some sort of a break once I am done with my current job. I am hoping we have an exit event and I can take a gap year before finishing out my FIRE plan. Between now and then I'll just have to live vicariously through this thread!