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All the Hacks: Money, Points & Life
Mini Retirements: How to Take a Break Sooner That Could Also Boost Your Career and Income with Jillian Johnsrud
01:03:36
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- [00:03]
Chris Hutchins
You've probably been saving, optimizing and doing all the right things. But what if putting life off until retirement means missing the very moments you've been working so hard for? Instead of grinding until you're 65 or 70, imagine taking a mini retirement every few years. Time off not just to relax, but to invest in your health, your family, your dreams, and the version of yourself that you rarely have time to prioritize. And here's the twist. It might actually accelerate your career, unlock new opportunities, and grow your wealth in the long run. As my guest Jillian puts it, by.
- [00:36]
Jillian
Having those consistent breaks, a mini retirement can be almost like a capital investment into your personal life.
- [00:42]
Chris Hutchins
And it's way more feasible than you might think, even without a high income. So today we'll break down exactly how to make a mini retirement a reality, how to fund it, how to talk to your employer or structure it around your business, and how, if done right, it can even pay for itself over time. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or leave a comment or review. And if you want to keep upgrading your life, money and travel, click follow or subscribe now. Let's get into it right after this. This episode is brought to you by Stable, which is a company that has really made my life better this year. And that's because Stable provides you or your business with a mailing address you can send everything to, and they'll scan mail, forward packages, deposit checks, and more. It's really a full dashboard to manage all your physical mail. And thousands of companies from formation all the way to Fortune 5000 use stable to automate their mailroom and act as their permanent business address with the irs, state and any vendor. I also love it because you all know I care about privacy, so I actually prefer not to share my personal info with every app or service that asks for a mailing address. So Stable has been incredible for that. Stable is also so easy for you and your team to use and lets you manage your mail from anywhere in the world with a digital mailbox. Best of all, our listeners get 50% off for your first 12 months at AllTheHacks.com stable. That's 50% off your new digital mailbox@AllTheHacks.com.
- [02:10]
Unknown
Stable Jillian why is the idea of one big retirement at the end of your life a flawed model?
- [02:18]
Jillian
I mean, it's probably not the worst case scenario, but it's definitely not the most optimal. And there's a lot of benefits to taking little retirements. But I Would say, the one that probably resonates the most is the fact that there are seasons in life with expiration dates. So if your plan is to work super hard for 40 years and never take a break with the idea of, when I get to 65, I'll do all those things that I never did, I can delay my life until then. You might realize that there's certain seasons of life that passed you by. Your kids aren't 5 and 7 anymore. They can't do this massive road trip with you. Your parents aren't still healthy enough to hike through Ireland with you. Maybe your health isn't what it was. Maybe your preferences changed. And backpacking through Europe and sleeping in hostels, you're like, I don't know if that's my jam anymore. But if you are hoping that you can just delay all these amazing things till the end, some things will wait. There's a whole bunch of stuff that won't.
- [03:22]
Unknown
I just had this conversation with a friend yesterday where he and I both have two daughters and they're both in that three to seven year range. And we were like, in 10 years, our daughters might not want to hang out with us, but right now they think we're the coolest people in the world. How do we take advantage of the fact it doesn't have to be today, but we've got an expiring window where our children think we're awesome and want to hang out with us. And when I was in high school, I wasn't like, ooh, I want to just go spend every waking moment with my parents, but my kids do right now.
- [03:52]
Jillian
Yeah, things change. And I think there's some that we know will change. We can anticipate this might be different. But then, honestly, there's things in life that you didn't know. It had an expiration date. Your spouse gets Ms. And you were like, I didn't know that, like hiking Machu Picchu had an expiration date that was coming up in five years. So I think by being intentional of like, what if we just took a little break every three years? Every five years we took a month off or six months off. And we leaned into the things that might pass us by if we try to wait on it.
- [04:26]
Unknown
So we're going to get into why is it not just for the super wealthy? Like, why this could be for anyone in different ways and shapes. But first, I just want to understand, how would you define a mini retirement?
- [04:37]
Jillian
So for me, a mini retirement has three elements. The first one is a month or longer I feel like a month is the minimum effective dose. The second one is stepping away from your primary career, stepping away from your 9 to 5. So for a lot of people it does look like a big adventure or travel or hobbies or family. But for some people it can be a professional pivot or starting a side hustle or just doing something really different, volunteering. The third one is to focus on something that matters to you, something that's meaningful.
- [05:07]
Unknown
And can you partially step away? I'm just thinking out loud. Oh, what if we decided to make the podcast every other week for three months next summer? Would that count? Because I'm still working, but not really as much.
- [05:21]
Jillian
So everyone can use whatever term they want that fits their prerogative. For self employed people. In the book I have a whole chapter just for self employed because it's a whole different bear. But I do encourage people. For your first one, maybe start with 10% of the work you normally do, because going to 0% is actually for most self employed people, more stressful than doing 10%. So if you normally work 50 hours, like just dedicate an hour a day, five days a week to make sure nothing's burned down to do the most critical tasks. Because for a lot of self employed people, that little check in actually allows them to pivot, to go out and have fun for the day and to relax and be more fully present in their time off.
- [06:05]
Unknown
And what kind of impact broadly do you think taking multiple retirements throughout your life has on your time, your money, your energy? How does it affect those things?
- [06:14]
Jillian
I try to make a case in the book. I think for a lot of people, the personal life one makes sense. Yeah, I can focus on my health, I can focus on my relationships, I can develop hobbies, I can take care of myself. That is intuitive. What's a little counterintuitive is it can have a massive positive impact on your financial trajectory and on your career trajectory. So if you're a little bit strategic of how you time these, of how you use your mini retirements, all three of those areas of your life can be massively improved by taking consistent mini retirements.
- [06:51]
Unknown
So I think the biggest objection that's coming to my head and we can talk about others, is, okay, well, you want me to stop having income and I haven't yet saved up enough money to stop working. And now what I just heard you say is, well, actually you might have more money by not working. I was going to talk about this later, but let's just jump right into that now. How is that Possible.
- [07:10]
Jillian
So there's a couple factors at play. One big one for a lot of people. Your largest raise and your biggest promotion comes when you switch companies. It's not with your current employer. So if you're 25, 30, 35 and mapping out your career, you were like, what if every five years I decided to switch companies, I take a month off, I take three months off in between, and then I find my next job that might massively increase your lifetime earning potential. Because with each of those bumps up, it carries forward for decades. A good example of this, I had a friend who took a mini retirement, took a year off, he came back to a 50% increase at his next job, which you're like, oh, my gosh, that's amazing. That sounds so cool. It was because he had worked as a previous employer for 15 years, which meant for a lot of years he was being undercompensated. He was not at market value. His market value was 150%, clearly. And so I'm kind of a numbers geek. So if let's say for eight of those years he was undercompensated, well, that's $400,000. Let's say his year off cost him 100,000. He would still be $300,000 ahead if he would have taken consistent mini retirements. So by the time he was 65, I don't know, a million dollars, $2 million ahead. Like, he left so much money on the table by being quote, unquote, loyal to his employer.
- [08:44]
Unknown
Now to take the contrarian take, if every five years he had switched jobs and never taken a mini retirement, he would probably be even more ahead, financially speaking, only. Right.
- [08:56]
Jillian
Well, I think personal life, by having those consistent breaks, a mini retirement can be almost like a capital investment into your personal life. I took a mini retirement, my late 20s, I took a month off and I did intensive inpatient therapy, like six hours of therapy a day. It was like a full house renovation. Now I've done a live in renovation where, like, you do it real slowly in the middle of your regular life and it's so painful, but if you can just renovate a house in a month and then you get to move back into a fully finished house, much more preferable. It was something that was an investment of time and energy and money. But every year since I've been able to build on those renovations that I did, then it's benefited me in an ongoing way.
- [09:47]
Unknown
I believe it. I think that I would be so much more professionally motivated and productive if I took a month off and just got all that punch list that's going on in my head of all the things I need to do. But then I come back to your definition and I think, oh, wait, I need to focus on things that matter to me. I imagine if I took a month off and I was like, I'm going to use this time, focus on things that matter. But first I just got to get all this stuff done that I haven't been doing in the house. We want to clean up the storage room. We want to move the beds around. Is it possible that people do this and that punch list of stuff takes up their entire mini retirement? And how does that mental overhead, home, project, life, project stuff fit into a mini retirement?
- [10:32]
Jillian
One of two ways. It can take up your whole time. And if that's your goal and your intention and that's what's meaningful. Like, I feel like I'm drowning, and I would rather not feel like I'm drowning every single day, I think that's a worthy goal. So a lot of people do get caught up on projects on life. I'm guilty of. Sometimes I have over a hundred tabs open on my phone and then it stops counting. It's just like a little smiley face. Sometimes you have too many tabs open and closing all those loops out does improve your quality of life going forward. For some people, it is finishing up a specific project. During one of my many retirements, I decluttered and I went through the entire house. I touched every single item and got rid of 50% of our stuff. I had five little kids at the time. Massive benefit moving forward to not feel like I was living in a storage unit. So it can be really meaningful. But on the other side, I encourage people to pick maybe two or three intentions for their time off. Don't do all of them at the same time, but create phases. And for a lot of people, that first phase is get caught up on life, recover from burnout, do some rest, just feel more at their baseline. And that can be a great way to start a mini retirement, especially the first two or three weeks.
- [11:47]
Unknown
In the book, you outline these four steps. And so I'm going to drill on part of the first one, which is like, there's some filters for setting goals. How do you think about that goal setting for many retirements and maybe before that, what are some common types beyond the let's declutter or let's travel, which I assume are pretty common.
- [12:03]
Jillian
Yeah, Extended travel, slow travel, super popular. It's stuff that can't fit into nights and Weekends like you're not going to hike the Camino on a four day weekend or whether you just feel like realistically it's not going to happen, should it be able to happen? Cool. Yeah, maybe. About when I turned 40, I realized, oh, I have to take care of my 40 year old body different than my 23 year old body. It has different requirements now. It needs vegetables, I think. I don't know, I can't eat candy for breakfast. I was like, I need to figure this out. And it can be easy to be like, yes, while raising five kids and while running a business and while doing all these other things and all these other responsibilities. I should also learn an entire different way of feeding myself and moving my body. But I just couldn't. So taking some time off and being like, I'm going to do a deep dive, I'm going to reset all my habits, I'm going to reimagine how I care for myself was a really important investment into my future health. We talked about things that have an expiration date for a lot of people that looks like recovering from burnout, hard to do sometimes at nights and weekends, time with people we love, hobbies, personal growth, those dreams that we gave up on because we thought, well, that's not going to be part of my life or that's not realistic. Many retirements are great. Opportunity to loop back around to that. I always thought I would do social dancing and then I just never did. So last year I took a month off to learn tango and it was amazing. I had so much fun. But sometimes you thought like, I wanted to be in a band. You can start a band and play for a month in your garage. You can do a long hike, you can loop back around to those dreams that maybe you thought didn't fit into your life and you can give them a go.
- [13:46]
Unknown
For people that hear this and they've got five, six ideas, they're like, oh, I'd love to take a month to prioritize my health. I would love to take a month to spend time with my family. Declutter the house. Obviously you advocate taking lots of these throughout your life, but how should someone think about which one they should start with?
- [14:04]
Jillian
Yeah, there are a couple ways I think about it. Starting with kind of what feels urgent and what feels important. Is there something that you're like, gosh, this has to be first. I'm so burned out. I feel crispy. Yes, I want to maybe start a side hustle. Yes, I want to travel in Europe, but I feel so exhausted. At the moment, I can't even muster the enthusiasm for those things. So something feels really urgent or it was like my mom got cancer and she feels great now, but we don't know what it's going to look like in 12 months. Let's front load those things that feel urgent. But there's a couple other ways to look at it. One, let's say you have a bucket list of 20 different things and you're kind of early in your financial journey. You can front load the things that are more affordable. All 20 of those things might have a different price tag and it actually makes a big impact in your financial trajectory. I did a 10 week road trip to 10 national parks with my little kiddos in a pop up camper. Super affordable trip. I do want to do an around the world cruise with a bunch of friends. No one can wait. And that's the other thing. Front load the ones that maybe you need to be the most capable and the most healthy to do, do them early. I've seen a lot of 70 year olds on cruises. Like they seem to be having a great time. If you want to hike the Appalachian Trail, maybe let's try that in your 30s or 40s, maybe you can do it at 80, that'll be awesome. But you start to kind of roll the dice. So front load the things that you really want to do in this season, the things with expiration dates, the things that are more affordable and if you know, things have a high probability or a long shelf life, maybe push those a little bit further down.
- [15:43]
Unknown
I love that. Are there things people should do to kind of design like a really impactful mini retirement? Whether it's how they spend their days or just things that they should be thinking of in advance once they have their big goal in mind?
- [15:56]
Jillian
Absolutely. This is something that you don't want to wing. A mini retirement is such a big investment of time and energy and money. But there can be this temptation to be like, you know what? All I need is to not be working and I will be peak happiness. And the reality is happiness can be one part reducing suffering and then one part adding joy. So we need to focus on both sides. I really encourage people to, to come up with a schedule. What is their ideal day? What is their ideal week? How could they structure that day and week to really optimize for whatever the goal is in that phase and then do a weekly check in and like, how is it going? Am I actually on track? Am I doing the things I said I would do? Am I doing the things I wanted to do. Do I need to pivot anything before next week? Because your time can definitely get away from you. It can go really fast.
- [16:52]
Chris Hutchins
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- [18:37]
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- [18:37]
Chris Hutchins
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- [19:31]
Unknown
So I'm already starting to think about this. We actually talked about how next summer maybe we want to take a month off. It's like, okay, how would we want.
- [19:39]
Chris Hutchins
To spend our days?
- [19:40]
Unknown
Kids are out of school. I've got that figured out. But I keep coming back to the other objections that either I or other people might have. And I feel like the biggest one is no income coming in, spending more money. When you think about the financial side of this, how do you think people should start to approach this so it doesn't feel so daunting?
- [20:00]
Jillian
Yeah. So if your time off is going to be unpaid, maybe your employer will pay it, but maybe they won't. Maybe with your business it'll create income, but worst case scenario is if it's going to be unpaid, you have to cover all of that and then you have the additional budget for whatever your activity is. And I encourage people to try to keep it within 50% of their monthly take home pay. So if you bring home, let's say 5,000amonth, maybe spend an additional 2,500 on your mini retirement, which is also one of the reasons that many retirements are actually accessible for people at all sorts of income levels because the cost is very proportional to how much you make.
- [20:44]
Unknown
Now in the case of an unpaid time off, right, you've stepped away from your job, no one's going to pay you. Then you'd probably have to not save 3,000, but $9,000. Right?
- [20:53]
Jillian
Well, it depends how long. So you have your monthly salary plus up to 50% of whatever that take home pay is.
- [21:00]
Unknown
So I was assuming three months, but if it was just one month, then yeah, yeah, it wouldn't be that much.
- [21:05]
Jillian
That amount times however many months you want to be gone.
- [21:08]
Unknown
And I'll keep people thinking about you're saying take home pay. And I think it's really important because I know a lot of people do the math about how much they make and how much they spend and they often use their gross salary number and they think, oh, I make $120,000 a year, I make $10,000 a month, I need to replace that. It's like, well no, if you're not making money, you're not paying taxes on that money either. It's the after tax amount, it's the take home amount, not necessarily the full amount that you are getting paid.
- [21:36]
Jillian
Yeah. And if we're just talking a month or three months, pausing your retirement contributions or other savings of your take home Pay, you're saving 20% of that. Pausing it for a month probably isn't going to have a huge long term impact if that kind of makes the whole thing feel more comfortable.
- [21:52]
Unknown
I didn't even realize in preparing for all this, I was like, oh, I really want to do this. I want to take a mini retirement. I didn't realize I'd actually done one. There was a time many years ago where my wife and I ended up subletting our place and we backpacked around the world for seven and a half months. So I totally have taken a mini retirement. Didn't even realize it at the time. Maybe financially responsible, maybe not. We just burned through our savings, but we had the savings so we didn't go into debt. We thought about, okay, we want to go on a trip, we want to see places. We, we'd put this map on the wall and we were like, where are all the places we want to see in the world? And there were so many. We thought, how are we ever going to see them all if we don't go for an extended period of time where travel is actually cheaper. Like it's really cheap to go from one country in Africa to another. It's really expensive to go from the United States to Africa. And so we took this trip and we thought, well, we could go anywhere in the world, but let's go to the places where there's the biggest discrepancy between the cost to rough it and the cost to not rough it. Like in Europe there is every step along the way, but in a lot of Africa there is not. Right. There's like really beautiful safari lodges and there's places where you can camp for free and sure there's some hotels in between, but it didn't feel as easily accessible to transport around. So we did this big long overland trip and we couch surfed and hostiled and camped. And looking back, my wife and I were like, that was so awesome. Maybe her a little more than me. Like never going to do something like that again. I always joke about taking our daughters later, like I'll take them to hostels and all this stuff. My wife's like, that just, season's over, that doesn't need to be a thing I do. We were bringing those sleep sheets because you just, the beds were Gross, like all kinds of stuff. So for us that was really important was like, think about the things that we're capable of doing, but think about the way we're able to do them. We spent $7,500 each for seven and a half months. To do that trip with two kids in a much more comfortable place isn't a little bit more. It would be wildly more expensive. So I hadn't really thought about the fact that I did take one of these. But when we did, we were very intentional about if we're going to rough it and if we're going to be cheap, what places can we see that would be way harder to see if we wanted to do it differently? When I think about these breaks, like we were lucky in that I was doing some freelance work. I'm curious for people who have a job, maybe they like their job. You could quit your job and hope that in the future you find a new job, that you're making more money. As you said, that's often a way to increase your salary. But if we step back a little, is that the only option? Or are there other ways that you can approach your employer to make this easier?
- [24:29]
Jillian
If you like your job, if you want to stay there, I would a hundred percent try your hand at negotiating a mini retirement. I've worked one on one with so many people and everyone's like, yeah, it's not really a thing in my company. We don't really have that policy. Nobody does it. But with a little bit of planning, usually people have a much better outcome than they had hoped for. Especially if it's one to three months. Just because logistically the HR back end of leave. Most companies have some sort of HR system for people to be gone for up to 12 weeks, whether it's FMLA or maternity leave or whatever. If you want a longer leave of absence, it does get a little bit trickier. Usually what'll end up happening is you officially separate from the company with an open invitation. Like as soon as you're done with your trip, please come back, please reapply. Like we will find a spot for you is probably the two ways that can go.
- [25:23]
Unknown
But within that one to three month period, have you found people who were convinced that their company would say no and managed to make this happen? And what were the things you coached them through?
- [25:35]
Jillian
Yeah, absolutely. I would say most people don't think it can happen. And at least in the cases I've seen and I've talked to a couple hundred people about their mini retirements, overwhelmingly it's successful. So there's a couple things that you can do to prepare. When you read the book, you'll see I've heard every objection, I've heard every fear, I've heard every point of confusion. And so I write it in a way of like, it's not fluffy, it's not aspirational. It's like, here's exactly what you need to do, here's every step. One of the first things is to come up with your mini retirement story. Like, you create the narrative. Don't let other people backfill this with their assumptions. You really need to get ahead of it. And I encourage people to think about kind of four elements of this story. The first one is it needs to be positive. Even if there's like a negative reason, like you're really burned out, you do not want to go in and say, I am so tired of all you. I cannot look at your faces for a minute longer. I just need to be home. We're not going to frame it that way. So frame it in a positive way. The second one is that it should be something that's interesting. Do something that's interesting during your time off. The third, which sometimes people don't think about, is the more specific you can make it. So instead of saying, I just want more time with my kids, like I mentioned, I did a 10 week road trip to 10 national parks. A very specific way we spent time together. And then the fourth one, frame it as a one time event. 10 week trip, 10 national parks. That's not really a thing that people do every single year. It sounds like a one time thing. Going to hike Mount Kilimanjaro for your honeymoon feels like a one time thing. Training to do a triathlon in Hawaii for your 50th birthday, that kind of feels like a one time thing. And when you put these four elements together and you realize like you're sitting in front of another human being who has similar hopes and dreams and values. And so for an example, to put all four together, if you said, hey, so I have a week of leave and I was hoping we could talk about how I could get an extra three weeks unpaid off. You see, my parents, they've always had this dream of biking through France when they retire. But you know, a couple years ago my dad passed away and this year my mom's turning 60 and she's set to retire. I would love to be able to do this one month cycling trip with her. I feel like it would be a once in a lifetime opportunity and While she's healthy, while she's able to do this, I would love to be able to have this experience. I've thought through some of the logistics. I know there'll be a couple challenges, but I have a couple solutions. I think we can make this work and if you need to be a little bit more heavy handed, you can sprinkle in at the end. I've loved working here so much and I'm really excited about the future projects we have and the team. I feel like we're really starting to gel. I would really hate to have to separate. I would love to find a way if we can make this work.
- [28:23]
Unknown
And one thing you didn't mention in that narrative, which I think as someone who's hired people in the past, it is so much more costly and time intensive to hire someone than one month. Maybe there are roles where that's not the case, but in most cases I've ever hired anyone, not that I would want to make this a policy necessarily, but a month off, especially if it's unpaid or I have to find a replacement, assuming it's an employee I like, it's a no brainer. As the employer. Is there any way that you found that frames that up politely where it's like, hey, isn't it going to be so much easier to give me a month off than to go hire someone?
- [29:02]
Jillian
So I really encourage people, don't drop this in your employer's lap. Don't be like, hey, here's a huge problem you have to solve, not that you're not busy or anything. Think through the logistics, think through the process, think through the challenges, bring solutions. It needs to be a really creative and collaborative approach. But ultimately you want the accommodating to be easier, cheaper and quicker than replacing you. And it's up to you to build this case like, this is the easiest solution for everyone. This is the cheapest solution for everyone. It's going to be the quickest solution. Everyone has a reason that they're pretty sure they can't get a mini retirement. They don't earn a lot of money. They're like, I'm too poor. On the other side of the spectrum, they maybe earn a lot of money and they're like, yeah, I got a couple thousand dollars, I can swing that. They're too important to leave, they're too critical, they're too necessary. Everything would burn down without them. Nobody can fill in for them. I was talking to a CFO at the retreat and he's, God, I would love a month off. I think it would be so, so, so good for me. There's no way. Nobody does what I do. They can't replace me. It's essential that I'm there. And I was like, okay, cool, so if you left, how long would it take to hire someone to fill your spot? Oh yeah, that's tough. That probably takes six months. It's a long process. I'm like, okay, and then how long would it take for that person to really get onboarded to where maybe they're being as effective and efficient as you? And he's like, yeah, it's a long process. That's probably another six months. And I'm like, uh huh. So they could either give you a month off or they could take a year of your spot not being fully filled. Which one would be easier for them? Which one's quicker and simpler and cheaper? Because they love you. They know you do a good job. This new hypothetical person is a gamble. Thinking about it more that way instead of like, I'm too important to leave for a month.
- [30:51]
Unknown
And so that gets over your personal objection, but is there a good way to frame that to your boss where it doesn't come across too threatening? Like, hey, if you say no, it's going to cost you so much time and money to replace me. And now it's like you're not collaborating, you're not trying to solve this thing together.
- [31:09]
Jillian
I tend to be kind of a subtle soft sell and I think you can be really subtle. I know we're in the middle of this project, we're gonna finish it up next year. I would really hate to leave before we wrap this up. I feel like this would be a real tough thing for someone to come in and fill this or. I've been here four years. I feel like I'm really starting to click in this role and I know how long it took to onboard me. I would hate for the team to be set back for so long because it just takes so long to train someone for this position. I think there's some really subtle ways. But they know.
- [31:44]
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're just telling them the thing they know. But.
- [31:47]
Jillian
But you can hint at it, but they're like, yeah, no, we're doing that mental math. And HR especially knows.
- [31:52]
Unknown
Yeah, you mentioned that sometimes it doesn't have to be unpaid, but should people go into this with the expectation that they're not going to get free vacation from their employer or what have you seen?
- [32:03]
Jillian
So I would say it depends on what they give paid leave for. So if you have A lot of paid leave for fmla, things for maternity leave. If they're pretty generous with paid leave, if they have any sort of sabbatical program already that involves some sort of pay, then you can maybe start with. That would be cool, but not necessary. If your company offers like no paid leave, you're probably not getting paid leave. So kind of looking at the company culture. So there are some things that you can negotiate in this when you're looking at especially accommodations that you're willing to make. So there are a couple things that are problems they can't figure out, they can't solve without you there. Maybe it's an end of the month report, maybe it's a meeting with a certain client. That's the thing in their mind, they're like, yeah, but how do we figure this piece out? So coming up with accommodations that don't cost you or your experience very much, but are like a high ROI for them, and you can bring this negotiation of man, I know this client. We have a meeting every Friday. It's super important. I know I've been the point person on this. I would be willing to come in or to do a video conference in two hours every Friday just to meet this need. And the magic words are, in return, I would appreciate maybe you paying 10% of my salary to cover all of my healthcare deductions. And so you can come up with a list of things that you're willing to make this accommodation and you would appreciate if they could make this other accommodation.
- [33:39]
Unknown
And you mentioned sabbatical. Why is this not a sabbatical? Could you just take a sabbatical? Or how is a mini retirement different than a sabbatical?
- [33:47]
Jillian
I think people can use whatever language really resonates with them. So I think there's some slight connotations with other words. Usually a sabbatical kind of indicates you're coming back to the same employer, not switching careers. A gap year kind of infers that it's a year long, a hiatus, a career break. I think any word that you're like that one feels right for this thing that I'm doing right now, go with that. I use mini retirement because I feel like it's the most generic and the least loaded with additional meaning.
- [34:19]
Chris Hutchins
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- [37:22]
Unknown
Obviously, a sabbatical implies you're coming back. And you talked about how one of the best strategies financially is to change careers. For people who, in their mind, you know, they've always been told, always line up your next job before you leave your current job. How do you get over that fear that finding that next job might be a challenge?
- [37:41]
Jillian
So this whole process, I think about fear as a little bit like an Evel Knievel stunt. He used to ride a dirt bike motorcycle and jump it across a ravine, which seems super dangerous, but he built ramps on both sides and he did the math and he did the calculations. So the actual risk was much lower than how it appeared. And I feel like that's our job is how can we build ramps on both sides so that our actual risk is lower than this thing that we're doing appears to be. So if you're going to be switching careers, there's a couple steps that I really encourage people to take. A really simple tactical thing is I call like a goodbye email and it could be a goodbye Instagram post or whatever, but something along the lines that you send to your co workers, your clients, people in the industry. I've really loved working here, loved working with you all. For the next six months, I'm going to do this amazing adventure, but I look forward to returning to this industry. And if you all happen to hear of anything in the meantime, feel free to reach out. I will be busy with this backpacking trip through Europe, but I would love to connect in the future. And it creates an open loop in people's minds and especially in work based cultures, like an American culture where we kind of idolize work a little bit. We're very work centric. You not working makes everyone just a little bit uncomfortable. Like you just out there living your life and having fun and posting pictures of these adventures. They're like, oh. And it opens these loops. And I've seen this when people retire early or when they take sabbaticals, all of a sudden they get all these job offers. Nobody had ever given them job offers, like unsolicited. And all of a sudden you're top of mind and people reach out more. And so you can take that natural tendency and amplify it by networking, by building those contacts, maintaining those contacts while you are gone. One of the really practical things, my ex, when we took a year off, there was a job he was thinking about returning to. And about once a month he would just go into the office with a box of donuts and be like, hey, how y' all doing? Like, how are things going here? What's the new gossip? And just ch everyone up. And when he worked there, he had never been offered that promotion. And in the year he was gone, he was offered it three times. Like, that's interesting.
- [40:01]
Unknown
I love that. So what about finding that job and just asking to start it later?
- [40:07]
Jillian
That can be a really helpful tool, especially if you don't have a year long adventure planned. If a month off, if two months off, let's say it's September right now and you get a new job and you're like, hey, I've got some things I need to wrap up. I've got some personal things to take care of. Can I start in November? And they're like, oh, we really need you sooner. And you're like, okay, well maybe six weeks then. And they're like, okay, that sounds good. For a lot of people, that's an easy way to start because you're not stressed about finding the next job. You have that security. You can really enjoy your time off without having your attention split of. I'm enjoying my time off, but maybe I should be looking or maybe I should be applying for jobs. And I would say for almost everyone, if you can afford an extra four weeks off, why not ask? And for the employer, I think you can really pitch it as they're again, creating your own narrative, your own version of the story of. I'm really excited about this new opportunity. I've got a, B and C that I've been postponing. The last job was really busy. I would love to wrap all of this up so that when I start I'm 100% focused. I'm 100% all in. I don't want to try to balance these other things that I have going with a brand new job. I'd rather just knock all this stuff out and then be 100% on day one.
- [41:23]
Unknown
Yeah, I love that idea. I just keep thinking I want to hit the ground running and this is going to be a distraction. But I'm not sure whether you intended this. But the strategy of setting an anchor point even further. If you're like, oh, I really want to take two months off before I start, tell them, hey, could I start in Five months. And they're like, no, that's crazy. And you're like, oh, fine, what about two? You know, like it really just comes down to thinking about your narrative and how you tell it in all of.
- [41:50]
Jillian
Those negotiations, having that ideal and then having what you would accept. Sometimes people start with the lowest thing they would accept and you might as well start with the thing that's ideal, whatever it is you're negotiating. But in this case, three months, like start with the ideal, you're perceived as very accommodating, you're perceived as very reasonable. If you start with like your lowest bid and you get it, you don't get any of those bonus points you mentioned.
- [42:15]
Unknown
There's a whole chapter about self employment, maybe a couple extra tips, especially because it's relevant to me. And I'm thinking about this. It's been over a decade since my last mini retirement. What advice do you have for those who are self employed?
- [42:28]
Jillian
To start off, it's super scary and it's such a pain in the butt. It requires a lot more preparation. Is the other thing where if you're a 9 to 5 employee, it might take a month, three months to get ready for you to take this. If you're self employed, it might take three months, it might take a year and a half to really get your business ready. And no, it's a huge hassle up front, but there's a massive benefit on the end when you return. All of these things are important, but they don't become urgent until you step away from your business. And so it gives you a deadline and a little bit of a carrot at the end of the stick to do this. So I have four steps. All of them logistically are annoying and some of them for some people are psychologically challenging. So sometimes we're kind of our own worst enemy on this. But the first one is to simplify things. There is complexity in our work that doesn't need to be there, but we've been able to tolerate it. So we just keep going because it feels too difficult to simplify. So being real honest and simplifying everything you can simplify. And then the second one is to start doing some automation. There again, there's stuff that is just easier for us to do by hand. It takes 20 minutes a week or to create the automation, or to create the system might take three hours. So we just kind of do it the long way over and over because we're like, oh, we have the time, we have the bandwidth, we know what we're doing. So Putting in place that automation. But then the third one, and people psychologically really hate. This is documentation. 1. It's super tedious to be like, how actually do we do this? But there is a psychological component that I bring this magic, I have this expertise. Everything's unique. Nobody could replicate this. There is no formula, because I just bring my creativity to everything. And I'm like, oh, there's probably a little bit of a formula. It's like, I had one client who does, like, tech sales, and he was like, well, no, every sales email I respond to is entirely unique to what that request was. And I was like, yeah, but is it like, I bet you probably, like, acknowledge what they said, and you probably offer a solution to that problem, and you probably talk about scope of work, and then you probably offer solutions to other problems they might have. And then you probably set up a time to have a phone call and discuss this more. And he was like, oh, I mean, yeah, that's what it is. So creating some documentation. Because then the fourth step is you can delegate things. If you've ever hired an assistant and not done those first three steps and just hoped that your assistant could magically do all the first three for you, and it was a total hot mess. That's why. But what happens then is you come back to this business. It is so much more organized, it's so much cleaner, that's so much more efficient. Everyone's better prepared to help, and there's less on your plate. One of two things happen. Let's say you were working 40 hours a week. You come back and you're like, huh, shoot, I could probably do some 30 hours a week now. And either people go, man, I really want to start doing yoga classes and my kid wants to do volleyball. Maybe I'll help with volleyball. And you invest more in your personal life, or you go, there's this other project that I really wanted to do, or there's this way I wanted to expand, or there was these ideas that I had, but I never had the time, I never had the bandwidth. And people can really expand their business and grow their business exponentially because they took mini retirements.
- [45:59]
Unknown
I don't know if this was because of the mini retirement or not, but I have a friend who got really good at this. And now I called him the other day and he's, well, now I'm running four companies because he figured out the delegation, the automation. So I'll just say take some baby steps, because he went from 1 to 0 to 1, and then within weeks, he was like starting 2 and 3 and 4. And now I think he wishes he took it a little slower. But you were right. When you learn how to set up these processes and automations and hire people and delegate, you can really extract yourself from the business and do lots more. But sometimes I think if any one of those businesses at the same time there were big problems that he had to jump in, it would be a little bit of a disaster.
- [46:41]
Jillian
Yeah. And the thing is, you come back refreshed and rested and excited and creative, which can lead to, I'm going to do all the things and you might not feel that rested forever. So, yeah, I think starting small now.
- [46:56]
Unknown
I want to jump in for a couple minutes into the whole finances stuff. We talked about it a little bit, but are there a few important things that we haven't touched on that people should be thinking about either when it comes to planning or saving or actually spending during their many retirements?
- [47:13]
Jillian
So in the planning there again, think about where you are in your financial journey. You can do more affordable things first, and you can do it in a more affordable way. So if you're like, man, money's kind of tight. Definitely can't spend $30,000 on this. There's so many things that you can do if you are thoughtful about it. Like, we used to travel all winter and we would rent out our house while we were gone. And that was $2,500 a month. And that pretty much covered because we traveled in a camper, all of our camping fees and all of our gas. And I realized, oh, it costs us the same amount of money to live whether we're living in our house or whether we're traveling full time. If you're like, this really needs to be a budget trip, rent out your place and then go be a trusted house sitter, go volunteer on a farm in Italy. There's a lot of ways that you could travel really affordably. It might actually be cheaper for you to travel than to be home. And so it's okay to start with things that are in your price point. And I encourage people to start small anyways. If you want to do a mini retirement, the first one should not be three years. Start with a month, start with three months. Because there is a little bit of a learning curve and you get better at it over time. One of the tips that I encourage people with saving, look at what is the most high leverage for you. It might be reducing expenses, it might be increasing income. And go with the one that you're going to have the most Bang for your buck. I think the thing that can be discouraging about a typical retirement, especially when you're in your 20s and your 30s and even your 40s, it's so far away. So if you're like, but I really want to eat Chipotle on Friday at my desk, like that's my one small joy, is my burrito bowl to be like, well, I'm going to give up my burrito bowl so that hopefully when I'm 70, like I can buy a cup of coffee is a real tough motivation. But if you said, hey, if I gave up my burrito bowl every Friday, so I gave up a hundred burrito bowls over two years, that would pay for three meals a day in Mexico for a month in two years. So I'm just giving up my kind of mediocre Mexican food now, but knowing in two months I'm going to be eating street tacos and drinking margaritas in Cabo. And so the loop of denying yourself something and then enjoying it is much shorter.
- [49:34]
Unknown
I like that. I think one thing that we realized when we ended up taking our mini retirement, I guess I never called it as such, but was that multiple mini retirements, if they're all similar and they're abroad, might be cheaper together than apart. And so what we found was the cost across the ocean, right? The cost to make a trip short was so high you would never, on a week or two week trip to any continent take a six day train ride unless that was part of the trip. And six is probably extreme, but I think we took a two and a half, three day train ride in Africa. If you were only in Africa for a week, you'd be eating up a huge part of your vacation. And what we found was when you looked at how much cheaper it was per day to travel slow, for the cost of two international vacations that were each, let's call it two weeks, you could do one international vacation that was like four months. Because the cost to get there and the cost to force yourself to a tighter scope of time and get so many things done go away a little bit when you're spreading it out, or at least you only have to do them one time. And so the only counter I'll give to starting small is that if you have this three different one month trip goals, there might actually be a lot more economies of scale to doing one three month trip than three one month trips. If money is the main concern, right? If money is not the main concern and it's about being able to easily get time off work, then completely the opposite. But I do think there are some cases where longer could be cheaper, at least if you're comparing to multiple shorter.
- [51:17]
Jillian
Absolutely. And that's one of the mistakes people make in estimating the cost of a mini retirement, especially if it involves travel, is they go, well, man, our last vacation when we went to South Carolina, Gosh, we spent $2,000 for that week. So a month off, that's going to be $8,000. That's the wrong comparison because traveling slower is so much more affordable per day. And usually when people have more time, they require less luxury. So if you only have four days in Paris, like, you want to go all in and you really want each element to be very luxurious. But if you're going to live in France for a year, just walking down to like the bakery that everyone knows you, and ordering a cappuccino and reading your book in the park and going to the farmer's market and getting a crepe like that feels amazing when you have enough time.
- [52:08]
Unknown
Yeah, it's amazing. I think kids also create the time luxury element because you're like, well, I just can't do all the things. So today we're going to go to the playground. And I was like, oh, wow. It is way more expensive to travel with kids in that you are buying another two plane tickets and getting rooms that can accommodate everyone. But some days we don't do anything. We just go to a park and the kids play around and we go on a walk and they take a nap. So from that perspective, it's actually a little bit less expensive. Spread that over a three month trip where you don't even feel the pressure to go do a lot of things every day or every week, I could see how it could be a lot less expensive. And the cost to rent a place for a month is usually much cheaper than 30 times the cost to rent a place for a night.
- [52:51]
Jillian
And for people who have young kids where essentially any age that you're paying for childcare, this is a very real cost that you might be saving. So I interviewed someone on my podcast that him and his wife had two young kids, both under 5. They lived in the Boston area and they moved to France for a year and it cost them $40,000 to live in France for a year. They both quit their jobs. He said their childcare back home for two kids was $40,000 a year. They lived abroad for a year just on the cost of what their childcare would have been. When you're thinking about timing, if you do want kind of an around the world trip or a longer one? There might be an added perk there.
- [53:33]
Unknown
And I know a lot of people who pay a lot more than $40,000 a year for childcare. So not that you want to do it at the level we did backpacking, but we did seven and a half months for $7,000 a person. There are some real affordable ways to live in lots of parts of the world, and there are places that are expensive and not. But I want to talk a little bit about where things can go wrong and how you can make sure it's a success.
- [53:56]
Jillian
I love this. I did the whole last section of the book is what to expect on the journey, because some of it's very unexpected. And it's always interesting to me when I talk to people because before they take a mini retirement, they're worried about the money, they're worried about their employ, they're worried about their healthcare. And then after they've done that, they're like, yeah, okay, none of that was an issue. Here's what actually went wrong. It seems when you're in. It can create kind of a weird mental narrative, is that sometimes people don't realize how burned out they are. Burnout's an incredible function that gets us out of a bad situation, and it gives us energy to get out of a bad situation for a long period of time. Like, it's super helpful for survival if you're lost in the forest. Like, you need to be able to keep going until you get unlost. But as a result of that, sometimes we don't feel the full weight of that fatigue until we're out of that situation and our body feels like it has access to rest. And this can be tricky. If you thought, I'm going to get so much done during this mini retirement, and then you just want to take a nap, it can feel a little bit like recovering from the flu. Not like on the most sick day, but like three days later when you're like, ah, I don't know if I want to get out of bed. Like, I should unload the dishwasher, but that sounds exhausting. You can have a little bit of that vibe, but where it goes wrong is that people create a story in their head. And the story usually sounds like, I'm just a lazy person. Apparently I'm unmotivated. I can't accomplish anything outside of my job. Maybe I need to have a job just to be productive. It's not accurate and it's not helpful. A better story is, huh? I'm a lot more tired than I thought I was. Good thing I'm on a mini retirement and can take a nap today and then just move on with your life. There can be some unnecessary emotional suffering that we invite if we're not exactly sure what to expect.
- [55:45]
Unknown
What about how to best frame this to people you meet in a way that doesn't come across too crazy? Oh, well, we're just going to quit our jobs and travel around the world for three months and it sounds like, oh, must be nice. I imagine people get that kind of reaction when they don't find a right way to approach it.
- [56:03]
Jillian
Generally, keep it really simple. In the book, I talk about this idea. You can use the same kind of framework that you did with your employer, but it's like, memoir rules. It all has to be true. It cannot be the whole truth. The whole truth is too big. If you try to tell every detail, you're going to lose the plot. So just keep it really simple, really short. One kind of silly trick, but it works really well in American culture, is if you frame it as, this is something you've earned. We love when people work towards goals and earn the things that they enjoy instead of taking them or being given them. So if you frame it like, yeah, you know, me and my spouse the last few years, really busy with work, but we've been saving and setting some money aside, and now we're able to take these six months off and enjoy this other thing. And people are like, oh, yeah, oh, good for you. That's nice. Versus if you're like, man, that last job just sucked, so I'm just gonna take a vacation. Then people are like, you should have sucked it up.
- [56:59]
Unknown
I just realized when you were talking about a spouse, do these mini retirements have to be all or nothing with your partner? Or can you take a mini retirement not with your partner at a separate time? Maybe you alternate versus a whole family thing.
- [57:13]
Jillian
Yeah, it's kind of dealer's choice. And there's a lot of benefits to taking turns. One person's at least earning income, and that can feel like a little bit more stability. It can make it a little bit less scary. One person maybe is bringing healthcare for the family, and that can be helpful. So taking turns can have a lot of benefits. One of the downsides, though, that I always encourage couples is that usually both spouses need a mini retirement. One just needs it a little bit more than the other. And so there can be a degree of, let's say the wife really encouraged her husband to Take a mini retirement. They're both burned out. But she's like, honey, like, you really need this. This is gonna be so good for you. And then watching him do all the things that she wished she could be doing can create a little bit of resentment. And you need a little bit more communication. Yes, it's primarily for you or for this goal, but how can this benefit our whole family? Negotiating all of those things, speaking out loud, any assumptions you have, especially when one partner's staying at home, the other partner might be like, I mean, I just assumed if you were home, like you would take the kids to doctor's appointments, right? Because now I'm working. You thought I was going to take time off work while you're at home to do doctor's appointments. So articulating all of that, because on the other side of it, especially when you have kids, because there's just so much to do, the person who takes time off goes, I just became a stay at home spouse. I'm a stay at home parent now. My whole day is filled like all of those other goals and intentions I had for this time off, I'm not really able to accomplish any of them because it's filled with chores and errands and tasks. So it takes a little bit more communication there. Again, I have a tool that I encourage people to do, like a weekly check in and set some things that you want to check in, like, how is this working for you? How is this working for me? How is it working for our kids? How is it working for my parent? Whoever might have expectations on your time, just clearly communicating that upfront and often.
- [59:10]
Unknown
You've mentioned health insurance a few times. How do you think about that? Because I know some people fear that, oh, if I don't have a job, I'm going to lose my health insurance. What other options are there?
- [59:21]
Jillian
There are a lot of options and I think it's one of those things that creates a lot of fear because people don't really look into the options. So sitting down and saying what is available to me, if you're going to go back to your job, how can you just stay on their health insurance if you have a partner who's going to continue working, obviously that's going to be the plan for people where either both are separating or maybe one doesn't have insurance. I think Cobra can be a great option, especially in the 3 to 12 month range because it's just simple and it's easy and you have the same doctors and like nothing changes or you might eventually Choose a different option. I think that so many people don't consider. They try to think of what's the one perfect option that will work for this entire length of time. And it doesn't have to be for the entire length of time. You can do different things at different points. So let's say someone who was going to do like a two year mini retirement, they're a married couple, they both take off. And so the first six months they're like, you know what, let's just do cobra. That's really simple. We'll stay on cobra. And then they've had no income for six months and they're like, okay, let's switch to a plan on the exchange. And maybe because they haven't had income for a long time, there's some subsidies and it's a little bit more affordable. And they're like, okay, that's cool. And then maybe a year in one spouse is like, actually I think I would want to go back to work part time. And they find a part time job that would be interesting and enjoyable for them and that also provides health insurance. So then they get health insurance. That way you can choose multiple options and string them together. Especially for longer mini retirements.
- [60:53]
Unknown
Yeah, I don't know if this is still the case, but there used to be because I remember getting laid off and thinking about these things, like some short term policies in states where it's like, you can't do this forever, but it's reasonably affordable for like a 6 to 12 month window. Or if you're traveling, different travel insurance policies can be a decent option as well. I feel like I'm ready to really start putting this plan for us to do this next summer, especially because the kids are out of school. What could we do with them? How could we plan ahead? Any other parting advice for me as I think about planning this with almost a year lead time.
- [61:29]
Jillian
So when you have a long lead time, I'll speak to that element is starting to put in place what those goals would be, what those intentions would be. Not just for planning, but to start to practice, to kind of warm up and get into that mode. And one thing I encourage people to do is to kind of find the microhabit that matches that intention. So if you said like for you guys with kids, we're going to do a big trip, we're going to travel, start practicing, travel with your kids. And what that can look like is just on a Saturday being like, you know what, we're going to leave the house at 9am and we're not going to come home till 7pm and we're just going to be out and about. We're going to go out to breakfast, we're going to go to a park, we're going to go to a farmer's market, maybe a museum, we're going to go out to dinner. But start to practice those things so that when you get to the mini retirement, you're not starting every learning curve. It can help you just be more successful right from the get go.
- [62:27]
Unknown
Okay, I'm sure there are lots of people who, like me, are now excited to do this. For people who want to dig in a lot more, where do you want to send them?
- [62:35]
Jillian
The book is available everywhere. If you go to retireoffman.com, you can find the book or worksheets. I have a really unhinged newsletter and then retire often podcasts where I share people's stories. If you like the idea, but you're like, yeah, it won't work for me, I would encourage you to read through the book because I think it would resolve a lot of the fears and the challenges. But mostly if you get the idea in your head and you start walking in that direction, life might provide an opportunity when you don't expect it and you can pivot and take advantage of that.
- [63:06]
Unknown
I love that. Before we started recording I said, what would be a goal here? You said, I want someone to message me after they take this trip and tell me about it. And so for anyone listening who's inspired, I will be disappointed if I check in with Jillian in a year and you haven't gotten at least one message of someone who's taken a mini retirement. So do that. Reach out and let her know. This has been awesome. Thank you so much.
- [63:28]
Jillian
Awesome. Thank you.
- [63:30]
Unknown
Such a great episode.
- [63:32]
Chris Hutchins
Thank you so much for listening. I really hope you enjoyed it and if you did, please consider clicking that Follow or Subscribe button if you haven't already. It really helps us out and there's no better way to support us than doing that. Or sharing the show with a friend, colleague or family member or even a random stranger is totally appreciated. Also, links to every everything in this and all other episodes are at allthehacks.com where you can also find all the deals we find as well as links to the top credit card bonuses. Finally, if you have any feedback, want to get in touch or share a question you have for a future Mailbag episode? You can email me@podcastlthehacks.com that's it for this week.
- [64:11]
Unknown
I'LL see you next week.