Speaker 1: Welcome to Had of Money.
Speaker 2: I'm Joel and I am Matt, and today we're talking
Speaker 2: about why you should retire on the reg with Jillian John's.
Speaker 3: Rude Yeah, you know, I think one of the biggest
Speaker 3: hurdles to overcome here in the United States, but not
Speaker 3: just like in our country, but also even for regular
Speaker 3: listeners on the podcast is the word retirement, because, like,
Speaker 3: what do you think of when you hear that someone
Speaker 3: is retiring, Like I know, I think of someone who's
Speaker 3: maybe a bit older, they're at least past their prime,
Speaker 3: They've put in several decades of hard work and now
Speaker 3: they're just totally hanging it up. And then on top
Speaker 3: of that, if you attempt to picture yourself in that situation,
Speaker 3: I think it's often so far away that it's difficult
Speaker 3: to even have any connection to that future version of yourself.
Speaker 3: But these are the types of problems that our friend
Speaker 3: Jillian loves to help walk folks through. She writes over
Speaker 3: at retire often dot com, she hosts podcast by the
Speaker 3: same name, and as a mother of a bunch of children,
Speaker 3: Jillian herself grew up in poverty. She wants folks to
Speaker 3: know that many retirement is more of a possibility than
Speaker 3: you think. And so we're excited to talk about retiring
Speaker 3: on the RAG. We're excited to talk about sabbaticals with
Speaker 3: Jillian today. Jillian, thank you for joining the podcast.
Speaker 4: I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 2: We're excited to have you back. We were just talking
Speaker 2: about how you were I think our first for real guests,
Speaker 2: Uh huh had the money back in the day. This
Speaker 2: was many, many years ago. Yeah, so it's fun to
Speaker 2: get to talk to you again like this. But the
Speaker 2: first question we won't link to that episode. I'm sure
Speaker 2: Jillian had a lot of good things to say, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm sure she did.
Speaker 3: But just given awkward, man, we were so fresh and
Speaker 3: green at that point that it pains me to even
Speaker 3: think about that conversation.
Speaker 1: Hure percentury.
Speaker 2: So, Jilly, I don't even remember what you said when
Speaker 2: we asked you this question, and I'm pretty sure we're
Speaker 2: asking this question even if.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if you want I don't even know.
Speaker 2: But the question we ask now everybody who comes on
Speaker 2: the show is what's your craft beer equivalent? What is
Speaker 2: it that you are spending more money on than some
Speaker 2: people would think is sane? While you're being smart and
Speaker 2: saving and investing for your future at the same time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's gardening. It's plants. I go to nurseries and
Speaker 4: home depot and lows and it's like it's pretend money.
Speaker 4: It might as well be monopoly money. I don't even
Speaker 4: think of it as real. The only limitation that I
Speaker 4: put on myself when it comes to plants is I
Speaker 4: have to eventually be able to plant them in the ground.
Speaker 4: So like my physical labor is kind of the parameters
Speaker 4: of how many how many plants I purchase. It's also
Speaker 4: my stress purchasing, Like if I'm having a really bad week,
Speaker 4: I go and buy seeds online or the I order trees.
Speaker 4: It's also, yeah, kind of my impulse stress purchase.
Speaker 3: So, speaking of seeds, have you ever heard of or
Speaker 3: ordered from, or been to. I think it's called Bakersfield
Speaker 3: Seed Bank or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's out in.
Speaker 3: California and literally Kate and I were getting into gardening
Speaker 3: when we were out there on a road trip and
Speaker 3: it was literally an old timey bank. It's like this
Speaker 3: like picture green gots that they converted into a seed bank,
Speaker 3: and it was goblins run things there too. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: goblins with green pounds. But they've got like a lot
Speaker 3: of heirloom varieties and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: I was on my phone yesterday and my mom's like,
Speaker 4: are you looking at sheds? I was like, no, this
Speaker 4: is my secret Instagram account that is just entirely plants
Speaker 4: and gardeners. That's that's all I've curated over here.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. Okay.
Speaker 3: I feel like at least my wife and you, Jillian
Speaker 3: could talk about plants all day.
Speaker 1: For sure. I certainly help her out. I think I
Speaker 1: think some of the bigger holes.
Speaker 3: But we're going to talk about retiring, and let's start
Speaker 3: with definitions. Retiring often that is such a passion of yours,
Speaker 3: But what exact fact is it?
Speaker 1: Like what do you.
Speaker 3: Define as a the frequency of retiring, and like what
Speaker 3: do you how do you define many retirements specifically.
Speaker 2: Especially because vacations, right, that's vacation many retirement.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I have kind of three parameters for what
Speaker 4: classifies as a mini retirement, and I use the terms interchangeably.
Speaker 4: Whether it's many retirements, sabbatical, career break, hiatus. All of
Speaker 4: them are good. But the three things is that it's
Speaker 4: a month or longer you're stepping away from your primary
Speaker 4: career to focus on something that really matters to you.
Speaker 4: And if you have those three elements, for my own
Speaker 4: personal definition, I consider that a mini retirement.
Speaker 2: Okay, So a vacation typically in the US at least
Speaker 2: is like a week once a year, maybe twice a
Speaker 2: year if you're one of the lucky folks. We Matt
Speaker 2: and I lament about the statistics that most people don't
Speaker 2: take all their vacation time. It's really it's really sad.
Speaker 2: And if it's less, if it's a short period of time,
Speaker 2: that typically means that you're not disconnecting from work in
Speaker 2: the way you need to to kind of reset your
Speaker 2: brain and get some actual rest. So is that part
Speaker 2: of why the month is such an important parameter a
Speaker 2: month or longer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a kind of physical down shift to help
Speaker 4: people get into that state of rest. And I find
Speaker 4: when people are really burned out, you know, it's adrenaline
Speaker 4: and it's cortisol, and they're running at this heightened state.
Speaker 4: And just like taking caffeine, the minute you stop drinking
Speaker 4: your coffee, the caffeine does not leave your system. You know,
Speaker 4: there's a time period before you kind of start to
Speaker 4: settle down. And it's the same with work. The minute
Speaker 4: you walk out of the office, you're not completely self regulated.
Speaker 4: So I find usually around week two or week three
Speaker 4: people really start to relax and settle in. But a
Speaker 4: month is also enough time to do something really significant
Speaker 4: and interesting in with your time.
Speaker 3: So first of all, I love that you've defined the
Speaker 3: fact that there's like a half life to your work.
Speaker 1: Once you step away from it, just like there is
Speaker 1: with Cavin.
Speaker 3: But on your podcast, like you've interviewed a whole lot
Speaker 3: of folks about this, and I'm curious, like, what have
Speaker 3: those folks mentioned as being I guess that maybe the
Speaker 3: best part of their time stepping away, or maybe could
Speaker 3: you share some good, just encouraging or inspirational examples of
Speaker 3: what some folks were able to accomplish, or maybe some
Speaker 3: life decisions that were made, or maybe they found.
Speaker 1: Themselves out of just like kind of fork in the road.
Speaker 3: I would love to for you to share some examples
Speaker 3: from the folks that you've talked with on your podcast.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely, I have my podcast. I do one on
Speaker 4: one end group coaching, so I get to have lots
Speaker 4: and lots of these conversations and I always encourage people
Speaker 4: to pick kind of three intentions or three goals for
Speaker 4: their time, because there can be a temptation of I
Speaker 4: have this huge backlog of things, and I'm going to
Speaker 4: accomplish thirty different things during this time off, and because
Speaker 4: you don't have that focus, none of it really feels
Speaker 4: like you made good progress or really significant. So pick
Speaker 4: kind of three. I would say the top ones are
Speaker 4: extended travel, you know, things that you can't really do
Speaker 4: in a four day or seven day vacation. I met
Speaker 4: a couple ones who were biking through Croatia, like an
Speaker 4: amazing trip, but it's not a four day weekend travel.
Speaker 4: Extended travel, it's not doing something really cool and interesting
Speaker 4: with their kids, having real quality time. You know. I
Speaker 4: did a ten week trip in a pop up camper
Speaker 4: through ten national parks with my kid. I was a
Speaker 4: few years ago. There again, not something I can fit
Speaker 4: in into two weeks vacation, but really significant. In America,
Speaker 4: recovering from burnout rest burnout's a massive issue, so that
Speaker 4: hits the top of a lot of people's priority focusing
Speaker 4: on their health, whether that's losing weight or training for
Speaker 4: a marathon, or even their mental health. You know, trying
Speaker 4: to go to therapy and get some of that stuff
Speaker 4: unpacked can be really helpful. A lot of people use
Speaker 4: it for a career transition too, you know, they're in
Speaker 4: that midpoint to their career where they're like, wait, am
Speaker 4: I really going to do this for the rest of
Speaker 4: my life? Like? Do I have another twenty years of
Speaker 4: this in me? But when you're burned out and when
Speaker 4: you're overwhelmed with work, it's really hard to imagine what
Speaker 4: else is even out there, what else might you enjoy?
Speaker 4: And so they need kind of that decompression time to
Speaker 4: recover from burnout, to just have the creativity to explore
Speaker 4: new options.
Speaker 2: So you kind of hinted at our work obsessed culture,
Speaker 2: and it's just kind of a barrier, I would think,
Speaker 2: just convincing people that this is a good idea. When
Speaker 2: we're on this kind of Hampshire wheel merry go round,
Speaker 2: it's kind of hard to just jump off. So do
Speaker 2: you find that as an obstacle trying to people understand
Speaker 2: that this is as a necessity in the first place.
Speaker 4: You know, I think a lot of people intuitively know
Speaker 4: that they need a break or that they want to break.
Speaker 4: It's not hard to convince someone of like, hey, would
Speaker 4: you like to spend a month in France? Or you know,
Speaker 4: do you do you want to buy a bike right
Speaker 4: across the country or build out your garden for a month,
Speaker 4: you know, whatever people are passionate about. And the reality is,
Speaker 4: with our modern work culture, those hobbies, those interests, those
Speaker 4: things that we want to pursue, those things that matter
Speaker 4: to us sometimes get entirely squeezed out of life. There's
Speaker 4: just not enough time. There's not enough hours in the day,
Speaker 4: there's not enough vacation days to do those in meaningful ways,
Speaker 4: which starts to exasperate this problem in that our work
Speaker 4: occupies so much of our life that it becomes so
Speaker 4: much of our identity and it's tough to build an
Speaker 4: identity outside of work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I completely agree. We talk about this all the time.
Speaker 3: How gosh, this makes me even think of something I
Speaker 3: read recently too about work crushes and how they're like
Speaker 3: very common because of course, when you are spending so
Speaker 3: much time at work, it's like you have individuals that
Speaker 3: you're drawn to. But that's like a whole other conversation.
Speaker 2: Well, there's usually rules about that not dating in the workplace,
Speaker 2: and people are like.
Speaker 1: What am I supposed to do? This is where I'm
Speaker 1: spending most.
Speaker 3: Of the You're spending all your time there, and so
Speaker 3: it makes sense that, like relationally and emotionally, you feel
Speaker 3: pulled in that direction. But of course when it comes
Speaker 3: to your skill sets and the things that you are
Speaker 3: spending your time doing, it makes sense that you get
Speaker 3: really good at doing your job, and so it's hard
Speaker 3: to disentangle like our identity from the work that we're doing.
Speaker 3: But like, I think one of the reasons folks have
Speaker 3: a hard time pulling away is because they're practically thinking, well,
Speaker 3: if I prioritize a many retirement, that's going to hurt
Speaker 3: my career. It's going to hurt my earning potential. What
Speaker 3: would you say to somebody who's who's making that argument,
Speaker 3: Because I don't know, maybe I'm leading the witness here,
Speaker 3: but almost feel like that there's an argument to be
Speaker 3: made for the opposite that perhaps because I mean, you've
Speaker 3: already mentioned how they can foster career transition, but just
Speaker 3: talk to us about that about career potential or just
Speaker 3: the career path that someone might be on and trying
Speaker 3: to escape that hamster wheel.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting because it is a little counterintuitive, but
Speaker 4: over and over I've seen the pattern of a mini
Speaker 4: retirement accelerating their professional growth and accelerating their financial progress,
Speaker 4: which it does feel a little counterintuitive, but on the
Speaker 4: professional side, I think it's I think it's pretty well
Speaker 4: known that one of the best ways to get a
Speaker 4: twenty to thirty percent raise is to switch jobs, and
Speaker 4: a mini retirement provides the perfect motivation and kind of
Speaker 4: the perfect rest opportunity in between those jobs. So, especially
Speaker 4: if you're early in your career and you're going to
Speaker 4: be switching company every three or four years, that's a
Speaker 4: perfect little little moment in time that you can take
Speaker 4: a month or two to focus on these other areas
Speaker 4: of your life. And there's a really interesting phenomenon that
Speaker 4: I never would have guessed until I started having hundreds
Speaker 4: of conversations with people about this. But it makes people
Speaker 4: really uncomfortable when you're not working. There's something about the
Speaker 4: work culture that it just feels wrong you not working,
Speaker 4: them still working and you not working is very, very uncomfortable,
Speaker 4: and sometimes it's subconscious. But when you step away from
Speaker 4: a job and you don't jump into a brand new job,
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of people start trying to get you
Speaker 4: a job. They try to like fix this, whether you
Speaker 4: want them to or not. Early retirees experience us all
Speaker 4: of the time when like everyone and their network's trying
Speaker 4: to suck them back into corporate life. But there's ways
Speaker 4: that you can foster that as well, and oftentimes people
Speaker 4: get much better jobs, I think because that cognitive loop
Speaker 4: is open and where when jobs come open, they might
Speaker 4: not think of you if you're happy at a company,
Speaker 4: but if they're like, oh, isn't Joel off doing that thing?
Speaker 4: What's he doing? He's in Europe right, he probably wants
Speaker 4: to get back to work. Maybe we should give him
Speaker 4: a call, and so you can kind of encourage his
Speaker 4: natural phenomenon, and people oftentimes get much more interesting jobs,
Speaker 4: jobs that they're better suited for, and better paying jobs.
Speaker 4: I hung out with a friend in DC who had
Speaker 4: just finished a mini retirement and two cool things about
Speaker 4: this story. One, when he came back to work to
Speaker 4: his new job, he had a fifty percent raise over
Speaker 4: his previous job. Wow, he had taken a year off.
Speaker 4: His sign on bonus covered like half of the cost
Speaker 4: of his mani retirement. But the other thing was interesting
Speaker 4: during that time off, he rested, he recovered, he did hobbies,
Speaker 4: all of that, but he also explored other career options
Speaker 4: and then started taking classes and getting the certifications that
Speaker 4: he would need to pivot into a new career and
Speaker 4: did it well enough that he got a job offer
Speaker 4: in this new career. Ultimately, he decided to go back
Speaker 4: to his previous career. But he's like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: I might be here for a year or two and
Speaker 4: then maybe I will switch careers. Like now I know
Speaker 4: I can do this.
Speaker 1: That's cool. Kind of proved it to himself a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I love what you said too, just how well,
Speaker 3: first of all, it would be me making the calls
Speaker 3: to Joel, just like, dude, you haven't showed up to
Speaker 3: work in like three months, Like what's the deal.
Speaker 1: Here, buddy? And I wouldn't take his calls.
Speaker 3: But that being said, when he did come back, like
Speaker 3: how interesting of a conversation?
Speaker 1: What do we have?
Speaker 3: Like I guess I like the part of it too
Speaker 3: where it's almost like this forbidden it's this forbidden fruit
Speaker 3: that before I didn't really care, but now that I
Speaker 3: can't have you, I want to like we got to,
Speaker 3: but it's.
Speaker 2: Almost like kind of how comedians and musicians need to
Speaker 2: live life in order to make good content right like,
Speaker 2: and I think the same is true for like life
Speaker 2: right to be appealing in so many of those ways,
Speaker 2: you have to go live a little or you just
Speaker 2: become the person who knows how to do the basic
Speaker 2: math and not kind of the interesting creative parts of
Speaker 2: a job.
Speaker 1: So I see a lot of benefit in that. I'm curious, too, Gilly.
Speaker 2: You, what about our consumption culture, how does that fuel
Speaker 2: our inability to take time off? Because think about it,
Speaker 2: we see the stats people living paycheck to paycheck, even
Speaker 2: people who make six plus figures. Is just kind of
Speaker 2: the fact that we don't know how to rein in
Speaker 2: our spending. Does that prevent us from having some of
Speaker 2: that financial flexibility to take an extended period of time off.
Speaker 4: So one of the things that I talk about in
Speaker 4: my group coaching is this time luxury continuum and the
Speaker 4: phenomenon that if you have less time, you tend to
Speaker 4: want more luxury, but if you have more time, you
Speaker 4: don't really need as much luxury. And so I think
Speaker 4: it's it ties in with the consumption in that when
Speaker 4: we have so little time, we have to spend so
Speaker 4: much money on everything, on having groceries delivered, on convenience food,
Speaker 4: on ordering new clothes online, Like every part of our
Speaker 4: life gets more expensive, and when we travel, it gets
Speaker 4: more expensive to do. You know, a five day trip
Speaker 4: to Paris for a family of four is a huge cost,
Speaker 4: probably a similar cost for a family of four to
Speaker 4: live in France for a month, And so oftentimes when
Speaker 4: you have more time things aren't is expensive, And so
Speaker 4: sometimes people try to extrapolate their vacation costs. While a
Speaker 4: vacation costs me five thousand dollars a week, a month
Speaker 4: long mini retirement will cost me twenty it will not
Speaker 4: cost you twenty thousand dollars. Like because you don't have
Speaker 4: to rush, you don't have to see three sights every day,
Speaker 4: you don't have to eat out three meals a day
Speaker 4: for the next thirty days in a row. Most people
Speaker 4: don't want to eat out ninety meals in a row,
Speaker 4: so the cost comes down because you can enjoy all
Speaker 4: of the other elements of life.
Speaker 3: I totally agree, and I think there's something to be
Speaker 3: said to in the same way that we get sucked
Speaker 3: into the work and that keeps us from being able
Speaker 3: to being able to realize what it is that's making
Speaker 3: us happy. Sometimes I think we get sucked into the
Speaker 3: same consumption traps as well. That doesn't allow us to
Speaker 3: look up from from the grind that we're living in
Speaker 3: a day in and day out. Jillian, you, as well
Speaker 3: as a lot of our friends, Joel and I were
Speaker 3: all kind of a part of the fire community. Whether
Speaker 3: or not we're like tangent to it or fully in
Speaker 3: it or not, I guess maybe it depends on the year,
Speaker 3: But I think there are a lot of folks within
Speaker 3: that community that might say that a mini retirement, well, hey,
Speaker 3: that's gonna that's gonna delay my ability to achieve full
Speaker 3: financial independence. Fat fire. What would you say to those
Speaker 3: folks who are instead of looking at retirement at age
Speaker 3: sixty five, You know they've got the noble task of
Speaker 3: maybe going after it by the age of forty or fifty,
Speaker 3: but they're so fixated.
Speaker 1: On their number. What would you say to those folks?
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a common hesitation, And honestly, I think
Speaker 4: many retirements are the perfect compliment to retiring early. And
Speaker 4: so's there's two kind of ways to look at this. One.
Speaker 4: If you are early in your financial independence journey. Like
Speaker 4: I said in the like the three qualifiers for what
Speaker 4: a mini retirement is. One of them is stepping away
Speaker 4: from your primary career. That doesn't mean that you have
Speaker 4: to do nothing. There were too many retirements that we
Speaker 4: used to buy a rental property and to renovate it.
Speaker 4: That was a big undertaking for us and it wasn't
Speaker 4: something that we were able to do alongside our nine
Speaker 4: to five careers. So we took these two small gaps
Speaker 4: and that massively accelerated our path too five. Some people
Speaker 4: use their mini retirement to start a side hustle, to
Speaker 4: start a side project, to start kind of that business
Speaker 4: that they've been thinking about but they just didn't have
Speaker 4: the bandwidth to do it after work. And so you
Speaker 4: can create additional sources of income. So, especially if you're
Speaker 4: early in your career or early in your financial journey,
Speaker 4: I would consider it doesn't have to be a beach
Speaker 4: in the Caribbean for a month, like there's lots of
Speaker 4: different things you can do with this time. But the
Speaker 4: second for the second group, if you're because I've worked
Speaker 4: with a lot of people who are like seventy percent
Speaker 4: of the way to find eighty nine and it's like, ah,
Speaker 4: do I really want to take a break? I could
Speaker 4: just like keep my head down, push through for a
Speaker 4: couple more years, and then I'm one hundred percent there.
Speaker 4: But achieving financial independence is a little bit like driving
Speaker 4: down the interstate eighty miles an hour. If you pop
Speaker 4: that thing in reverse all at once, it's a little
Speaker 4: bit of a tailspin. There's a whole bunch of things
Speaker 4: that you maybe have not practiced or have kind of
Speaker 4: set aside in your pursuit of financial independence. Maybe some
Speaker 4: of those relationships, maybe some of those hobbies, those interests
Speaker 4: that travel you've kind of postponed, thinking well, I'll just
Speaker 4: really do all of that when I get to five.
Speaker 4: And the reality is it's tough to change, like to
Speaker 4: significantly change one thing in your life. It takes a
Speaker 4: lot of work and effort, and it's not always enjoyable.
Speaker 4: If your plan is I'm going to change fifteen things
Speaker 4: in my life as soon as I become fie, it's
Speaker 4: a rough transition and it's very discouraging for a lot
Speaker 4: of people. Fail even just like the failure rate of hobbies.
Speaker 4: You know, you try a new hobby and not all
Speaker 4: of them work out, Not all of them are what
Speaker 4: you expect same of volunteering. So you go from a
Speaker 4: career where you're very proficient and really good at everything
Speaker 4: and very successful to a life where you're like mostly
Speaker 4: failing at stuff, and a lot of people it brings up,
Speaker 4: you know, whether you retire at sixty five, whether you
Speaker 4: retire early, sometimes even during a mini retirement. One of
Speaker 4: the things I warned people about is it allows you
Speaker 4: to unpack baggage. So it's like if your kitchen's really messy,
Speaker 4: but you go to work all day and you don't
Speaker 4: have to look at the messy kitchen, it's easy to
Speaker 4: pretend it doesn't even exist during your time off. Now
Speaker 4: you just stare at that messy kitchen all day long,
Speaker 4: and so it's an opportunity to clean that stuff up.
Speaker 4: But I know a lot of people who worked so
Speaker 4: hard for ten or fifteen years, head down, push through
Speaker 4: to retire early, only six months or a year later
Speaker 4: to be like this sucks, I'm going back to work.
Speaker 4: And it's like if you would have practiced retirement periodically
Speaker 4: throughout the process, that transition not only would be easier,
Speaker 4: but it would be so much more successful.
Speaker 2: I guess sometimes it's easier to do the thing that
Speaker 2: you're really good at that you kind of disliked.
Speaker 1: Us exactly trying to practice the things you're not great at.
Speaker 3: It's just like nobody likes to suck at anything, right, No,
Speaker 3: like so much of our lives. I feel like you've
Speaker 3: gotten better. A cappella music comett, but I sucked. No, No,
Speaker 3: I don't sing, but like, yeah, like it goes back
Speaker 3: to the doing the things that you're proficient and nobody
Speaker 3: it's really difficult. It's humbling, Like you have to get
Speaker 3: over that ego to say, you know what, even though
Speaker 3: I'm so good at this thing and I make a
Speaker 3: lot of money, you're like hitting the reset the reset button,
Speaker 3: and you're basically starting over at beginner's, beginner level, novice
Speaker 3: status on a bunch of other different things. And I
Speaker 3: think a lot of folks would much rather continue to
Speaker 3: be proficient and at the sort of a claim expert
Speaker 3: level at the thing that they know and love. But
Speaker 3: maybe that they're beginning to resent.
Speaker 2: Think that the people around them value too, because in
Speaker 2: this culture, that is what gets put on a pedestal
Speaker 2: is professional success in the work workplace environment, more money
Speaker 2: in the bank account, and so it's like, cool, let
Speaker 2: me keep doing the thing that everyone else thinks is
Speaker 2: great that I'm actually pretty good at, and I feel
Speaker 2: good about myself. Chilie, we have more questions we want
Speaker 2: to discuss about retiring often and how we actually what
Speaker 2: are the specifics of how we actually pull that off?
Speaker 2: Do we have to like put in our resignation. Tomorrow
Speaker 2: we'll talk about that and more.
Speaker 5: Right after this, we are back from the break talking with.
Speaker 1: Her friend Gillian.
Speaker 3: John's rude and Jillian like, so far, like in the
Speaker 3: first portion of the episode, you've made a really good
Speaker 3: case I think for why folks should be considering many retirements.
Speaker 3: But let's talk about more of the nuts and bolts.
Speaker 3: I guess the practical side of how we go about.
Speaker 1: Doing this thing.
Speaker 3: So let's say that someone's convinced, how does how does
Speaker 3: one get prepared? One does not simply walk into mordor right?
Speaker 3: How do you take off a significant chunk of time?
Speaker 3: Is this something where someone should just say yeah, like
Speaker 3: hand in their two weeks? Notice, like, should you just
Speaker 3: straight up quit? Or maybe should someone try to negotiate
Speaker 3: a leave of absence? I guess what I'm asking here
Speaker 3: is how should they negotiate the relationship that we have
Speaker 3: with the current employer.
Speaker 4: So there's two options. If you want to come back
Speaker 4: to your employer, which honestly, I will always recommend starting
Speaker 4: small because it's the easiest step and it'll give you
Speaker 4: that confidence and clarity to kind of go bigger next time.
Speaker 4: But a month off negotiated from your employer, go do
Speaker 4: something cool, go do something awesome, come back refreshed and happy,
Speaker 4: is probably the easiest thing to negotiate. So if you
Speaker 4: want to come back, I usually recommend if it's like
Speaker 4: one to three months is what people can typically negotiate off,
Speaker 4: partly because that's in the framework of typical leave of absence.
Speaker 4: You know, if someone has a heart attack, or if
Speaker 4: someone has a baby, or you know, most companies are
Speaker 4: somewhat equipped to handle a one to three month absence. Now,
Speaker 4: if you want to take a year off, two years off,
Speaker 4: you might not be able to negotiate that. You might
Speaker 4: have to separate from the company, although I know a
Speaker 4: lot of people. Actually, one of my client siblings was
Speaker 4: kind of inspired. After my client made some progress and
Speaker 4: was a doctor and win and just quit, she was like,
Speaker 4: I need a year off. I'm out of here, like
Speaker 4: peace out, And they were like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: no no no, okay, how about you leave and then
Speaker 4: in a year you just come back. Just please come back,
Speaker 4: whatever you do, just please come back whenever you're ready.
Speaker 4: And so sometimes you can kind of negotiate this understanding
Speaker 4: that a job is available when you return. But either way,
Speaker 4: I always encourage, even if you're going to separate, do
Speaker 4: an exit negotiation, which we can kind of get into
Speaker 4: how to structure that. But yeah, shorter, if you can
Speaker 4: start with a shorter leave of absence, go for it
Speaker 4: one to three months, negotiate that you might need to separate.
Speaker 4: If it's a longer leave of absence, are.
Speaker 2: You typically still getting paid? I guess depends on the
Speaker 2: length of time and what you negotiate. So if you're
Speaker 2: like gone for a month, are you able to say, listen,
Speaker 2: I'm going to come back and be rested, refresh, meet
Speaker 2: kicking butt. So you should probably pay me for this
Speaker 2: month off or is it like half and half? Like
Speaker 2: how do you negotiate sort of the pay for when
Speaker 2: you're going to be gone?
Speaker 4: So I always encourage people, as like a rule of thumb,
Speaker 4: to look at what their leave of absence pay policy
Speaker 4: is currently so if people will get zero pay for
Speaker 4: vacation or maternity leave, you're probably not going to be
Speaker 4: able to negotiate a paid leave of absence, So you
Speaker 4: can start with an unpaid leave of absence. Some companies
Speaker 4: will do paid or sometimes so there's an HR logistics
Speaker 4: issue in the background and of your health insurance, your
Speaker 4: four one K contributions, your dental you know all of that.
Speaker 4: Where does that money come from? So some companies like
Speaker 4: Bank of America offer twenty five percent pay, which essentially
Speaker 4: helps cover all of your automatic deductions.
Speaker 1: That's cool to know.
Speaker 2: There's some companies who just kind of have that structured
Speaker 2: into the way they do business with their employees. Okay,
Speaker 2: what about healthcare because this is one of those things.
Speaker 2: Do you if you quit altogether, you might not have
Speaker 2: healthcare at all we're talking about then your income drops.
Speaker 1: So do you go on healthcare.
Speaker 2: Dot gov and get a plan there? What's the best
Speaker 2: way to make sure that you have coverage, especially cat
Speaker 2: traffic coverage while you're on your break?
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely have healthcare coverage. Like this is not the
Speaker 4: time to be like skip it. Definitely get healthcare coverage.
Speaker 4: There are in the US. You know, this is kind
Speaker 4: of a US problem. In the US, there's six or seven,
Speaker 4: eight kind of different routes you can go. Typically, if
Speaker 4: people are looking at a two, three, four month mini retirement,
Speaker 4: I generally suggest Cobra just because the ease of use.
Speaker 4: It might not be the cheapest option, but you get
Speaker 4: to keep all your same doctors, you get to stay
Speaker 4: in the same network. You just it kind of rolls
Speaker 4: over seamlessly. If you're looking at a longer mini retirement,
Speaker 4: you know, eight months a year, then looking at the
Speaker 4: Exchange is a good option. But there's also other options.
Speaker 4: So sometimes if there's a married couple, one of them
Speaker 4: could stay employed while the other one, you know, does
Speaker 4: their mini retirement and they swap back and forth. I
Speaker 4: had clients who one of the spouses had a very severe, expensive,
Speaker 4: ongoing medical condition, and they're like, we have to have
Speaker 4: insurance all the time, and so we just came up
Speaker 4: with a plan. We're like, you'll just you know, you'll
Speaker 4: swap back and forth, each of you getting some time.
Speaker 4: If you know, let's say both people want to take
Speaker 4: a year off, maybe one of them works part time.
Speaker 4: You know, like I said, I'm obsessed with gardening and plants.
Speaker 4: If I was a distressful corporate job and wanted a
Speaker 4: year off and I could go to the local nursery
Speaker 4: and work part time and water plants, like that is
Speaker 4: my dream anyways.
Speaker 5: All I want to do.
Speaker 4: Is be outside and water plants and talk to people
Speaker 4: about plants.
Speaker 1: Like, oh, I thought you're gonna say talk to plants both.
Speaker 4: I talked to my plants as well. But that could
Speaker 4: be an option, you know, to where you have this
Speaker 4: flexus ability, You have the ability to do more trips
Speaker 4: and things, So there's some options you can kind of
Speaker 4: piece together, and people are always really nervous about it.
Speaker 4: I always encourage people to take an hour and do
Speaker 4: the research because it's usually those unknown pieces that create
Speaker 4: that hesitation and get people stuck. But see what's out there,
Speaker 4: and you don't have to decide forever. That's the other
Speaker 4: great thing you'll love about Cobra. If you're overwhelmed, if
Speaker 4: you cannot figure out healthcare, start with Cobra. You don't
Speaker 4: have to stay on it the whole time. You can
Speaker 4: do it for two or three months and then decide, actually,
Speaker 4: I want to switch to the exchange now, or I
Speaker 4: want to work part time or kind of come up
Speaker 4: with a new option.
Speaker 3: It makes me think back to when I worked in
Speaker 3: the corporate world for like a two years, and once
Speaker 3: my wife and I were looking to start our own business, Jillian,
Speaker 3: I had looked into what healthcare is going to cost,
Speaker 3: and what I realized was that even if I was
Speaker 3: going to stay with my company, I would have dropped
Speaker 3: the group insurance because it was actually more expensive because
Speaker 3: we were young and healthy than having gone out on
Speaker 3: our own and paying for health care. This is a different,
Speaker 3: simpler time, I know, I know in the health care space,
Speaker 3: I mean, but what I love what you said there
Speaker 3: though as well about actually going and working at a nursery,
Speaker 3: Like that's a way that you can offset the cost
Speaker 3: of a mini retirement. And so let's talk about I
Speaker 3: guess budgeting for a mini retirement or a sabbatical and
Speaker 3: what that entails. Because so by working at part time job,
Speaker 3: not only does that offset your health care cost, but
Speaker 3: you've got a little bit of money trickling in, and
Speaker 3: so that kind of helps to offset the missed income.
Speaker 3: But what about, like, how else can you financially prepare
Speaker 3: for sabbatical, Whether you're talking about on the income side
Speaker 3: of the equation, or even on the on the expenses
Speaker 3: side of the equation.
Speaker 4: I think the planning stage isn't too complicated. You know.
Speaker 4: It starts with knowing your baseline budget how much does
Speaker 4: it cost you to live for a month, and then
Speaker 4: kind of itemizing what is the cost of this thing
Speaker 4: I want to do? And I have exercises I walk
Speaker 4: people through of like how to decide what the next
Speaker 4: mini retirement should be. But if all things you're equal,
Speaker 4: especially if you're early in your financial journey, and you
Speaker 4: have twenty different ideas, start with the least expensive one.
Speaker 4: You know it will it'll help, It'll help you make
Speaker 4: really good financial progress. You don't have to start with
Speaker 4: you know, I want to do one hundred and twenty
Speaker 4: day around the world cruise. This might not be the
Speaker 4: one you do at thirty two, Like maybe save that
Speaker 4: to when you're eighty two. And the first one is
Speaker 4: like camping, you know, an American road trip or hiking
Speaker 4: through Europe or something. So there's that part, and there's
Speaker 4: once you start to I encourage people like list out
Speaker 4: all of the elements of what the thing they want
Speaker 4: to do during their many retirement would cost and that way,
Speaker 4: you can kind of start to find creative ways to
Speaker 4: pay for that. So if there's flights, you know, maybe
Speaker 4: you do credit card points to help cover the flights,
Speaker 4: but lots of different things you can do the research
Speaker 4: to figure out how could I bring those costs down?
Speaker 4: What are some alternatives you can crowdsource those ideas or
Speaker 4: even like enlist some help. You know, when it comes
Speaker 4: Christmas and birthday time, if you have like a backpack
Speaker 4: that you really want, or you know, a piece of
Speaker 4: luggagey you really want, or travel books or whatever that is,
Speaker 4: you know, put that put that on the wish list.
Speaker 4: So on the on the budget side, for money savvy people,
Speaker 4: that's usually not the biggest stress, but there are lots
Speaker 4: of boys on the income side. To bring in some
Speaker 4: extra cash during your mini retirement, that could make it,
Speaker 4: you know, a little less stressful, because, like I said,
Speaker 4: if someone's used to earning and investing and saving, and
Speaker 4: if they've been in that mode for a long time,
Speaker 4: not earning bending down selling investments is a little stressful
Speaker 4: at first. It takes some practice. And so there are
Speaker 4: some things you know, when we travel, we travel about
Speaker 4: half the year in an RV around the country with
Speaker 4: all of our kiddos. We rent out our house while
Speaker 4: we're gone. So we rent out our house for about
Speaker 4: twenty four hundred dollars. Our travel expenses are about the same,
Speaker 4: and so it costs us the same to live at
Speaker 4: home or to travel full time. So we don't actually
Speaker 4: really have many additional costs to traveling. And so that's
Speaker 4: a really if you want to travel, it's a really
Speaker 4: kind of low barrier to you know, to rent out
Speaker 4: your house. You don't have to necessarily have rentals. You
Speaker 4: don't even have to do an airbnb. We do long term,
Speaker 4: but it could create a lot of income that could
Speaker 4: offset those additional costs.
Speaker 2: Like I feel like kind of what you've referred to
Speaker 2: in the last few answers, just thinking outside the box.
Speaker 2: I think there can be roadblocks, right, like.
Speaker 1: Oh, healthcare, how am I gonna How am I gonna
Speaker 1: do that? One?
Speaker 2: I guess I'm just not gonna take a mini retirement,
Speaker 2: or uh yeah, what am I gonna do with the house?
Speaker 2: Who's going to take care of it? And like actually
Speaker 2: maybe you make money on it, like these are these.
Speaker 1: Are ways gonna pay me to take care of my
Speaker 1: house for me? Right? Right?
Speaker 2: And it's so easy, I think though, to let those
Speaker 2: things like the mortgage or the healthcare be these roadblocks
Speaker 2: to doing the thing that's going to be incredibly life giving,
Speaker 2: potentially beneficial to your future career, but more than anything
Speaker 2: beneficial to you as a human.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah, Okay tell me this self employed folks, that's
Speaker 2: a little different.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So we were talking about breaking free from an employer,
Speaker 2: but if you run your own business, it can feel
Speaker 2: even harder to step away, I think, and if we
Speaker 2: but that's one of your tenants for a mini retirement
Speaker 2: is that you have to leave your day job. So
Speaker 2: can you can you like participate in it a little bit?
Speaker 2: Or is it like no, no, you got a cold turkey?
Speaker 1: Do this thing?
Speaker 2: Your business needs to be run by somebody else. You
Speaker 2: need to put on a pilot for a bit. How
Speaker 2: how do you.
Speaker 1: Help self employed folks think through taking any retirement.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think a lot of nine to five employees
Speaker 4: have this assumption of, oh my gosh, it would be
Speaker 4: so much easier if I was the boss, I would
Speaker 4: just say yes to me, And the reality is it's
Speaker 4: so much more complicated, it's so much harder, and it's
Speaker 4: scarier for a lot of people. While it can be
Speaker 4: scary for employees, like what if I don't get hired again,
Speaker 4: it has a different level of fear of what if
Speaker 4: the thing I've spent years building explodes while I'm gone
Speaker 4: and I come home to like a pile of rubble. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Like that's a different level of fear, But there also
Speaker 4: is so many benefits. So to tackle your first question
Speaker 4: of do you have to walk away completely honestly for
Speaker 4: people's first mini retirement, I don't suggest it. I suggest
Speaker 4: shrinking your responsibilities to where you can accomplish them in
Speaker 4: maybe five, maybe ten hours a week, trying to get
Speaker 4: closer to five. But the reality is, when you're building
Speaker 4: out better systems, when you're building out better processes, when
Speaker 4: you're hiring people, it's really tough to replace you one
Speaker 4: hundred percent. Like there's more risk and like ten times
Speaker 4: the effort to replace you one hundred percent versus replacing
Speaker 4: you eighty percent. And so I always encourage people like,
Speaker 4: what's the eighty percent that you could automate or you
Speaker 4: could get off of your plate, or you could delegate
Speaker 4: to someone else, And what's the twenty percent that like
Speaker 4: is really essential that you do and just focus on
Speaker 4: that during your mini retirement. But yeah, it's they tend
Speaker 4: to be more successful and it's easier to get it prepared,
Speaker 4: and then you know retiring often. The more often people
Speaker 4: do this, the better you'll get. It's kind of like
Speaker 4: people ask me, like, is it hard to rent out
Speaker 4: your house? Yes, it's super hard. The first time you
Speaker 4: have to declutter everything, you have to clean everything, you
Speaker 4: have to like pack stuff up. But every time you
Speaker 4: do it, you come back to a cleaner, more prepared,
Speaker 4: more organized home, and the next time it's less hard
Speaker 4: and it takes less time to prepare. And it's the
Speaker 4: same thing for self employed. The more often you do it,
Speaker 4: the stronger and smoother and like more efficient your business becomes,
Speaker 4: the better trained your employees become. And it does get
Speaker 4: it does get easier. So you might get to like
Speaker 4: I've logged off, I've thrown away my cell phone. You
Speaker 4: will hear nothing from me for six weeks. But I
Speaker 4: recommend starting with like five hours.
Speaker 3: A week check in not just like it is a
Speaker 3: big thing to do to take a mini retirement, but
Speaker 3: what's even bigger is taking an actual retirement. Now I
Speaker 3: love that, Like one of the recurring themes to what
Speaker 3: I hear you saying is that you're trying this out.
Speaker 3: It's not going to be perfect the first time, and
Speaker 3: the more you do it, the better you're going to get.
Speaker 3: And I can't help but to think about the sort
Speaker 3: of the like you barely touched on the selling of assets, right,
Speaker 3: drawing down of principle, and that for so many retirees
Speaker 3: is an incredibly difficult thing.
Speaker 1: What an awesome way to try that thing out?
Speaker 3: By yes, and maybe you're not obviously you're not paying
Speaker 3: penalties and taxes on withdrawing money out of your retirement early,
Speaker 3: but even not contributing to those retirement accounts, it does
Speaker 3: this mental shift where it feels like you're not making
Speaker 3: progress because maybe you're measuring progress incorrectly, maybe you're going
Speaker 3: about it the wrong way. And I like that, whether
Speaker 3: you're talking about being self employed or even retirement accounts. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's just a low risk to giving this a shot
Speaker 3: at a reasonable level at least. But all throughout your
Speaker 3: answers and just kind of how you've talked about this,
Speaker 3: you're you've referred to your kids, and so we've got
Speaker 3: a few questions about whether or not many retirement is
Speaker 3: possible with kids. I mean, obviously it is because you've
Speaker 3: done it. But we'll get to that and more. Right
Speaker 3: after this.
Speaker 2: We're back. We're still talking about retiring often. Why you
Speaker 2: you who are listening right now, You should probably retire regularly,
Speaker 2: more consistently. It's not all or nothing. It's not oh,
Speaker 2: can't wait till I'm sixty five. Maybe you should retire
Speaker 2: little bits here and there along the way. And it
Speaker 2: certainly sounds like an ideal, ideal way to live. It's
Speaker 2: something Matt and I are discussing more and more as
Speaker 2: business partners and as friends, and so part of the
Speaker 2: reason we wanted to have Jillian on today was selfish
Speaker 2: in nature, because was it like for us maybe to
Speaker 2: do this more in our own lives. But Jillian first,
Speaker 2: before Matt and I take off for a couple months,
Speaker 2: we I have to know, like, what are the horror stories?
Speaker 2: What are the worst possible outcomes of retiring often? Do
Speaker 2: you have any from your own experience or from some
Speaker 2: of the people that you talk to or work with
Speaker 2: like that have just been like, that's not for me.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't say that it's not for them, but there
Speaker 4: can be legitimate challenges. There are things that are hard
Speaker 4: and go wrong, and I never I never sugarcoat that,
Speaker 4: Like I think it's really important to kind of know
Speaker 4: what you're getting into and to know what the challenges
Speaker 4: might be. But I also always encourage people like these
Speaker 4: are challenges, like this is a bridge you're gonna have
Speaker 4: to cross at some point. The only alternative to figuring
Speaker 4: the stuff out is dying at your desk. See, you
Speaker 4: either die in your desk or you figure out some
Speaker 4: of these challenges. So we might as well start small,
Speaker 4: like you said, we might as well practice along the
Speaker 4: way in like bite sized challenges versus okay, now, and
Speaker 4: we're re tired for thirty years, like I have to
Speaker 4: take a thirty size bite. But yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of challenges, like like I mentioned briefly, unpacking baggage. A
Speaker 4: lot of couples, and this is true whether you're sixty
Speaker 4: five twenty five, A lot of couples have more conflict
Speaker 4: during retirement because they have to stare at the dirty
Speaker 4: kitchen all day long.
Speaker 1: In each other.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, I think that's what you call your husband.
Speaker 4: Okay, But I always encourage people like this. While it
Speaker 4: can be viewed Sometimes people's internal story can be why
Speaker 4: the heck did I even take this time off? And
Speaker 4: why am I spending all this money? And why am
Speaker 4: I losing all this income just to like fight with
Speaker 4: my spouse? And that could be the story, or you
Speaker 4: could say, you know what, this is the opportunity for
Speaker 4: us to really focus on this and learn some new
Speaker 4: skills and figure out our communication and work through this
Speaker 4: so that we can have decades more being happily married.
Speaker 4: But that can catch people off guard. Another thing that
Speaker 4: catches people off guard is if they are severely burned out,
Speaker 4: they often under us to make the time and the
Speaker 4: intensity of what that recovery will look like, and it
Speaker 4: sneaks up on people where their body kind of downshifts,
Speaker 4: and it's almost like if you've been fasting and then
Speaker 4: you start eating again, your body all of a sudden
Speaker 4: feels super hungry, and you feel hungry for a really
Speaker 4: long time. If you've been depriving yourself of rest and recovery,
Speaker 4: soon as your body realizes, oh, I have access to this,
Speaker 4: it will feel super tired, and it will feel super
Speaker 4: tired for a really long time. And there again, the
Speaker 4: story people tell themselves never the helpful story, but it
Speaker 4: often sounds like, well, maybe I'm just not motivated. Maybe
Speaker 4: I'm not a productive person. Maybe I'm just lazy. Maybe
Speaker 4: I can't thrive outside of my nine to five. This
Speaker 4: was a horrible idea. I thought I was going to
Speaker 4: be able to accomplish all these things, and now I'm
Speaker 4: just napping. I have no motivation. I should just go
Speaker 4: back to work because this sucks when in reality, your
Speaker 4: body's just trying to get you back to your baseline
Speaker 4: and it sees this as the perfect opportunity. So if
Speaker 4: people kind of go in knowing this might be something
Speaker 4: that happens and can reframe it of oh my gosh,
Speaker 4: my body is really tired. Maybe I should shift my plans.
Speaker 4: But I'm so grateful I have the ability to give
Speaker 4: my body what it needs.
Speaker 2: Another downside I could see of many retirements doing them
Speaker 2: regularly is being away from community, from family, from you know,
Speaker 2: some of those the people that matter most to you,
Speaker 2: and over an extended period of time. So let's say
Speaker 2: I'm like taking four months off and I'm away from
Speaker 2: those people for a long time, Like that is a
Speaker 2: very grounding thing for me, and I would imagine for
Speaker 2: a lot of people out there, what does that look
Speaker 2: like and what like? How have you dealt with being
Speaker 2: removed from your community for an extended period time as
Speaker 2: you're enjoying that time with your family, getting off the
Speaker 2: beaten path and not working nearly to the same degree,
Speaker 2: Like are you staying in touch with your community or are
Speaker 2: you writing letters? Like what is how do you how
Speaker 2: do you kind of maintain that cultivate that while you're away.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, there's there's two ways to look at this. One.
Speaker 4: I always encourage people you don't have to leave for
Speaker 4: a mini retirement, Like you can stay home one summer.
Speaker 4: I took the summer off and I planted a food
Speaker 4: forest in my backyard. You know, you can play in
Speaker 4: a band, you can do things locally. So if you
Speaker 4: don't want to leave your community, you don't have to.
Speaker 4: But the other side is if you want to travel.
Speaker 4: It's actually been massively beneficial for us to be able
Speaker 4: to connect with extended family, to be able to connect
Speaker 4: with friends, friends from college, friends from you know, my
Speaker 4: husband was in the military, so we have friends all
Speaker 4: over the country during that season of our life. Professional friends.
Speaker 4: When people only have fourteen days of vacation between holidays
Speaker 4: and birthdays and weddings. There isn't a lot of time
Speaker 4: left to go visit your cousins or your great aunt
Speaker 4: or your friends from college. You know, oftentimes we lose
Speaker 4: some of those connections, and we lose some of those relationships,
Speaker 4: and when you're traveling, it's a great opportunity. You know,
Speaker 4: we kind of try to plan our trip a little
Speaker 4: bit around where are all the people that we haven't
Speaker 4: we haven't gotten to see for a while. And so
Speaker 4: while you know it is important to maintain your connections
Speaker 4: back home, there might be those more distant connections that
Speaker 4: you actually have the opportunity to kind of lean into
Speaker 4: if you are traveling.
Speaker 3: I love that that makes sense to not you're not.
Speaker 3: It's not like you're replacing your community, but it's like, hey,
Speaker 3: how can we strengthen some of these other relationships that
Speaker 3: we have or maybe.
Speaker 1: Relationships too that we've neglected over over the years. But uh,
Speaker 1: all right, last question, Jillian. Uh. I mentioned kids earlier.
Speaker 3: Obviously I think a lot of I mean, the way
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about this, I'm like, all right, summer breaks,
Speaker 3: that's an easy mini retirement, right, You've got two or
Speaker 3: three months where you can take off. But if you're
Speaker 3: thinking beyond that, how does that work with schooling? I
Speaker 3: mean you're talking about taking months on end off.
Speaker 1: What does that look like?
Speaker 3: Are you homeschooling and then when you come back, are you,
Speaker 3: you know, are the kids like jumping right right back
Speaker 3: into public schooling? Is there any catching up that has
Speaker 3: to be done? What does that look like? Just from
Speaker 3: a practical standpoint with kids and education.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for us, so we live in Montana, so the
Speaker 4: education piece will be a little bit state specific, but
Speaker 4: it is pretty easy to find online or talk to
Speaker 4: you know, your school's administration to see how they would
Speaker 4: handle different policies. Ours is if kids are gone for
Speaker 4: more than a month, they unenroll them. So when we
Speaker 4: leave because we like to travel in the winter because
Speaker 4: I get seasonal depression and Montana is like massively cloudy
Speaker 4: in the winter, so we travel in the winter, so
Speaker 4: we unenroll them. We homeschool them when we travel, and
Speaker 4: then when we get back, we re enroll them and
Speaker 4: they jump back into school. We don't. Sometimes people ask
Speaker 4: us about our curriculum. It is totally haphazard. It is
Speaker 4: all over the place. But because kids are all of
Speaker 4: our kids are moving at their own pace. They tend
Speaker 4: to massively outpace their peers when they return. So I
Speaker 4: kind of feel bad, Like we got back early April
Speaker 4: this year, so they're going back to school for two months,
Speaker 4: and I kind of feel bad sending them back because
Speaker 4: they're not going to learn a single thing in the
Speaker 4: next two months, not a lick of information. I'm just
Speaker 4: sending them back so they can like get back into
Speaker 4: the rhythm. See their friends have like build those you know,
Speaker 4: community connections again. But yeah, I'm not in any way
Speaker 4: expecting them to learn new information these last two months
Speaker 4: because they're a greater or two level ahead at this point.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's I would say, you know, kindergarten in
Speaker 4: Montana through junior high that's the system, and it's pretty easy.
Speaker 4: It gets a little bit more complicated in high school
Speaker 4: for a lot of reasons. You know. Oftentimes people are like,
Speaker 4: I don't know if I want to travel when my
Speaker 4: kids are young, and I get it. It's so much
Speaker 4: more like physical labor. It's so much more emotional labor
Speaker 4: to travel with them. But with school and with friends
Speaker 4: and with activities and hobbies, it's logistically so much easier.
Speaker 4: When kids are younger. I have two in high school now,
Speaker 4: and it's tricky and we're having to shift plans and
Speaker 4: kind of shift gears to accommodate those those needs. So
Speaker 4: I always encourage people travel while your kids are young,
Speaker 4: because you just never know. You never you never know
Speaker 4: what your kids will want or need once they get
Speaker 4: into junior high in high school.
Speaker 1: That's good advice.
Speaker 2: Jillian. Thank you so much for walking us through this.
Speaker 2: It's given me a lot of food for thought, especially
Speaker 2: that last point.
Speaker 3: I'm like, Okay, I totally caught myself in that position
Speaker 3: of being like, well, the four year old can barely
Speaker 3: hike it a couple miles, Like I want to make
Speaker 3: you know, don't you want to go when you can
Speaker 3: throw down like five, six, seven miles because I'm thinking
Speaker 3: National parks. But then, like you said, yeah, are the
Speaker 3: oldest are they going to want to do that? So
Speaker 3: it's easy to I don't know, it off in the
Speaker 3: future for ourselves into the position of the questions that
Speaker 3: we're asking Jillian.
Speaker 2: For sure, Jillian, thank you for joining us. Where can
Speaker 2: our listeners find out more about you? More about taking
Speaker 2: many retirements on.
Speaker 4: The rig, Like you mentioned retireoften dot com and I
Speaker 4: have some worksheets there if you want to start kind
Speaker 4: of planning what that might look like, or are on
Speaker 4: social media. I'm at Gillian John's Rod.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: And we didn't even mention the workbook that you've got out.
Speaker 3: And you've got a book coming out next year about
Speaker 3: retiring often, so we'll make sure to link to that one.
Speaker 3: It's available into your current resources now, Jillian, thank you
Speaker 3: so much for speaking with us today.
Speaker 4: Thank you, guys, it's wonderful to be back.
Speaker 3: Well, Joel, are you convinced is the time for us
Speaker 3: to just hang it up at least for like a
Speaker 3: month or two?
Speaker 1: And I think so.
Speaker 2: I think so, And I think like I told Jillian
Speaker 2: actually right after we got off the call, that we
Speaker 2: were considering something like a two week extended thing next June,
Speaker 2: once my wife's graduated getting her degree as a marriage
Speaker 2: and family therapist. And then now I'm like, why stop
Speaker 2: it two weeks?
Speaker 1: Why not make it longer?
Speaker 2: Why not just lean into that a little bit harder
Speaker 2: and make it a month and try our first like
Speaker 2: legit many retirement.
Speaker 1: I think you and.
Speaker 2: I we're solid about work life balance. We're solid about
Speaker 2: taking time off but this makes me want to do
Speaker 2: even more.
Speaker 1: Definitely does.
Speaker 3: The hardest part is going to be you getting her
Speaker 3: to take a many retirement when she's just getting started.
Speaker 3: Like that's the I feel like the difficult part there.
Speaker 3: But yeah, was that your big takeaway? Nor do you
Speaker 3: have something else that you want to refer to in
Speaker 3: our conversation than.
Speaker 1: I think my big takeaway was when she said, if
Speaker 1: you have less time, you want more luxury, and I
Speaker 1: think it's so.
Speaker 3: Freaking true luxury time continuum. If you have the rest
Speaker 3: of each other, guess what you want to have? Pay
Speaker 3: someone to clean your house, you want to pay someone
Speaker 3: to mow your lawn, you want to pay someone to
Speaker 3: deliver the groceries.
Speaker 2: Everything costs more. When you feel like you're strapped for time,
Speaker 2: you're paying for you're outsourcing all these services.
Speaker 3: If you only have four days in Paris to travel
Speaker 3: because that is the only block of window, or that
Speaker 3: is the only window of time that you could get
Speaker 3: away from work, well guess what you're gonna be paying
Speaker 3: off the nose to be able to take off during
Speaker 3: those four days, which happens to be when everybody else
Speaker 3: also wants to take time off and flights are ridiculously expensive,
Speaker 3: and the compounds, it's everything, like literally everything costs more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I think, just like what she said,
Speaker 2: if it's five thousand bucks for you to take a
Speaker 2: week vacation, it's not twenty thousand dollars to take a
Speaker 2: month long vacation. In fact, it might be somewhat similar
Speaker 2: in price because you're going to be doing all these
Speaker 2: all these different things with a unique approach. So yeah,
Speaker 2: think about think about that, how being constantly busy is
Speaker 2: costing you more. And if maybe you had more time
Speaker 2: in your life you can enjoy some of those tasks
Speaker 2: and diy and save yourself some money. I think there's
Speaker 2: a lot of truth to that. Yeah, man, I couldn't
Speaker 2: agree more. So my big takeaway is going to be
Speaker 2: when she was talking about we were sort of talking
Speaker 2: about the nuts and bolts, like the practical side of
Speaker 2: planning for a sabbatical or a many retirement, and she
Speaker 2: basically highlighted that for most folks it's not too difficult
Speaker 2: to figure out the financials of it. And so what
Speaker 2: does that then leave. It's the psychological, emotional, the emotional,
Speaker 2: the mental side of things, and like all the numbers
Speaker 2: part of the equation, like those are all now.
Speaker 1: Just excuses because she said that.
Speaker 3: How you can take one hour, do a little bit
Speaker 3: of digging around and figure out Oh, look, turns out
Speaker 3: my company already has the policy, it's already spelled out.
Speaker 3: Or you can spend that hour researching. Okay, well, what
Speaker 3: does it then look like for me to pay for cobra?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: What does it then look like for me to take
Speaker 3: this much time away? How is that going to impact
Speaker 3: my career? There is so much fear of the unknown,
Speaker 3: and it keeps us locked into the rut of going
Speaker 3: and punching the clock, you know, just doing the same
Speaker 3: things that we're so used to because we're proficient, we're competent,
Speaker 3: but also I think because we're scared.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's difficult to.
Speaker 3: Do something that that causes like a little feeling of
Speaker 3: fear that kind of like sparks up.
Speaker 1: Inside of us.
Speaker 2: I ever get a real job again. All there's all
Speaker 2: these questions that come up, and I agree, I think
Speaker 2: there are these kind of root level questions that are
Speaker 2: probably really good things for us to sort through, but
Speaker 2: it's hard to have the time to sort through them
Speaker 2: if we're you know, working our butts off exactly, and
Speaker 2: one other things she mentioned, you know, going to see
Speaker 2: friends and family and stuff. I thought one of the
Speaker 2: perk of that is often there's a free place to
Speaker 2: stay when you're doing that, so that can dramatically, least
Speaker 2: for a couple of days, rekindle some of those Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: they might boot you out, but you want to be
Speaker 2: here for how No, I'm on a many retirem I
Speaker 2: don't think you understand to be here for a couple
Speaker 2: of months and they're like sorry, but yeah, a few
Speaker 2: days in a bunch of different places can can make
Speaker 2: for like a really fun trip.
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, let's tell folks about the beer you
Speaker 3: and I enjoyed during this episode. Grits and Juice by Carolina.
Speaker 3: How do you say this barn House, boun bowen House, Yeah,
Speaker 3: something like that. Okay, is it like barn House? It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: I think's German? Maybe bower House.
Speaker 1: Did you?
Speaker 3: I guess you picked this beer up about a Greenville
Speaker 3: I've never even heard of them, surprising well, considering how
Speaker 3: much time I spent in Greenville, South Carolina, that.
Speaker 2: I've only had a couple of beers from them, but
Speaker 2: this one was by far my favorite that I've had
Speaker 2: for this great, so good, super tasty, the most One
Speaker 2: of the most underrated beer styles is when you combine
Speaker 2: sour and hops together. This beer had both because it
Speaker 2: was it was a session I pa that had sour
Speaker 2: vibes going on, with like citrus sour going on, and
Speaker 2: it was delicious.
Speaker 3: It's totally barrel aged too, right or no, I don't
Speaker 3: because it had like a funkiness going on like that
Speaker 3: made me think of that made me think of oak.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it did have a funkiness, but I don't
Speaker 2: know that it was barely okay nice, I dug it.
Speaker 3: The grits and juice. Is that like a Snoop Dogg
Speaker 3: reference gin and juice?
Speaker 1: Maybe, I don't know, but a southern version.
Speaker 3: It had a nice acidity to it with some of
Speaker 3: that funk while at the same time having some of
Speaker 3: this some of that hoppy bitterness on the finish as well.
Speaker 3: Super tasty and doubly fund Since I don't think I've
Speaker 3: ever had a beer by these guys, so I'm always
Speaker 3: fun to try a new brewery. Yeah, glad you were
Speaker 3: able to pick this one up for sure, me too nice?
Speaker 3: All right, We'll make sure to link to some Agillian's
Speaker 3: resources that we talked about here on the podcast. We'll
Speaker 3: make sure to link to her show as well as
Speaker 3: her site. You can find that up in our show
Speaker 3: notes at howamoney dot com.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned because will we be back on Friday with
Speaker 2: a Friday flight or will we be like kicking our
Speaker 2: feet up somewhere.
Speaker 1: Who knows.
Speaker 2: You'll find out in a couple of days, I guess,
Speaker 2: but Mattha's gonna do it for this one. Until next time.
Speaker 2: Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out,