Recently, I met up with one of my blog readers who read my old article titled ” Do you want to live your life by default or by design – The concept of Mini Retirement” which sparks some thoughts in her about taking a mini retirement. Mini-retirement is a concept first coined by Tim Ferriss who is the host of The Tim Ferriss Show which is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than 900 million downloads.
This is his definition of Mini Retirements:
Essentially, mini retirements are a series of intentional breaks throughout your career, rather than one final retirement after a life of labor. This is different from a sabbatical or unpaid leave. We’re talking about a clean break from your employer, followed at a later date by reentering the labor market or maybe starting the business you’ve always dreamed of having.
The concept sounds exciting, right? But the challenge is why and how do you execute it.
So my reader is in her early 50s who is happily married with two teenage kids but in recent years felt that work is causing a burnt out and wish to take a break or a mini retirement. She felt that the pace of work is too fast and getting a bit mundane after staying in the corporation for quite awhile. In addition, she haven’t stop working for the past 30 years since she started working in her 20s while living a rather frugal lifestyle. All these while, she felt that life is like sitting in a fast moving bullet train and she can’t really stop for a moment to think about other aspects of life. She might have neglected some important aspect of her life like her physical health, mental health, passions and relationships with people she loves.
She shared about one of her distant relative in her early 60s who lives in a big landed house but wasn’t in the best of health all her life and struggled with mobility. She could had potentially right-sized her house so that she could move around with ease instead of climbing up and down the stairs all the time. But she still kept it as she doesn’t want to give up the social status and her original intention to allow the whole family to stay together. With her prolong mobility issues, she isn’t in the best of emotions all the time which kind of affected her relationship with her husband, elder son and daughter. The daughter is happily married and had since moved out of the house but the elder son is facing depression due to his recent divorce and is fighting custody over two young kids. There were also fights on the eventual inheritance rights on who should get how much. The negative emotions totally destroyed the relationship among the family members and now all of them are not on good talking terms.
So the essence of the above sharing is to show us that money does not buy health and happiness, instead it is because of having that much and the unwillingness to let go that causes all these unhappiness.
Further into our conversation, we also shared about planning too far ahead does not guarantee that you will sure get there eventually. As in some people plan with the mindset that they will get there one day and kind of delay gratification for too long until they became unhealthy or even pass away before they reach that point.
So a better way to plan is to set short term and long term goals so that you achieve certain things in the near future while you are still young and healthy while not compromising on your long term goals. Sometimes, what you wished that you could do in your 20s or 30s might change when you turned 40s or 50s. As your physical health and life stage might determine what you can do or can’t do.
Like for example, some people might want to do bungee jump in their 20s but became risk adverse when they turned 40s with family commitments. Another example, is that young people might have loads of energy to travel and do lots of things but do not have sufficient money to do so while a person in the 40s might have more financial resources but do not have the time to do it due to work and family. So we need to strike a balance in this case to have some fun when we are still young and in pink of health while we start to save for the future at the same time.
But the financial barriers usually form the biggest concerns about taking a mini retirement and you really need to consult a trusted financial advisor to make sure you could afford one. Below are some simple pointers to take note of before taking the plunge:
- A solid understanding of your personal expenses which includes your utilities, food, transport, insurance, housing costs etc.
- Decide on how long this mini-retirement is going to take
- Set some simple objectives so that you could have a bit of focus during this lull period
- Budget and setting aside more than enough savings specifically for this mini retirement
- Making sure your hospitalization or personal accidents plans are in place
- Finding affordable healthcare options during this period
So for my reader, I think a mini retirement might be good for her physically and mentally if her finances allows her to do so. Like from the book “Things you only see when you slow down” by Haemin Sunim kind of illustrate that a pit stop in the form of mini retirement might be good so that you could take a step back and take stock of what is important in your life before you proceed with Life 2.0 or even Life 3.0. I’m going to leave you with some meaningful quotes from the book which are really things that you only see when you slow down.
“Your freedom is more important than money. It is better to live the kinds of life you want than to earn more and be constrained. Don’t sell your freedom.”
“Measure your self-worth not with the balance of your bank account but with the frequency of your generosity.”
“Some say they don’t really know what they are looking for in real life. This might be because, instead of getting in touch with how they feel, they have led their lives according to other people’s expectations. Live your life not to satisfy others, but to fulfill what your heart desires.”
For those who plans to take a mini retirement or had taken one, please share with me your thoughts!
