Be happy now – and resign for a year

LOGIC: BEHIND RELAXING MID-CAREER BREAK

Take breaks from working to enjoy yourself before retiring.

Prospect of a future trip gives young workers extra reason to save, live within means and pay off debt.

Many people obsess over their careers and fret about saving, terrified they won’t have enough to retire. The advice now being offered by some experts may surprise these worried souls: take months or years off from work, travel the world and enjoy yourself.

There’s prudent logic behind a relaxing mid-career break. With longer lives come longer careers and longer retirements – the first so that you can afford the second. But a 40-year career, ending at age 60 or 65, is a very different prospect from a 50-year career ending at 70 or 75.

“It’s just too gruelling. We have to take breaks,” says Lynda Gratton, a London Business School professor and coauthor of The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity. “Why wouldn’t you want to take some of the retirement at the end of your life and move it to the middle?”

The sabbatical – a chance to recharge mid-career – is hardly a new idea, and it’s common in academia. But until recently, most wouldn’t dream of quitting their jobs just to have fun for a year or two. And, as Gratton acknowledges, doing so is still a financial impossibility for the vast majority.

For well-paid workers in high-demand fields such as technology, however, the idea may be catching on.

Online money manager Wealthfront launched a tool that allows clients to estimate whether they can afford to take time off for travel. They can set a months- or years-long trip as a priority alongside other goals like retirement or buying a home.

Kyle Parrish and his wife, Kate, both in their early 30s and clients of Wealthfront, returned to San Francisco in November from a 15-month round-the-world trip. They visited 25 countries and every continent except Antarctica.

They made friends and kept costs low by staying with locals – working on farms in Slovenia and Patagonia. The trip cost $40 000 (R527 000) and required Parrish quitting a job in sales at Dropbox, the San Francisco-based cloud storage company.

They have no regrets. “You only have one life. As a human being, you have to stop and refresh,” he said.

Wealthfront cofounder Dan Carroll said the attitudes of clients, particularly younger ones, have shifted: “Retirement is no longer the ultimate goal. We want to live enriched lives today rather than waiting to begin life at retirement.”

When the Robo-advisor surveyed its clients, more than half listed “take time off to travel” as a top priority, listing it ahead of all other goals except “financial independence” and “early retirement”.

Taking a break to travel isn’t a crazy move, especially for millennials, because it can help give workers the stamina for longer, more sustainable careers, says Jamie Hopkins, a professor and director of the retirement income programme at the American College of Financial Services. – Bloomberg