Meet the 20-Somethings Taking ‘Adult Gap Years’
Why wait until you’re 65 to take time off and travel the world?
Morgan Sanner started plotting her own mini-retirement after she took her first trip abroad last April. “I had never traveled internationally before, and it was so eye-opening that I was like, ‘How can I do this more?’” she says.
Sanner, who’s 27, lives in Ohio and works in HR management for a major automotive company. Like most corporate employees, she has limited vacation days and a schedule that doesn’t exactly lend itself to a multi-week jaunt overseas. So she began researching ways that her peers — other 20-somethings — have done it. “I was seeing a lot of people taking significant breaks from their jobs, or between jobs,” she says. They were calling those breaks “adult gap years,” “sabbaticals,” and “mini-retirements,” and using them to travel, work on passion projects, or just chill out.
Sanner isn’t just personally invested in this trend; she hopes it’s part of a larger movement. “I think Gen Z is interested in less traditional models of employment, in general,” she says. “For example, we’re far more likely to freelance or do contract work than previous generations. I hope that as we become a bigger part of the workforce, mini-retirements become more doable and more normalized.”
The concept of regular breaks from the daily grind isn’t new. In some fields, like academia, sabbaticals are commonplace; the Old Testament advised farmers to take every seventh year off to let their land recover. The term “mini-retirement” was initially popularized by Tim Ferriss in his blockbuster life-hacking manifesto The 4-Hour Workweek, which came out in 2007. Of course, many ideas put forth by Ferriss — including his book’s title — aren’t realistic for most people and haven’t aged particularly well. But lately, mini-retirements have gained traction, particularly on TikTok.
“I’ve recently decided that working for three years and then taking a year off is how it’s going to be for me,” said a teacher who has started setting aside money for her mini-retirement in a high-yield savings account, in addition to contributing to her regular retirement plan. “I did this. It changed my life. I’ve decided that I will take a year off work every fifth year (4 years working/1 year off) for the rest of my life,” posted another.
Adama, a London-based engineer in her 20s, says she has already taken multiple mini-retirements and plans to continue doing so. “Instead of waiting until you’re 60 or 70 to travel or try to indulge in hobbies … you do them while you have your youth, your energy, your health, and you dot them around your life,” she explains.
Of course, taking time off — beyond the measly 10 to 15 PTO days that most Americans get (if they’re lucky enough to have PTO at all) — requires a lot of planning. The most pressing concern is, of course, money. Most 20-somethings haven’t been working long enough to save what it takes to fund more than a few vacations, let alone time out of the workforce. The uncertainty of quitting a job without a new one lined up throws another wrench into the financial equation. Also, what about health insurance? Student-loan payments? Rent? The ability to save for your actual retirement further down the road? And how will you explain a gap in your résumé to future employers?
No one has a perfect answer to these questions. In Sanner’s case, her next steps include saving up a year’s worth of living expenses in her emergency fund, just in case (this process is well underway, she says). Then she’ll tackle her sabbatical fund; she has a number in mind based on the cost of the trips she wants to take. While she travels, she’ll continue her freelance work as a résumé consultant to supplement her savings. She’s not sure yet what she’ll do about health insurance.
Brittany Foley, a 26-year-old who lives in Boston, had a lucrative career in consulting before she set her sights on a mini-retirement. She wasn’t happy with her job, and she had an idea for a book she wanted to write. “With other people my age, there’s so much pressure to chase promotion cycles and raises, and everyone is so burnt out,” she says. “I figured this is actually the best time to take time off work, when I don’t have kids or other dependents.” Another catalyst: Her mom had just died (her dad passed away when she was a teen), and she felt like she didn’t have much to lose. (In case you’re wondering: No, she didn’t get an inheritance.)
Foley gave herself six months to squirrel away a year’s worth of expenses, which involved setting aside a third of her monthly take-home pay of about $6,000 as well as any bonuses. She also minimized her cost of living to make her savings last. A few months after she quit, she took a part-time job as a restaurant server for additional income. She bought her own health-insurance plan and moved to a cheaper apartment.
That was a year and a half ago; Foley has since finished her book and is in the process of getting ready to query agents. At this point, her savings are running low, so she plans to start looking for a corporate job again in the fall. She hopes that her break from the consulting world won’t scare off recruiters, but she knows it probably will. “Sometimes people I know from college will come into the restaurant, and when they see me working there, I can tell they’re like, ‘Oh my God, this girl’s life has gone down the tubes. What happened?’” she says. “I wish becoming a server or doing another noncorporate job wasn’t frowned upon that way. Working part-time to support yourself and pursue your other passions shouldn’t be a mark against you.”
In fact, plenty of people would argue that taking regular breaks, or switching up your career for a year or two, should make you a better job candidate. You just have to know how to sell it, says Cara Nicole, a 28-year-old program manager at a tech company. She’s based in North Carolina and actively planning to take a mini-retirement in the near future. “We should be able to communicate to a hiring manager, ‘Hey, I took this time to refocus, and now I’m coming back with more energy than ever, knowing that this is exactly what I want to do and where I want to be,’” she says.
She also points out that mini-retirements can take different forms. Sometimes people line up a new job and simply ask for a later start date, one that allows them to take a month or two off beforehand. Others can take a “bridge job” — like freelancing part-time or working at a coffee shop — to make ends meet while they explore other interests. Some companies, particularly start-ups and nonprofits that are looking for nonmonetary incentives to retain employees, offer a one-month sabbatical (or longer) to those who stay for a certain number of years. And even if your workplace doesn’t have a sabbatical policy in place, they might be willing to entertain the idea if it’s pitched in a compelling way. “It’s all about how you sell it,” says Nicole.
Ultimately, most of us don’t want to work nonstop until we finally save up enough money to kick back for a few years before we die (if we’re lucky). “I’ve known people in my family who planned their retirement for decades, only to pass away right before or right after. Or they got sick in a way that prevented them from traveling the way they wanted,” says Nicole. “The reality is, yes, there are trade-offs to not bringing in an income for a period of time. You don’t want to YOLO-spend your way through life. But you also have to accept the reality that you’re going to die someday, and you can’t take your money with you.”
Plus, it’s healthy to reevaluate your relationship to work, she adds. “Do the math. If you can figure out how to take a few months off every couple of years without dipping into your nest egg, it’s worth prioritizing.”
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