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Tried something like this. Recruiters told me the gap didn’t look good and I should lie about needing that time off for my mental health. The 1st class honours degree I was told would allow me to walk into a job was deemed essentially worthless since I had only around 2 year’s industry experience. Took me months to get another role offered - a 15k paycut and overall a major downgrade - which I had to take to pay the rent. 0/10, would not recommend.
the gap didn’t look good
Yeah, live your entire fucking life to be attractive to that guy.
The only thing worth learning from this is that if there’s so little need for work to be done that “having gaps in the resume” is enough that they’d rather go without, then the work does not need to be done.
It’s beyond time for UBI.
Yeah… I don’t really think anyone really cares about anyone’s education anymore, at least not past your first employer.
I have to spend a lot of time teaching people in their residencies at my job, and where they went school doesn’t really bring anything to the table. In fact, a lot of the people who went to fancy private medical schools were either overwhelmed by having to talk to our impoverished patient population, or didn’t ever develop healthy ways to mitigate interpersonal conflict.
I think the problem might be how quickly you quit to do it. It takes a good year to train a new person to be productive. If they only get about a year of productivity from you after training you for a year (and a junior level amount of productivity at that), then it’s not worth their time and effort to invest in you. If you did it every 5-7 years instead, it would probably go over better. That’s long enough to see whole projects through to completion and then just take a break in between.
There’s also the issue of how long you take off. If you take off 6 months to a year, it’s less likely that new technology comes in and changes everything than if you take off 2 years. Ex: 2 years from today you can expect huge swaths of industries to adopt using AI tools in day-to-day tasks. Another ex: I’m an engineer, not a CS person. I’ve helped design computer systems, but sophisticated coding isn’t the main part of my job. In the last 3ish years I’ve seen every system I’ve encountered switch to containerization.
You’d have to find a job that pays enough for this lifestyle. And with the kind of resume this produces, it’s a pipe dream.
Nah, you just need to adjust life styles. I’ve been doing this exact thing for five years now in the IT industry. I rely on contracts for full employment for 8 months and relax for 4 months.
I’ve got a buddy who does a variation of this. He’s got a little shack pretty close to town. He’ll work in the oil field for a few months, come hang out with everyone, and live a “normal” life. Then when he’s saved up enough he rolls out and lives in the woods with his dog hunting and fishing and growing veggies. We go by and check on his place every so often to make sure no one has broken in and it’s not rotting to the ground.
When he no longer has the money to stay in the woods he comes back. I say that, but he’s got the skills to feed himself out there. I think he gets bored after a year or two and wants to be around people for a while.
I asked him about retirement once and he’s got another shack right on a lake that’s been paid off since the 90s. His plan is to go there and fish and not come back.
Boomer here - that’s pretty much how I managed my software career. Do a contract job for 6 mos to a year, then do theatre until I needed to work again. Had to go back to fulltime work once I got married and had kids. I miss those days tho. Also, fuck your tiny stereotyping brain if you think a whole generation has the same likes and dislikes.
Man I love you! (Platonically, of course).
This only works without kids.
I mean there’s a whole bunch of assumptions
First, you’d need to make enough money to work 1-2 years to be able to save up enough that it’s more substantial than a two week vacation, which for many isn’t possible.
Second, you’d need to have a type of career where it’s just fine to stop working for awhile and then come back like nothing happened. Most careers don’t let you just leave for awhile and come back when you feel like it, and applying for a new job every year or two years sounds fucking miserable.
Third, you’d need to have some place you can live during those 1-2 years you are working. Either you’re rich enough to just already own a home or condo or keep paying rent, or you have kind friends or family that let you live with them. Otherwise, again, you’re searching for housing every year or two, which sounds awful.
Fourth, you still need medical care when you aren’t working, so you need the money to pay for private insurance.
As you said. Pets, kids, an SO with a stable job that doesn’t want to do this, all non-starters.
To me this screams “I have a trust fund and I mean that I want to save up travel money while my apartment is already paid for.” And where that’s not the case, I imagine it’s someone in a very lucrative field, where working two years nets them a significant amount of money.
Though the top comment certainly shows an example of where this does work (though it requires all the assumptions I outlined above)
My friends and I basically do this. None of us have trust funds.
My friends:
- Park ranger, climbing guide, liftee, etc. Do enjoyable seasonal work, take off seasons you wanna have fun.
- Remote worker. Live in a van, work normal hours, but travel where ever you feel like.
- Rope access technician. Make 6 figures in 6 months, winters off.
- Engineer/Software Dev/Normal Office Worker. Do good work at a no-name mid-sized company for a few years to build up good working relationships and tribal knowledge. Leave on good terms with a handshake agreement that you can return in a few years as long as they still have room for you. Call it a “sabbatical”.
- Contractor/Carpenter/Trades. Make 6 figures in 6 months, or just take off whenever you want. Someone always needs a staircase built.
- Accountant. Work 3 months for tax season, then fuck off.
- Travel Nursing. Pick up 3 months stints basically whenever you want.
- Teacher. Summers off.
- Nannying. Build up a string of good references, then take off when you feel like it - you can always find another gig.
- Any job where you can make around 6 figures after a few years in the trenches. Live cheap, save up, invest in passive income streams, retire forever.
Some of them have pets. Some of them have kids. Some of them have partners (who they chose in part for their openness to this lifestyle). Some of my friends were born into stable middle class families. Some were born into poverty with drug addicts. Some were drug addicts who spent years in and out of jail. Literally the only thing they all have in common is that they cared enough about having flexibility in their lives to make it happen.
Edit: for additional context -
Where do they live? They tend to live in their cars or in tents in nature, or else in hostel-like environments when abroad. No rent helps a lot. They will rent out their homes when they are gone if they own. Or sublease their rental if they want it when they come back. Or simply have no home base other than maybe a storage unit. Not owning much, and having little attachment to material possessions helps a lot here, too.
For healthcare - best option is to be from somewhere with a good healthcare system. Lots of my friends are Canadian. I’m from Colorado, and the state subsidizes your health insurance premiums based on your income. You can also use travel insurance, and set your home address to be somewhere where you don’t intend to go near, like a parent or friends home. Or you can simply spend all your time in countries where healthcare is cheap or free. Finally, one friend was simply uninsured and said his plan was to throw his wallet out the window on his way to the ER and give them a fake name and address.
That’s pretty cool. How do those with kids or a “home base” manage to just leave for an extended period of time? Do they seek new housing or just have someone take care of their property while they are gone?
Also when you say “invest in passive income streams” please elaborate, as this often leads to buy property and be a landlord, grift others, etc.
One friend who has kids is a teacher. His ex was a school administrator. Now that they are divorced, he’ll take the kids for one month in the summer, and she’ll take them for the other.
Another is currently working on outfitting his camper van to be family-ready, plus building out a trailer to function as a home office. He works as a therapist while his wife works remotely for a nonprofit.
Another friend just had a daughter out of wedlock irresponsibly young, and now just does odd jobs under the table in his 40s when he wants money.
Friends with home bases do a number of things. Some rent them out - this is easier if you hire a management company or have someone nearby to help out if things go wrong. Some actually do make enough money to just leave them sitting there for a while. One friend has a “home base” that is literally his friends well water pump shed. A few friends have raw land that they park their vans on, which they are constructing more permanent homes on at their own schedule.
Passive income streams for everyone I know of are landlording or index funds. This is what I personally do. I have two properties - one is a big house in the city where I rent by the room. The other is a mountain cabin vacation rental. I do pretty much all the maintenance and management of these places myself. Just today I was pulling weeds in the gravel driveway, and the next time I have a gap in guests I’ll be restocking the soap and coffee and TP at the cabin. This summer I’ll be getting dirty and sweaty doing fire mitigation and landscaping. You can say it’s a grift, but all I see is that I’m offering affordable rent to people who recently moved to my city, often giving them a community in the process; and then helping families enjoy the beautiful mountains when they have a week or a weekend of vacation off. Of course, I am profiting simply from the fact that I bought the land at a particular time - for more on that, I’d recommend reading about Georgism, the most fair and efficient taxation scheme you’ve never heard of. But at the end of the day, the system is what it is, and I’m unlikely to change it. So why leave the opportunities around me just sitting there (where someone else will scoop them up anyway) out of some kind of impotent moral outrage?
What about retirement? Not continuing to save for retirement during your 20s and 30s is a recipe for absolute disaster for long-term stability. What about saving for a down payment for a house?
“Boomers” don’t like this because it seems incredibly short-sighted.
My retirement plan is sponsored by Smith and Wesson.
I mean, there are plenty of boomers who also didn’t save for retirement. It’s not like this is a kids-these-days thing.
Some of my friends, I assume, are not saving for retirement. I don’t know what they plan on doing. Others I assume are sensible enough to contribute maximally to their retirement plans while they are working, so they’ll have some healthy funds to live on later. I, personally, always maxed out my 401k and IRA before I put any money in my other funds. And I bought 2 houses which I run as investment properties. Frugality can get you a long way.
I was curious. I knew software dev would be in there and it’s my wheel house.
Engineer/Software Dev/Normal Office Worker. Do good work at a no-name mid-sized company for a few years to build up good working relationships and tribal knowledge. Leave on good terms with a handshake agreement that you can return in a few years as long as they still have room for you. Call it a “sabbatical”.
So he worked for a few years first. Not the 1-2 years this has talking about. His value is relationships and tribal knowledge, neither help him get a job at another company if the no name company goes under. Left that company with nothing but a promise that you might be able to come back… And if he can’t, welp that’s going to be rough.
This seems line a VERY unstable future.
Also if these people are making 6 figures in 6 months I don’t see the govment helping them with Healthcare. And living in a van it doesn’t seem easy to have a network. Raising a kid like that also seems kinda messed up, they don’t get to develop those social skills…
If you want a stable future, I guess you would not pick that lifestyle. And if you worked for 5-6 years, taking a year off for personal reasons is not too unheard of. That is long enough to be trained, work productively and hand over your tasks to the next guy. Also, you could always make something up like “I had to help family members” or “I built a house/family member’s house” or whatever.
My buddy does this with 3 kids. Hes been a contractor all his life for start up. Regularly gets equity in the start up. Builds it up, then cashes out.
Works for him as a contractor because he can make his own hours and they home school their kids, so they travel all the time too
Those kids are going to be miles behind everyone else when they enter the workforce.
He had first year of state tests this year and his oldest tested an entire grade above where she should be. They are enrolled in so many activities (sports, music, cooking classes, etc.) That they get plenty of social interaction and develop their social skills.
I appreciate your uninformed opinion tho
Healthcare costs in the US is usually the blocker for me when I think about extended stays as a hermit.
One solution to this has been, be a resident of a blue state and get on medicaid, though it’s looking like that might not be viable going forward…
Go somewhere with cheap healthcare when not working
“Sounds like we’re paying these guys too much”
If you’re ever on the backpacking circuit you’ll meet people like that. They work just long enough to save up for their next trip.
But also, they travel frugally, not having a luxurious lifestyle between earning higher than average wage.
I wish. It takes me around 6 months and hundreds of applications to get a job. That strategy isn’t sustainable for me.
I’ve done this for the past several years. Not on purpose. I keep telling myself I’ll settle down.
I got a new job a year ago. It looked promising and I was ready to make a life here. But I don’t see myself in it. Leaving soon. Saved enough for modest living and adventurous cheapish traveling for at least a year.
Before that job I was mostly on the road for a year and a half, with some temporary odd jobs here and there.
It has its pros and cons. It’s exciting and adventurous. Sometimes it’s intense. I basically have no retirement savings. Super hard to find a partner.
You must have a pretty well-paying job because most jobs don’t pay enough for you to really generate anything other than very mediocre savings.
If I were to try this I’d probably last about 4 months and then run out of money.
Not really, actually. I live somewhat frugally. And when I say “travel” I usually mean very low cost traveling involving lots of camping.
Curious, do you plant your own fruits and vegetables? (looking to learn hydroponics)
Nope. I wish. I try not to own a lot of stuff because I might move again eventually. Maybe there’s a good way to do it simply and temporarily. But I’ve scored living situations in places with gardens and fruit trees.
Ah definitely try. It’s not very complex to do basic things as some may make it seem. Just get some plants a container and a water pump for circulation as well as a general liquid fertilizer
This gets a lot easier if you have somewhere reliable and preferably free to stay when you need to start working again. Even if you have paid off your own place or been given a place for free you have bills to pay on it. I guess you can rent it out while you are away, but that seems less than ideal to me as how do you keep it maintained if you aren’t in the country? It just ends up being another cost.
I would have loved to have done this but the housing situation has always put me off.
This is literally the route I took in my life. Entered the workforce in the early 2000s in IT as helpdesk. Worked till I had a resume good enough for the next level up. Lived below my means. Take several months off to do whatever. Apply for a higher level position. Rinse and repeat every couple years until I was in my 40s at a company I intend to retire with.
I always lived in a smaller place than what I could afford. Never owned a new car. My current vehicle is a 2001 pickup truck, purchased in like 2018. So, gotta trade one luxury for another.
2 caveats: IT as a career was not in the state its in now. Much easier to move up and around. I’m also now in my late 40s and looking to buy my first home, since I wasn’t building a nest egg my whole life, and that’s no fun.
Also, it was really important to have some significant achievements on the resume as I left each place to show growth professionally so I could always jump up in role/salary with each move.
My career is solid and I make a great salary for my age, but homes are just insane. My brother is 6 years younger and took a more traditional route and started a family, he was able to score a good home before COVID.
Still, I wouldn’t trade anything material for the life I took and the places I went.
Im already doing this, can recommend
Millennial here and I’ve been doing this my entire adult life. If companies had better vacation policies and a less boring work flow, I’d be less compelled to job hop every year or two.
They ever ask you about your repetitive gap on your resume?
No because the last time I worked a job that that a proper interview process was over 15 years ago.
These days interviews mostly go like this for me:
"This is what we expect from you; does this sound like the kind of job you’d like? " I say “yes” and then a week or two later I’m working. The hardest part is landing the interview. On average it takes about 200-300 applications before I get a single one.Sounds like a huge pain
Well that’s what the job market is like now, so if yours pays well It’d be best to stick with it.
Own your own consulting firm which helps this occur anyway.
But it was pre-Covid the last time I made this work, I finally got in with the idea of steady jobs - they pay you like, $2k every couple weeks just to sit in a little room all day… ok I can doomscroll in a different place for a while if you’re going to pay my bills
A woman I know did just that, except she wrote a book during her “off” years.
Didn’t know this phenomenon had a name. That’s what I’m doing right now however. I want to have enough money to be unemployed for a year or two.
