What If You Didn’t Wait? Mini Retirements, Big Life with Jillian Johnsrud

This episode is brought to you by the Bolden financial planning platform, formerly New Retirement Create a financial plan for free@bolden.com.

Welcome to Bolden your Money, the podcast. Today we have Jillian Johnsrud joining us. And Jillian is an author of a new book called Retire Often. She has and is a champion of many retirements and sabbaticals. We originally chatted with gillian back in 2020 and I'm super curious about kind of what's happened in the interim. So with that, Jillian, welcome to our show. We're super excited to chat with you today.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me back.

Yeah. So I would love to, for you to kind of give a couple minutes on kind of where you are today and kind of your journey to this moment in time and then we'll jump into the main topics.

Yeah, I think on the kind of financial side I'd grown up with without, without a lot of extra. But then I got married at 19, the ripe old age of 19. But my spouse at the time and I had like $55,000 of debt and we both went into low earning professions. So that's always a fun combination. So we never anticipated to retire early. Like, that actually seemed like crazy talk. So instead I was like, ah, if we're not going to be able to do that. This idea of like sabbaticals or mini retirements felt possible. It felt accessible. And so that kind of was the plan initially just out of the gate. And as it turned out, by the time I was 32, we had become financially independent. So that was like a happy surprise. But this idea of mini retirement still was a lot more appealing to me. That rhythm of life, of periods of work and periods of rest and yeah, it still resonates with me.

I mean, it's amazing to start at 19, kind of like getting married and starting your life and, you know, negative net worth. Did you have this vision of, okay, we want to be, you know, financially independent and did you know about it? Were you financially literate at that point?

No, not at all. You know, my first kind of financial goal as far as that goes was maybe we could be able to retire by 60, like instead of 65. And I had seen my spouse's parents, their health decline and they hadn't been able to work for as long as they anticipated they would be able to work. And it was just a really stressful situation. And I thought this, this is a better plan, like, what if we, what if we try to be ready by 60 versus 65? And that it honestly felt Incredibly ambitious and a little out of reach. Like, I wasn't sure how we were going to do that, but I bought my very first personal finance book when I was 19. And then when I was 20, we moved to a town that had a library. Like, growing up, we didn't really have a library. And I started reading nonfiction, and I started reading about a book a week, a couple books a week, and I did that for 20 years. So now I've read, like, a thousand nonfiction books. But that was how I built my knowledge of personal finance and investing. And. And if when you read that much nonfiction, you kind of have to read all the genres because, like, there's just not enough of one genre. So that's kind of how I learned about most things in life.

So you weren't super targeted strictly on, like, personal finance, but it was like, you're just reading a ton. And so I literally just go to.

The library and get a little basket and walk from one end of the nonfiction area to the other, every single row, and probably grab a book from every row. So there were some. Some weeks I definitely read, like, seven books.

What drew you to personal finance? Because obviously, you zoomed in there, have built a whole Persona, and, you know, become an author yourself, which is congratulations and amazing. You know, I mean, it is amazing to go from 19, which is a pretty formative time in your life. Right. To whatever, 12, 13 years later, and you're financially independent, which is something most people barely get to when they're 60 years old.

Yeah. That motivation and initial interest for me came about. I was probably about 12. My mom was in her second marriage, and it wasn't awesome. It wasn't. Didn't feel healthy, didn't really feel safe. And, you know, I went to her, and I was like, yeah, we can't do this. I don't really care where we go, but we shouldn't stay here. And I was like, yeah, I'll get a job. I'll work, whatever. Like, we can live in a little apartment. And my mom's a very practical woman, and she just looked at me and was like, jillian, I. I can't afford to raise three kids on my own. Like, we don't have that option. And being an optimist and an idealist, it was crushing to me. And so I went upstairs to my bed, and I just cried hot tears into my pillow. I was so devastated. But it was also a little bit of an epiphany of, oh, money gives you options. Oh, money gives you choices. And, like, in that moment, I was desperate for more options and more choices. And I was like, I never want to be in this spot again where I can't make healthy, safe choices because of money. And so it really, for me, that that initial motivation was really out of, like, I want more options in life, and this is how I'm going to go about it. So I just started saving a lot of money, and I worked after school. I worked over the summers. By the end of my senior year, I had saved $8,000 and. And I lived on my own my whole senior year as well, and, you know, paid my bills and. And so that. That motivation right out of the gate was there of, like, I want some more options in life.

This is so interesting. I interviewed this woman, Brie, who lives in our town, like, way back. This was like, back in 2017. She had saved like a hundred thousand dollars in high school.

It was crazy.

Same thing, but, like, working, starting to invest and that. Yeah, and it was a similar kind of like, I should connect you to just, like, motivation. I mean, she's probably. I'm sure she's mostly in her mid-20s now, but I should check in and see and see what she's doing. I just remember hearing about her and, like, thinking, this is incredible. Like, who does this? But, yeah, this internal motivation and like, I think these stories that people have from their early lives about wanting to get this level of control is such a huge driver. How did it play out? I mean, I don't know if you're willing to share this, but I'm curious how it played out with your mom and, like, like, what happened?

Yeah, eventually. Eventually she was ready to. To leave, but it took. It took a lot of years. And so I think that that clarity. The first year my ex and I were married, someone just randomly said to me, because I. I'd never heard of financial independence. I don't think it was really an idea. This was, you know, I'm 42 now. This was a long time ago, like 23 years ago. But someone randomly said to me, hey, so, I mean, you guys have been. Been like, living on your own and paying all your bills. When you get married, you should just save. Save one of your incomes. We'll just save half of that. And then, you know, as you. As you get older, if you want to have kids or buy a house or whatever, like, you'll just have some more options. And I think just that word, like, options, I was like, ooh, I like that. Yep, that sounds great. We should definitely do that. And so that. That Was all it took, just one person casually saying like two sentences to me. And that became the goal. Let's try to save half. And like I said, we didn't go into high earning professions, but figuring out how to pay off those debts, you know, I realized, I realized very early on when I was about 20, 21, it can be really tough if you grow up poor. I felt a lot of shame around looking poor. I really didn't want to look poor. But I realized because I realized I don't make enough money to be rich and look rich. Like I've got to pick one of the two. Like I've. There's not enough cash here to do both. And so I kind of optimized for being rich and, and now I feel like there's actually three options. Like you can look rich, you can be rich, or you can experience a rich lifestyle. And sometimes, I mean, sometimes you make enough money to do all three. Sometimes you gotta pick one. Sometimes, like now I'm like, I get to pick two. I get to be rich and I get to have a rich, rich lifestyle. I still don't look rich. My minivan's like 20 years old. I think pity. People still like pity me a little bit when I pull up in it.

I think that's a strong signal though. You see this, I remember, you know, being in San Francisco and yeah. Seeing this written down and then noticing it that people like, very often people that have money, they drive kind of crappier older cars, right. Or they, they're not spending money on stuff like that because it's like a depreciating asset. And then you'd roll around and I start noticing, oh, here's someone in the nice house, but their car seemed like really old or whatever it is. And it's also all relative. It's so interesting. It's like, I think everybody's kind of indexing on this upper middle class lifestyle that hey, this is kind of what success looks like. And whatever house, certain of kids, certain school districts, whatever it is, wherever you live, and then spending a bit to keep up with, spending to keep up with the Joneses and, and that makes it really hard. And then like, like Mr. Money Mustache comes along and he's like, hey, you know, you got to save like this high savings rate. It's all relative. It's like, it's basically the savings rate relative. It's really the savings rate because if you can save half of whatever you're making and you're able to live on the other half, then you can pretty quickly, like you did, get to financial independence at that lifestyle. And then it depends on are you happy at that lifestyle, does that meet your needs? But so many people don't understand that.

Well, one of the things about mini retirements is you can use them for a lot of different functions. So especially if you're early in your financial journey, you can use them as wealth building activities. Like they don't all have to be travel or adventure. The house that actually I'm in right now was a mini retirement project about 12 years ago. Me and my spouse at the time, we took a month off, we bought this house, we renovated it ourselves, got all the basic stuff done, got it rented and used it as a rental for seven, eight years and then five years ago moved into it, finished renovating it. But you know, I'm kind of a numbers geek. So like we paid 100,000 for it initially. We've put another hundred in. It's now worth 500,000. So that month off, yeah, it probably cost us a few thousand dollars because we didn't get paid that month, but we're $300,000 richer because of it. And so I think front loading some of these mini retirements for things that can accelerate your career or can accelerate wealth building activities, especially if you're at the early stages of your financial journey, it can make a lot of financial sense.

That's super interesting. Do you have other examples of. I hadn't thought of it this way because when I was kind of getting ready for this, I was thinking about, oh, take a sabbatical, take some time off and chill out. Right. I think that's how most people think about it. But you know, you're kind of flipping it on its head. So. And that example makes a lot of sense. But yeah, there are other examples of how people do this, use their time that way.

I mean, on the professional side, a lot of people use a mini retirement to get additional training, additional certifications, improve their soft skills, really recover from burnout so they can show back up at 100% and kind of be a little bit more of a rock star. Oftentimes use a mini retirement to try to find a better job. On the other side, there's a lot of, there's a lot of cultural influences there. When someone takes off work to go do something fun where everyone kind of in your network subconsciously wants to pull you back into work, they're like, ah, they're having too much fun. Like let's, let's get them back to being employed. And so People are often surprised that they get a lot more job offers while they're on mini retirement than they ever did while they were happily employed. Like, nobody ever thought of them for the job while they were happy at their job. So that can, that can be one of those things. Or professionally, a lot of people, especially, you know, in their 40s, late 30s, early 50s, they've done their career for a long time and they're looking at, you know, I've probably got another 15, 20 years. Is this what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life? Like, is this the one thing I'm gonna do? And if by your 40s or 50s, like, you're further along in your financial journey, I talk about this as kind of like the first chapter, the first chapter of your career you really need to optimize for earning the most amount of money is like making that financial progress, paying off your debt, starting to invest. But if you've made a lot of financial progress, that's not necessarily what you need to optimize for in the second chapter of your career. And I see a lot of people, they've, they've gotten some financial momentum and they take this mini retirement to reimagine. What do I want to do professionally? Do I want to make a pivot? Is there something else I would enjoy? Are there other things I could optimize for? Could I optimize for co workers I enjoy more? Could I optimize for a better work life balance? Could I optimize for more creative or interesting work or work that leverages my skill set in a different way? Could I optimize for something that's less stressful, or I have more time with my family, or it's more flexible for me to travel and it's tough to do that. It's tough to reimagine that when you're in the thick of your current job and just so overwhelmed and maybe burned out and, you know, focused on what's happening in front of you.

Yeah, that totally resonates it, it does feel that, that's, I mean, how most people kind of go through their life. They're kind of like, hey, you know, they're pattern matching. I don't know, like the world I run in, it's like, hey, you know, in my high school, 95% of people went to college four year schools and they went to pretty good schools. And like, you know, we were all kind of like on this train of like, okay, you know, I mean, we're, we lived in a middle class Upper middle class town, but it wasn't, you know, but we're kind of like trained and I kind of almost indoctrinated. Then you're like, okay, get through school and then you're going to go to grad school or you're going to get a job and then you're going and, and then you kind of heads down. Yeah, trying to make money, kind of go through your life, get married, have kids, all that stuff. I mean, what percentage of people do you think do this, that they, they find the space to pull back a bit and think about it more holistically before the traditional like 55, 60 year old timeframe, when you're like, okay, for whatever reason, like, you know, I got laid off or I have enough money, I'm gonna think about it now, I.

Think it's rapidly increasing. And so I also maybe to take a step back, I define a mini retirement with three characteristics. It's a month or longer, stepping away from your 9 to 5 to focus on something that matters to you. So if you hit those three, I'm like, yep, I'm in your retirement. And it's funny, when I talk to people who are maybe going to interview me for about mini retirements, they go, actually after I read that, I was really curious about, you know, I was curious about taking mini retirement, but I realized actually I've done that. I did that like after college I took three months off and I went backpacking in Europe. Or like, you know, after me and my spouse were married, I, we were going to move across country and I was switching jobs and we took a few months off and like we did this really cool road trip. And so I think, I think it can naturally happen whether we know that that's what it is or not, whether we're intentional about it or not. Like there's periods of life where you might be unemployed or you might have a gap in between. You know, you might negotiate starting your next job a little bit later so you can go do this cool thing that you couldn't do during your working career. But the other factor is that the economy's different. It's just changed a lot in the last 50, 60, 70 years. So this idea that you can have one career at one company for 40 years and then get a pension and retire for the next 30 years, like that's just not the reality we're living in. For most people, you're probably going to work in multiple employers, you might work different careers and you're going to have these opportunities to take Bread breaks in between these jobs. And for a lot of people as the, especially if you're like under 40, the, the wages versus cost of living ratio is a little bit different than it used to be. And so this idea that like I'm guaranteed and promised a retirement at 60 or 65 might not be a reality. The reality is people might be working till 70, they might be working part time till 75. Lifespans are also increasing. And I, we have a much better understanding of how to be like healthy and active than if I think about my great grandparents, like very different than what I do. And so I think this model is what makes sense in our current economy and in our current job market and how we're actually living our lives.

I think it's starting to happen. I agree with you. Like I was, as I was prepping for this, I was like, I asked perplexity, you know, what, how do people do this? Right. You know, take a sabbatical is what I asked. And it's which they define as more than 120 hour hours off within a couple months. But it was anyway, the rate had basically doubled in the past. It's still not super high. It's like 7% versus you know, three and a half percent. But while you were, while we were talking, you know, this whole being out of work thing as a reframing is interesting. So 75% of people take more than a month to find a job. And tens of millions of people have been out of work in the past decade, like with COVID and stuff like that. So there is a real rotation. I do see this with people I know especially as I, you know, get older and advance my career. It's like, or my life. It's like, yeah, you know, you, you know, you see more people as they're deeper in their career. They're like, you know, okay, I've been making more money, but if something happens, I'm out of my job. It takes longer, you know, it takes longer to find those higher paid jobs. And could people be more intentional with that time?

Yeah. One of the things I talk about in the book is this idea of a mini retirement go bag. I used to watch a lot of NCIS and they, they always had this duffel bag. And so when like an emergency came, it had like their passport and some cash and like their toiletries and like a few changes of clothes and they could just grab the stuffle bag and in a moment's notice go off on like wherever they needed to go. And we can do the same Thing for mini retirements, especially those unplanned, unexpected, you get laid off and they're like, okay, here's six months of severance. Best of luck. And you don't have a lot of notice for this, but in that mini retirement go bag, I encourage people to come up with four or five, like month long plans. Something that's meaningful to them, something that's interesting, something, a variety of things that they could do in different seasons. Like, it can't just be like, I'm going to do a downhill skiing trip. You might get laid off in July. Things that they could do at home versus traveling. And if you come up, if you put in like the planning and the emotional energy up front to like, what are five cool things I could do? And then set aside a little bit of money for those adventures. Then when you get laid off, it's still a bummer and it kind of sucks. And you go home and you're grump. But maybe in a couple days or maybe in a week, you pull up that word doc and you go, actually, maybe now's the man. Now's the perfect time to do one of these adventures. And you're able to emotionally pivot in this difficult situation where if you hadn't done the planning, you might stay stuck in kind of those difficult, unpleasant emotions and not have the creativity or the motivation to like, come up with a cool plan.

I like that idea a lot. This Go bag, it's, you know, we definitely talk about in traditional retirement, like, hey, make sure you're retiring to something. But the idea of thinking through in advance a bunch of things that you want to do over the course of your whole life and doing that early and I think having the, you know, the, the framing of knowing that you can't always like, hey, I might want to go climb Everest. Well, you know, at 65 or 60, that's way harder than when you're 30 or 40. And so if you want to do some of this stuff earlier in the process, you should be pretty thoughtful and intentional about doing it. And I think one other comment I have about this is like, I do see this where people, like, they're like, okay, I got laid off, great, I have a minute. But then they're very worried about like getting a job. So they're very focused on that. And then when they do have the space is when they're like, okay, I found a new job, but I'm going to start two months from now. That's when they're like, I feel good. Job's Coming, but I go do this. I think it's getting that framing earlier and being like, okay, actually I gotta lay it up. I can spend some time not worrying about it and maybe taking action with my own human capital.

I think having that plan helps people emotionally pivot. And the other thing is, I think the reframing of if you're going to be, you have six months severance. Let's say you have a job that's hard to, hard to find something at your level that's like an appropriate fit. And it might take six months. You could stay home and just look for jobs for six months. Or you could go do a really cool adventure. You could do some professional development. You could do something that's like personally enriching. And then when you are doing those interviews and people are like, so what have you been up to? You're like, well, I just finished a cooking class in Italy for a month and me and my mom, mom, she just retired. So we biked through Croatia for a month. You know, I took this class at the local college for public speaking. You know, you have these things that show that you're interesting and dynamic and motivated and organized and like passionate. Mini retirements aren't. They're not exactly easy to pull off. Like, it takes a little bit of courage and it takes a little bit of gumption to go out and do cool things. It's much easier to just stay home and do nothing and watch Netflix. So I think there's actually a distinct advantage to being thoughtful with this time and doing the cool things. And especially if you are in an industry that's like really intense and very focused and doesn't have a great work life balance, I think people worry about, well, how am I going to explain this, that I took six months off? Like, this is a very work driven culture here. And I think it's a you, you, you're intentional with that narrative and it becomes like a work hard, play hard of like. I worked super hard at my last job, hyper focused. So I took three months off. I got caught up on all of my personal stuff. I invested in my relationships, I invested in my health, I did cool things. And now I'm ready to go all in again. Because this is the rhythm that I like. This is how I like to sprint. I like to sprint, I like to work super hard, I like to be super focused. And then in between jobs I take a break and recharge.

Yeah, that's super interesting. So do you, do you think people should be. It feels like, yes, you know, or I guess, why should people be proactive versus reactive? Because we've talked about, okay, something happens to you and you're like, I got laid off. Be intentional all the time. But you know, I know that you're also, you talk about the risk of burnout and like, kind of, you have to invest in yourself and the importance of rest. So kind of what's your point of view about being proactive and how that should, you know, emerge in your life around this area?

Yeah, I think because things are different now, I think it makes the most sense, the most logical sense for a person to say, actually, I think I'm going to take a mini retirement every three or four years. Two or three years into my career at a company, I'm going to negotiate a month off, I'm going to negotiate two months off, and then when I switch companies, I'm going to take three months off in between and make that part of the rhythm. And then if you are kind of, if you're kind of thoughtful about it. The reason I called the book retire often versus, like, take one massive, epic mini retirement in your working career is that you can give each mini retirement a different function, a different purpose, a different intention. So in the early ones, like maybe make them wealth building activities, maybe make them career building activities, do the affordable, easy, cheap, hyper adventure things that you might not want to do in your 60s, like do those early, front load, all of those. But then as you go through the decades, they can each serve a different function. So by the time you're in your 40s or 50s, if you're thinking about traditional retirement, start to use those as like a test drive of your retirement. When you talk about, like, what are you retiring to? Don't just make this theoretical. I'm theoretically going to do this, like, do a test run. If you think, you know what. God, I would love to play golf every day. I love golf so much. Take a month off, play golf every day, see how it goes. See what you think about it. Like, if you're like, I want to volunteer at this organization, take a month off, go do that thing. Because some of it will be amazing and it will give you confidence to retire and some of it will be a disaster. And then you're able to learn from that and to pivot and to come up with new ideas and to test run those ideas so that, that transition into retirement, you've already done it five or six times. Like, it's, it's as seamless and easy as, as it's going to Be.

Are there communities around this topic that, where people get together and they kind of share what's worked and what hasn't?

I think it's. It's becoming more popular and I hope that we're moving that direction. It's one of the reasons I host group coaching around it, because most people who are doing mini retirements, none of their friends and family are doing it with them. Like, they're doing it kind of alone. And there can be challenges, there can be fear, there can be things that, like, don't go as expected. And it is really helpful if you have other people who get it. That's one. There's not many advantages of traditional retirement, in my opinion, but one of them is that a bunch of your peers are also retiring.

So you're.

Yeah, you're in this weird life transition altogether. And you can go and get coffee and you can kind of complain to each other of like, like, my spouse is driving me crazy. They're home all the time. Like, he doesn't know how to load the dishwasher. Like, you know, but if you're 40 and you say, you try to go to your friend and you're like, oh, my gosh, I am way tireder than I expected. I'm just like, napping all the time. And I have all this time with my spouse and there's like this conflict and I feel like I have like, almost too much free time. You're going to be like, you've got to be joking me. Like, you're complaining about too many naps and too much time with the people you love. Like, you have any idea what I'm living right now.

How is the, the group thing is so interesting. We're seeing this in our communities where we have people in Facebook and people in Reddit that hang out at Bold and they talk about retirement and, and they do. They. They talk about their money. And what's interesting is there are these emerging, organically emerging groups that just form up themselves and they're like, we're gonna get together on zoom or in person, and we're gonna do what you just described because they are, they are going through it together and they have different roles and, like, ways of operating. What. When you're doing this group coaching? Like, like, who shows up? And are they the same? Are they all across these generations? And what do they. Like, what are some of the big things they're doing diving into?

Yeah, I mean, the demographic is probably 35 to 50. It's kind of that middle career kind of thinking about A lot of them are thinking about do I want to make a slight career pivot after this. And for most of them that's not something entirely different, but going into something that's maybe adjacent but maybe a better fit for their interest or their skill set. But I have them basically. A lot of the content in the book, we have a workbook and so there's exercises. And so once a week we show up and it. And we just share, like, what were your answers? What were your, what were you thinking? Like, what's the plan? And it's funny because like I'm there but mostly facilitating. Like they don't really want to hear my opinion. They've heard my opinion. They want to hear how are, how are each other handling it? How are they negotiating this off? How are they thinking about networking? How are they finding another job? How is the budget turning out like they thought, thought it would turn out or not how they thought it would turn out, like, and then problem solving. Like I feel guilty taking this 150 art class. Like what am I, what am I missing here? Why do I have so much more scarcity mindset or. And we're more tired than I expected. And I'm feeling guilty about that because I'm not getting as much done as I wanted to get done. So I think it's really helpful to try to find people who are going through unique things because that fourth step in the book I talk about this journey in that it's really unexpected for most people what this is like. But I liken it to like Lewis and Clark on when they were sent out on the expedition across North America. They had never been there and it was uncharted for them. So it was all new and it was all novel. But people had lived there like it wasn't, it wasn't unexplored just because they hadn't charted it. Other people were actually really familiar with every part of the country. And so finding the people who have done this, who are doing this and like getting some advice and getting some camaraderie of like, like wait, what time of year can we like cross this river? Like when's too soon, when's too late, that can be really helpful and really reduce. I call it unnecessary emotional suffering. There are things that can emotionally cause us to suffer, but they don't have to. If we just think about it a different way. If we handle it a different way, they kind of evaporate.

Yeah. One of the insights I got from a friend of mine who was also one of Our first folks that used advice in our platform, he's a doctor, a psychiatrist and for children anyway, he was like anticipatory anxiety is the most significant, impactful form of anxiety. We all worry about what's coming and have so much anxiety about it. And then when it happens, you're like, oh, you know, we're all still here, but we can't control ourselves from like worrying, you know, having this worry. What about outcomes? Do you. When people. So they're in these coaching sessions and engaging and learning about this and doing and going through it, do you have stories or data about how it helps people? I mean, so I financially, yeah. And then like I'm also interested just on burnout, right? We, this is such a work intensive culture we live in and I think especially millennials and Gen Z are super thoughtful about burnout and being aware of it. How do you see it improving those things.

Across every area? I mean one, it's kind of intensive. We do 16 weeks, we're talking a lot. But yeah, when you put time and intention and effort into something, it typically makes it better. So the plans that step one, like the planning gets better, they figure out how to organize it. Like being more thoughtful of the finances, taking a few of those extra steps in networking or maintaining contact with people during their mini retirement, asking for help during the kind of job hunt process. But honestly, a lot of it is the course correction. It's really easy if you've never done something for it to kind of go off the rails. And I tell people like this is intensive. Like the workbook's over 100 pages. Like there's so many exercises. We're going to spend 16 hours talking to each other it and you could get the mistaken idea of you're going to have a hundred percent perfect plan by the time you walk out of this. And I tell people you will not have 100% perfect plan. You are going to have 70% of a plan and then the other 30%, you're going to have assumptions of what you think is going to happen and how you think it's going to go. And those are going to be incorrect. And so the goal is every week, kind of like the scientific method, you're going to test your assumptions of how you structure your time, of how you budget, how you feel about your money, how you network, like all of these things, you're gonna test your assumptions and at the end of the week we're gonna do a weekly check in and you're gonna ask, how is it going? What did I learn what went well, what didn't go well. Like, do I need to have better boundaries with my friends? Cause they keep asking me to babysit their kids. Like all this stuff that could pull things off the rails. And you're gonna course correct and you're gonna try it again next week. And slowly, week after week, you're going to trade some of that 30% of make believe of your plan for actual data that's real. And the plan should evolve and change as you go.

I love talking about planning. I know I want to dive into what you're doing here. So, like, what do these groups look like? I mean, how many people are doing this at a time? Because I could see this resonating with our audience.

Yeah, our cohorts, we usually on the calls, we. It's like five to 15 people. So it's. I try to keep it to where everyone has a chance to share their work and ask questions and give advice. So finding kind of that sweet spot of, of that group dynamic. And then we do a WhatsApp chat where people kind of continue those conversations. And when they're like, oh yeah, that thing that, that resource that I shared or that link that, and we throw all of that in there. But in, in sharing their work and sharing their plan and sharing like the parts that they struggle on, they get really close to each other. Like, they develop really strong bonds and often they keep going afterwards, they still have zoom calls with each other, or they meet up and like go on vacation together and stuff. Because they're all doing mini retirement, so why not?

This is happening in our little communities. But they're not organized. I mean, people, I think they, they, they are going through this process. But so, okay, fascinating. So people are, you're grouping people up good size. I mean, solid. Like, I think the optimal group size, they say like eight people. Right. Or whatever. But like at 5:15, I think it makes sense. Everyone can participate. Then they're doing 16 hours of training, workbook stuff. Like, what does this cost? Is that something we can chat about?

So affordable. I, I probably. This is not a business savvy move. I'm charging $300 right now, which is like, it's. Yeah. So on a business side, let's not study the economics of this. Let's ignore all of that for a second. But I love, I love it so much. Like, I love seeing the conversations. I love. We show up every Monday night for an hour and, and it's really, it's really fun for me. So, like the fact that it's kind of a volunteer role on my part. Like, I don't mind at all. But yeah, it's, it's. I try to make it enough to where, like, people will show up most of the time, or else I probably would just offer it for free because I love, I love hosting them.

But this was where when you're financially independent, you can kind of like, really lean into stuff that you love doing. And like, things that I would do for free, I would do this for free anyway. And you're like, basically. But then what could happen is, you know, you might get a lot of people signing up for this as they start discovering it and then, you know, then it becomes a job or then you have to raise prices to keep it, keep it manageable.

I think we'll figure it out. I think I could just, like, we could just have a free version. They can, if they want to organize themselves, we'll let them, we'll let them do that.

Well, I want to, like, I'm curious. Well, I'm actually really want to dive into like, you know, obviously with Bolden, it's all about financial planning and people are mostly planning traditional things. But it's interesting, like, there's people on our team that are kind of, you know, millennials. And they're like, oh, well, they'll do scenarios like sabbatical in Thailand, you know, and what, when you're saying, when you're talking about planning. Sorry to take in this direction, but you know, what, like, what are the things that people are considering? The big things they're considering in their plan.

Yeah. So there's, there's the budget. I'll. So a little tangent. I'll talk about the financial planning side because I've, you know, I've sat with a lot of people while they run their numbers in financial software and, and they run both of those scenarios, like, what would it, what would it cost if I take six months off or if I just keep working? And, and then we have that number at like, okay, when you're 67, and I can never answer this question for someone else, like, which one is more appealing? Which one do you want more? And so what I have people do is, okay, imagine you're 67 and you either have 2.3 million and you took these mini retirements, or you have 2.7 or 2.8 million. 2.3 is enough. So that's, that's a lot of money different like that, you know, 500 some thousand dollars. Like, that's a significant difference in money. If you Imagine if you visualize being 67 and you can have 500,000, more or less, but when you were 40, you took a big road trip. You took a 10 week road trip with your kids to 10 national parks while they were all still kind of little. And when you were 50, you hiked Ireland with your parents while they were still with us. And then when you were in your 50s, like you took this break and reimagined your career and you came back to like this kind of new reworked career that you're really excited about. Which one would you prefer? Like it's your choice and it's your life and you get to pick. Do I want an extra half a million dollars, which is not insignificant, or do I want to be able to look back and do all these things that I no longer can? Do I no longer have access to those choices anymore? Or is it worth, okay, you're 67, you're like, I really need that extra 500,000. If you could look back and have you have five or 10 of these experiences and you feel like you've had this incredibly rich, full life and you did all the things you wanted to do, how would you feel about working two more years.

When where do you think? I know the answer, but I'm curious what, what you find when you pose this question. And is this kind of what it looks like for most people?

Yeah, from, well, so far, 100% for. But I have a very biased demographic. I find when people have enough to meet their needs, extra doesn't hold a lot of value. It doesn't feel very exciting. More money that they probably won't use. So as soon as they get to like, I'll have enough to pay all my bills. The idea of these memories and these values expressed and these experiences with people they love become much more appealing and much more captivating. And I think one especially once you're to the point where certain seasons of life have passed you by and you can feel that intensely. Like if you like I mentioned, 10 weeks to 10 national parks is something I did with my kiddos and they were, they're in junior high and high school now, but when we went, they were all itsy bitsy and we were in a pop up camper and like just exploring the most beautiful places in the world with them every day, doing these adventures. And I were selling our camper this summer and someone asked me like, are you sad because for the last nine years we've done a big camping adventure, three, five months, six months every year with them and they're like, are you sad that like that season's over? And I am sad, but also we leaned in so hard to that. Like, we did all the things we did hundreds of days of just being with our kids every day and doing these incredible adventures. And it was such a gift to me and it was such a gift to them that I'm like, I am sad it's over, but man, I couldn't have done anymore. Like, we just like, we rang every drop out of that towel, you know? And so I think once you're to the age where you, you feel that, you look back at those pictures and you're like, oh my God, that was so, that was so fun. Or that was so meaningful. It makes those future decisions a little bit more clear.

I think for all of us, we have to consider this. And I totally see this too. As people age, they become much more aware that like, time is so much more valuable than money. Especially as they have like, yeah, when you, when you have less money and you're kind of like in that scarcity mindset, you're like, oh, you know, we need money, gotta focus on that and like crank and do all this stuff and. But then you get older and you're like, well, you're not gonna take it with you, you know. Yeah, you can support your kids and everything else. But it's also interesting hearing you describe it like, so, you know, you think, you think about a 30 year career, right? Many of us will have 30 or 40 year careers, right? So you're working, you know, if you take two weeks off a year, that's 60 weeks over 30 years, 230. But it's, many of us work longer. If you took 10, four week breaks in that time frame, that's 40 more weeks, right? It's, you know, I mean, it's a year of time, but it's not that as a percentage, it's like 3%, right. Like, or whatever, you know, it's not that much because one year, one more year out of 30 is literally 3% of your time. That's the trade off.

This is a great thing to run through financial software because I think most people are surprised how small of an impact it makes. Especially if you're just taking a month off, two months off, it doesn't massively change your trajectory. Even accounting for nothing else changing, which I've never, I've never seen people take multiple mini retirements and nothing else in their life changed or improved. Like, you create this space and it creates an opportunity for growth and and just for new opportunities to happen, whether those are career building or wealth building or both. But it doesn't have a huge impact. But when you look back on that in the rearview mirror, those 10 one month things become the highlights of your life. Like they're just epic. And especially compared to two weeks of vacation because that's never a two week vacation. It's always split up of like I took an extra day for Christmas and then we had this wedding we had to go to and then we had to travel for this thing. And then my kids had had sports so we took an extra day here to do travel like baseball. It's never just an epic two weeks like in Costa Rica or Italy, it gets divided up amongst all these little things and then maybe you get like one nice like five day vacation. So having a month off, you can have incredible adventures, things that, that you'll remember for the rest of your life.

So a couple quick thoughts. My oldest kid was like, you experience half of your life by the time you're 24. In terms of like your experience of time, I think is that an experiences occurs. Half of it occurs in the first 24 years because everything's new. Right? Where he was using a word like we're, it's dopamine sensitive. Right. Like when you're young, like everything's new. Right. You've never experienced it. So that's cool. And like, and I definitely have this in my life. I was like, like felt like time was slower, there was much more going on. And then you kind of get in this pattern of whatever pattern you're in. For many of us it's working a lot. And then it's like time flies by. I mean there are moments, right? I mean you're definitely, if you're having kids and buying houses or whatever, you're still. There are seasons of our lives. But I think that's definitely true. And what you're proposing, which it resonates is like do wildly different things and your experience of time will all expand across your life.

Yeah, it, I feel like by the time I, I hit like 30 or and especially 40, I'm like, I've had like two lifetimes. Like I've, I've done so much more than I ever thought was possible. And you're like, oh, time to dream some new dreams, set up some new goals. Because like I ran through that bucket list.

Well, that's, that's for you, that's, that's normal for you, but not for most people. But it's good.

You recognize it having those mini retirements and having that opportunity, it is compared to a two week vacation, even just a month off is massively different. And you can accomplish so many more significant things that, and very novel things that, yeah, if you're like, what? What did I do? You know, August six years ago, you're like, I don't know, I just lived and, and cooked food and went to work and took showers. But if six years ago you were hiking the Camino, you absolutely know what you were doing.

Yeah, that's cool. Do you think women do this, think about this more than men or vice versa?

So I think sometimes, especially with, depending on the gender roles and dynamics, the impact of burnout can be multiplied for women. If they have the same busy, demanding career, the expectations of what they carry outside of that, and sometimes that desire to want to meet all of those expectations and not disappoint people, it can amplify that burnout. And so I think men and women both experience burnout. But I see a lot of women, especially in their 40s, have, like, they're crispy, like they're burned to an absolute crisp because there's so many, so many demands. And I just know, like, you know, I have five kids. It's funny, even between me and my ex, like, despite how much we tried to create equality in our home, the cultural pushback to that is constant. Like, I remember we used to go to the gym together and we bring our two little kids. And the gym had a rule that they didn't change diapers, like the parent had to change diapers. And they would always bring the kids to me. And every time I'd be like, hey, we take turns, we take turns changing diapers. And they would still consistently just bring the kids to me. And I'm like, we're both here. And I would take the kids, you know, to go change your diapers in the bathroom. No one would say a word. And then when it was my husband's turn, I would see him taking, you know, our little girls to the bathroom and all of the old women, because we worked at a gym, it was like all the 70 year olds were just like, he's just the best. Isn't he amazing? What a sweet dad. And I'm like, nobody compliments me for. I'm doing the exact same thing here. Like, I get zero compliments. So I think with current gender roles, even if inside your home you try to create so much equality, women just disproportionately, we usually get asked and expected to pick up that Additional labor?

It feels like it. Hopefully that's changing. We'll see. You know, not as fast as we. It should. Do you feel like there's any downside? I mean, we talked about the financial side. Okay. Plan for it. Well, actually, let me back up a second. In your groups, are you, are your groups biasing? Female? No. 50 or whatever?

Yeah. Very evenly split.

Split, Split. Okay. So, you know, we talked about the financial trade off. Are there any other trade offs? Or do you think it's like all upside for people? I guess there's some career risk, maybe. I don't know.

Career risk, career gain. I mean, I see a lot of people, their best opportunity to get a substantial raise or to get a substantial promotion is by switching companies. Typically, a long loyalty is not financially rewarded. I had a friend who took a year off and when he went back and got his next job, it was a 50% pay rise. Which you're like, man, that's awesome. Great. No, no, no, it's not great because it, because he had been at his last job for 15 years, which mean he, he had been underpaid significantly for a long period of time. He had left a lot of money on the table by not taking many retirements and switching employers. So that actually massively delayed his path to financial independence because he, because he just stunted his lifetime earning potential by, by that company loyalty. So there, is there some risk? Yeah, but there's also some upside and there can be a lot of reward in that. So I would say those things as a, in general are an upside. There is a whole bunch of stuff that goes wrong. It's just never the stuff people worry about. People worry about healthcare and they worry about the finances and they worry about the career. And those feel like the big things and they're not the things that go off the rails. Typically, it's learning how to communicate boundaries to your friends and family. Work.

Oh, God.

It's an amazing excuse. Everybody respects it, everyone honors it. If your mom says, hey, can you guys stay for eight days over Christmas? You're like, oh man, we would love to. So sorry, I have to go back to work. So we can only be here for three days. If you're on a mini retirement, you need to have that conversation. And they won't, they won't necessarily respect your goals and your intentions for your time off because they won't understand them. So, like, that can go off the rails. Mini retirements can reveal weak spots in our lives. They don't create the weak spot, but it gives us an opportunity to see where those weak spots are. And that can be a painful re revelation. You can learn a lot about yourself. You know, I had a friend who took a mini retirement and he was like, yeah, so I thought work was the reason that I never went to my nephew soccer game and that I didn't learn Chinese and that I wasn't training for a marathon and I didn't clean out my garage. And it turns out those were just me, me. Like I was, I was the problem. And like, that's not. When you've been blaming work for a lot of the things you're discontent with and then you remove that excuse and you're like, oh, I'm the problem, it's me. Like, that's not super fun to work through.

Well, it's good that they have that self awareness to own it and be like, oh, yeah, it was actually me.

Yeah. And in preparing for traditional retirement, I have a lot of people say, like, you know, I just, I don't. What about my sense of value? What about my sense of purpose? Like, if I don't have this job, like, what if I feel listless? I don't know how to organize my time. And I'm like, yeah, probably all those things. Like, that's real and you'll probably go through it. But we've got two options here. You can either figure it out or you can die at your desk. That's it. There's only two options. So like, why don't we start to figure it out in small doses? Figure it out over three months. Not when you're staring down the barrel of 30 years. Because at the end of three months, even if you haven't figured it out, it doesn't matter. You just get to go back to work and you get to avoid this problem for another couple years.

So I have one more question then. I want to ask you a little bit about your book and then we'll wrap it up. You know, do you see this? What do you think it'll look like in the next five years? Has it changed? I mean, it's been five years since we jumped on. It does feel like this is changing. It's sabbaticals. People are more intentional about their time. The culture is changing. There's definitely a lot more awareness. We're in the age of AI. Everyone's like, oh, I'm going to lose my job to AI. I mean, we'll see. I mean, we tend to get busier. But I can also see that, like, you know, maybe we go to four Day work weeks, I don't know. Or maybe we go to sabbaticals every three or four years.

I put one chapter in the book that Specifically, what are 10 benefits to employers if. What if we gave every employee a month off every year? How would that change our companies and change our workplace? And I think I'm my internal optimist. I'm excited and hopeful that with AI, if a company's like, hey, we could be 30% more profitable. With AI, I said that the cost of this is about like seven and a half percent to give every employee a month off every year. What if Instead of being 30% more profitable, we settled for 23% more profitable and we massively reimagined work and culture and life? What if every American had a month off, a month off to travel and go on vacation and boost economies and spend money and have hobbies and improve their health and improve their families and improve their communities? We could massively, with this one little bit of technology, change our whole, like, everyone's quality of life could improve. Now we could just make a couple billionaires way more rich or all Americans, our quality of life could massively improve and be different forever moving forward. But I think there are a tremendous amount of benefits to companies. And in 50 years, yeah, I think everyone will offer one. The companies that have the vision and are quick to adapt will have a huge advantage for the next two decades. While the laggard suffer or burn down, I don't care. They can burn down too.

It is, I mean, I do believe that, like, we're, we're more innovative with more rest or more balance in our lives. So it's interesting. I was like, while you're, you know, while kind of I was listening to you, I was also like, looking up, like, in Europe versus the US because Europe has this thing of like, hey, they get 25 to 30 days off, you know, a year, and I think they usually take it, but they still feel vacation deprived versus the US is more like 15 to 20, 20 days. And I feel like many Americans don't take the time.

Yeah. And in the book I proposed kind of this extreme idea of almost forcing everyone. Like, it's mandatory. It's not a benefit, it's not an option. It's mandatory because it changes the dynamics. So, like, one benefit I outline is that in every company and every team, there is someone who is exceptionally knowledgeable. They gather all the information and they let everyone around them be slightly incompetent. And they do all the things and they take care of all the things, which is awesome because they're a rock star, but that actually makes for fragile teams. That makes for fragile companies when one person hoards all the information. And we know that we should be documenting, we know we should be cross training, but we don't have the motivation and the deadline to do it. But if Sally's going to be out of the office for a month, you know that we're going to get this done. Like, we know exactly when she's leaving. Everyone needs to be cross trained. Everyone needs to share this information. She needs to document this process. And that makes for more resilient companies. But you also have the benefit. Okay, so what if you're thinking about promoting Peter into Sally's role at some point? Because Sally's awesome, we're going to promote her, but you're not 100% sure if Peter's going to be awesome at it. Well, hey, Sally's leaving for a month, so why don't we give Peter like 60% of her job and just test it out, see how he does. Like, it's a really low cost way to provide people extra training, extra development, extra opportunity to stretch those skill sets and to just see how they perform. And if he sucks next, next year when Sally takes a month off, we're going to try someone else until we find the perfect fit. And so there's all these ways that IT companies end up being stronger, being more profitable, being more productive because they institute this.

That really resonates. Actually, it's super interesting because this exists in our company too. We have people that like, you know, know everything, but then they, they do, they become a, an actual gating function because it's like, oh, you can only go as fast as this, you know, particular people and it doesn't change. And like you want to force change. So I think that's.

And those high performers you have to kick out because they won't leave because they're too important, they're too essential. They know it. That's why they do it. Because they want to be so essential. They want to be such a high performer. They are not going to just go on vacation for a month and chill out. So you have to forcibly remove them for a month. Be like, thank you so much. Because they work at 110% all the time and they're at the greatest risk of burnout out. They're at the greatest risk of collapse. So you want to protect your highest performers because they are doing like three people's jobs. But that's another great Benefit for Sally. He's doing three people's jobs because everyone else is doing 80%. Kick her out for a month. Make everyone else do their whole darn job by themselves. Don't let her help everyone. And maybe when she comes back, they'll just keep doing their full jobs. She will not take on. So you can just give her a whole brand new job job because now she's not doing 10% of everyone else's job.

Yeah, 100%. It's, it's super interesting to think about this. And, and I'd like. Now I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go like, think about the data and ask. Ask chat, GTP Chat GPT a bunch of questions about this, about this topic. This is, this is really interesting. All right, well, look, I know we're, I know we're, we've gone, we've gone long. I do want to like, as we close, I just love to hear you riff a little bit about kind of like the four steps on your book. Book, kind of the dream career, money and journey. Maybe you can give us kind of a quick summary because I, you know, we definitely want people to check out, you know, your book, retire often and we'll put a link to it. I think it's a retireeoffen.com right. People can go there and find out. But yeah, I would love to hear you kind of just give a quick kind of overview of what people will find there.

Yeah, the book and the four steps. I've been coaching and teaching about this for almost, almost a decade now. And I've heard every fear, I've heard every objection, I've heard every concern that people have. And the great thing about one on one coaching, when you're sitting across from someone, you cannot, you cannot give them fluffy answers. You cannot be like, just go talk to your boss. It'll be awesome. They're like, exactly what do I need to say? What exactly do I say? What does this conversation sound like? And so in the book, I go through all of the tools, all of the prompts, all of the exact scripts, how do you time the emails, how do you plan the conversations, how do you plan the budget? Like, exactly how do you pull this off? So while I hope it's very inspirational, it's super practical. Like if you actually want to know how to do this, this walk through every single thing. And so we start with that planning and all the different ways to think through the planning, how to create phases, how to know which many retirements to front load versus to save for later thinking about your, your financial, where you are in your financial journey and your physicality, like how healthy you are. We go through all the career stuff, like how to have these conversations, what do they sound like? How do you craft your mini retirement story? How do you network, how do you find that next job? And then all the financials from, how do we budget for it, how do we think through the cost, how do we cap the budget? I usually encourage people to set kind of a maximum spend of 50% of your take home pay per month towards a specific mini retirement adventure. Which is why mini retirements can be affordable for anyone, whether you bring home 20,000amonth or 2,000amonth, because how much you're going to spend is proportional. And then, yeah, that chapter or that step four is just like, here's all the things you're not expecting, all the amazing things, like if you're on, if you're on a trip, like what are all the must see highlights? What's going to be the best part of this? And what are a couple things to avoid or what are a couple things to watch out for. And like I said with the Lewis and Clark, they had never been out there. They didn't know any of this, it was all new to them. But like, you know, Sacagawea had been there, she kind of knew what the deal was. And so they found someone, someone who knew what was going on and could like help them navigate that better. And I feel like that's, that's my role in this.

That's awesome. All right, well, Jillian, this is fantastic. I think this is going to be awesome and our audience will love it and it's going to be helpful, especially for younger people as they're thinking about this and being more intentional in their lives. So appreciate you taking the time and we'll definitely link to retire often. We'll get this out there. This will, will hit Our newsletter of 120,000 people and all that good stuff. And so for everyone listening, you know, I know you know, all feedback on this podcast is welcome, all sharing is welcome and definitely please check out Jillian's work and you know, we, we hope you enjoy it and let us know if it has a big impact on your life. And with that, Jillian, thanks again for, for joining us on the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me.