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[off topic]
I am a fan of the Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald. Introduced to them in childhood and still worth a re-read.
Travis was a 'salvage consultant' who would rob loot back from criminals, and then retire for as long as the money lasted.
Only works if you are not working a shitty job and living paycheck to paycheck. Good fucking luck in most economies greedy billionaires are keeping this from happening.
Yeah wtf jobs is she getting where she builds up a safety net in 1-2 years? I've been at this shit for a decade and have 3 digits in my bank account
Edit: I should disclose the fact that I have been making minimum wage this whole time. That said, most people I know make nearly average wages, and still have 3-4 digits in their bank accounts at all times
Living with parents probably (/gen, non-derogatory)
There's a thing called lifestyle creep. You may not necessarily be living paycheck to paycheck on the bare minimum. Going out with friends, having the latest phone, having hobbies, if you cut out all fun you may be able to save up significantly. You can also live like a bum in the least accommodating space you can stand. Being comfortable is expensive, but not everybody wants to be uncomfortable for long stretches just to fuck off to the Bahamas for a month every few years. That or credit card debt.
I think current 'lifestyle creep' for many is getting used to things like 'health insurance' and 'something other than beans and rice'. Hard to give up simple human dignity once you've had a taste of it.
That is for sure a thing, but in my case it genuinely is having little income
Been making minimum wage for way too long, and at this point I'm too old and don't have the skills to get a significantly better job. My retirement plan is
If you're making minimum wage, what do you really have to lose by improving your marketable skills?
I mean almost anyone with a stem education is able to do this.
Before you say: "buh have you seen the job market?"
The point of the plan isn't to get stinking rich off of each 1-2 year stint, it's to make just enough money that you can travel around and reset to nearly 0 after not working for a few months to a year
The biggest problem I see with this is staying current and sharp with your tech skills and also explaining those gaps. It’s definitely possible though, especially if you’re able to live frugally.
Not in the US, if you have any medical conditions or if you don't want to gamble with the possibility of getting injured, or if you have a spouse or children who need your insurance.
Live with a group in a LCOL area, eat rice and beans, no other hobbies.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
I thought Gen Z aren't really into drinking or drugs. I hope they do this. Make holes in your resume the norm so they can't hold anything against you. I have friends that did/do this and they got it out of their system. They're pretty happy with their lives.
From what I've seen as a gen-z/millennial aged outgoing person: older gen-z still drinks quite a lot, younger ones (17-22) drink less but use significantly more drugs.
But that's just my two cents. Drugs do seem to have normalised a significant amount. Most nightlife people are clearly using coke, mdma or designer stuff, which used to be more subtle.
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
She thinks the jobs will be waiting for her. That’s adorable.
This is a Gen X thing but whatever
Who do you think raised Gen Z?
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.
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.
I work in a place where they had specific arrangements for that.
It was something like after 5 years of employment there you could take a year off and come back to the same position you left.
Similar at my previous job, get paid 75% of your regular salary for 5 years and they would keep your position on hold for one year of paid vacation where you would get paid whatever they didn't pay you all this time.
That's kinda cool, really
Bad idea because
My 401k is being destroyed by an orange idiot who's literally enjoyed entitlement his entire life. When I'm too old to work, I'll just die.
Are you paying attention to your 401k? S&P is up ytd. If youre actively paying attention to your 401k, yours should be doing even better than that.
I dont care what side of the political aisle youre on, but your retirement 401k shouldn't be being deatroyed right now
A woman I know did just that, except she wrote a book during her "off" years.
A woman I know worked as an escort on and off and spent most of her time traveling, but I don't think most people have the looks and the charisma to do that even if they want to. I'm not sure what other careers both pay enough and let you quit and then start again easily, but presumably there are some.
So just longer “camp” work? Some people work for 3 months and get a month off.
I knew a landscaper who would work for the 6 months you can and then all winter would go and stay on the mountains. The company he worked for only needed to keep a couple guys for snow clearing, so it worked perfectly.