Micro Retirements: The Answer To Our Burnout?

If there’s one thing that unites us, it’s the desire to take a break from work. Even if you love your job, there are always going to be moments when the Sunday scaries hit and stress becomes harder to manage. Annual leave seldom feels enough and has to be strategically planned over a year, and any sense of peace we might have gained while away dissipates at the sight of 302 unread emails on our return. 

Wouldn’t it be great to tap out of it all for a while? Whatever you want to call it — a micro retirement (as TikTok has recently dubbed it), a career break, a sabbatical, an adult gap year — taking a period away from work has always been a popular notion. Now, people on the Gen Z-millennial cusp are discovering the benefits of hitting pause on the hustle. But rather than having one career break in your 20s or 30s and ticking the experience off, the micro retirement is about taking little breaks more often, usually over six months to a year. Statistics show Gen Z in particular is less centred on work than previous generations, being less bothered about climbing the career ladder for example. On top of this, the retirement age is increasing to 67 in the UK, and there’s talk of further increases in the States. 

“It was the best year and a half of my life, so enriched with amazing opportunities, culture and people,” says 29-year-old Beth Lawson from Newcastle, reflecting on her own micro retirement, which ended in June last year. She travelled from Argentina to Mexico with her boyfriend. “Ever since I was at college, I wanted to travel South and Central America, but it made sense to go to university first. After that I secured a graduate job in London and the years flew by happily, and COVID also happened. Once we saw the gap and opportunity to leave, we took it.” Lawson and her boyfriend, both working as junior designers, were able to save as they shared one room in a house-share, meaning their rent was less than their housemates’. Each month, over a period of five years, they put money aside. “We are not flashy people. We like to cook, we cycle most places, and always opt for tinnies in the park,” she adds. “When we were travelling we maintained this attitude, mainly staying in hostels and travelling by bus.” This made their micro retirement financially achievable. Lawson plans to take another break in a few years, once she’s saved up again.

Many millennials graduated into a recession; Gen Z graduated at the time of COVID. Both limited our choices. Lots of us grew up being told that the appropriate time to travel is either post-education or retirement, before or after you’ve completed your career journey; now, many people are realizing there’s time to enjoy in between. Time when people have more money than they did as students, are wiser and know themselves better, and need a break from the slog of work. Considering that one in five of us need time off work due to burnout, perhaps those taking a micro retirement are onto something. 

The financial planning requires some luck around your job, rent costs, and whether you’re working on a single or dual income. Grace, 29, from London, took a six-month stint off work last year to travel around South and Central America. She credits her job in healthcare with enabling her to save up. “It’s very common in the medical profession to take a year out after the first two years of being a doctor,” she explains. “I could only save very little from my base salary given London life and rent, so I picked up extra locum shifts on top of my 44+ hour weeks.” Over a six-month period prior to setting off, Grace worked weekends and nights, and took on last-minute shifts that needed filling. “These shifts pay much better than normal base rates and this was 100% worth doing for six months of travelling and chilling. This was always my plan for financing the trip.” She feels the reward of half a year off outweighed the hard work beforehand, the missed social events and burnout. “Without the break, especially after my first few years as a doctor working in the depths of COVID, I would have ended up resenting my job. I am a thousand times happier in myself, having had the opportunity to have six months of exploring.” Her only regret is that she hasn’t done it again — yet.

Micro retirement allows a person’s work-life balance to swing fully away from work — a refreshing place to be given that while working full time, life often moulds around your job. Natalie Whitcombe, an HR specialist and founder of Whitcombe HR, thinks young people have embraced the micro retirement due to the “culture of always being available”, be it through work or social media. “People are experiencing high levels of stress and pressure to always be productive, which can lead to exhaustion. It also seems that travel is very high on everyone’s lists now,” says Whitcombe. The tourism industry is projected to surpass pre-COVID levels, and there’s a significant increase in the demand for worldwide travel. “Travel escapism” offers an antidote to work fatigue. 

But not everyone is in it for travel — sometimes it’s simply about taking stock on a personal level. Thirty-one-year-old Anaïs Felt, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, went viral on TikTok for posting about her micro retirement, which she is currently on and plans to keep going for at least another five months. With the seven months she’s had so far, she’s been creating social media content, going through fertility treatments (embryo and egg freezing), spending time with her family and focusing on both her physical and mental health. “I’m enjoying a slower pace of life and having the flexibility to take each day as it comes,” she says. Felt previously thought a micro retirement should be “avoided at all costs” for the sake of building and sustaining a career but after watching colleagues take leaps away from work and land safely back on their feet when they were ready, she felt emboldened to do the same.

The break was needed. Felt has spent most of her 20s unexpectedly caregiving for a parent while building a career in product management and paying off student debt. When she hit the 10-year milestone of working, she was burning out and needed time to recover. “I could afford to take a micro retirement and felt time off to recuperate would help me show up as the best version of myself in my next role, so it’s a win-win for me and my future employer,” she says. Felt had been putting money into a high yield savings account and investing in ETFs, and ultimately plans to retire for good at 50. In the meantime she feels renewed excitement about going back to work because of this break.

Returning to work isn’t always easy, though. Lawson admits her return to working life after more than a year off “was a big shock”. “The reality of needing to get a potentially mundane job again did not fill me with joy,” she says. “We couldn’t move back to London because we had spent all our savings so we lived at home in Scarborough in my grandma’s old flat. Next to no design jobs exist in Scarborough so I set up as a freelance interior designer. I managed to secure work with an architect I had worked for in London, a month or two after returning to the UK. There was no backup plan, it was just ride it out and see what happens.” Lawson is glad she took that time away and credits it with changing her perspective on life — but it didn’t come without a cost once the fun was up. 

How aspirational this is at a time of high inflation and cost of living is another part of the puzzle. Budgeting is all well and good but it relies on the job market working in your favour once you return. Lizzi, 30, lives in London and quit her job late last year. Her micro retirement lasted nine months and she returned this summer excited to get back to work but aware of the clock ticking. To finance her micro retirement, she and her partner had lucked out on rent-free accommodation for a while, spent their annual bonuses and tax rebates, and withdrew their savings. “While travelling I was updating my CV and looking for jobs, determined to have something lined up [for when I got back] as my funds were running low,” she says. Lizzi landed a job five weeks before she got home. If she hadn’t, financially she’d have been in a tricky place. “Also, I started my new job five days after I got back, which was a lot. I would not recommend doing it quickly when you’re still jet lagged and emotional about coming home.”

Preparing for a micro retirement isn’t easy nor is it even achievable for everyone. Pearl Akintola, consumer finance expert at Experian, says it may take several years of strict saving to afford one — at which point, you might question whether it’s worthwhile. Akintola says anyone planning a micro retirement should create a detailed budget that includes all monthly expenses, such as household bills, rent or mortgage payments, and groceries. Then add in estimated costs for activities you want to enjoy during this time. “Consider adding a buffer of 20-40% to your estimated budget,” she adds. “This extra cushion will help ensure you can comfortably cover your time off, especially if it takes longer to find a job than you’d hoped.” If the worst does happen and money runs out while seeking employment post-micro retirement, Akintola recommends seeking advice from a financial advisor or debt counselling service. “They’ll be able to help you identify any benefits like the UK’s Jobseeker’s Allowance or other benefits that you may be eligible for that can help cover your living costs.”

There’s no doubt that once the admin of a micro retirement is taken care of, the experience is enriching and rejuvenating. Lawson is currently saving for her second one, and people are telling Felt they’re inspired to follow her lead. The lure of a year of freedom, adventure and self-actualisation has always been — and always will be — too good to pass up (if you can afford it).

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This article was originally published on refinery29.com.