Retire Often: Mini-Retirements for a Richer Life with Jillian Johnsrud

0:00 Welcome to Something More with Chris Boyd. Chris Boyd is a certified financial planner, practitioner, and senior vice president, financial advisor at Wealth Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest registered investment advisors. We call it Something More because we'd like to talk not only about those important dollar and cents issues, but also the quality of life issues that make the money matters matter. Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and across the country. Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd. Welcome to the program, Something More with Chris Boyd. I'm here with a whole host of characters here. I've got Jeff Carey and Russ Ball.

0:42 All of us are from the AMR team at Wealth Enhancement, and our special guest today is Jillian Johns-Rude. Jillian is the author of Retire Often. We're going to talk a little bit about your book and your approach to how people should have a more fulfilling life with their work-life balance. Thanks for being here. Thanks so much for having me. Well, not only do we encourage listeners to listen, share, like, rank our podcasts, we also listen to other podcasts. And I was listening to Dr. G, which we've had on the show. I'm a regular subscriber of his podcast.

1:23 I think it has a lot of good content, earn and invest. And I don't know, a month or so ago, probably when your book came out, Jillian, you were on Dr. G's show, and it was a very captivating conversation that you had. And we deal, our client base is broad, but primarily we deal with people thinking about retirement and in retirement. So your book, certainly Retire Often, and the topics that we're going to discuss today, I think are really right on point to what many of our clients are thinking about, so thanks for being with us today. Yeah, thanks for having me.

2:04 Could you just start, you know, for our listeners, and tell us a little bit about how you get into this niche of the financial world? Yeah, I started writing online about 10 years ago, actually during a mini retirement, my husband at the time and I had taken a year off, and one of the things that I wanted to do during that time off, I wrote on a little list, something to do with writing. And I wanted to write about personal finance, partly because I had always been such a personal finance nerd, and I loved the topic so much. But at the time, I had five itsy bitsy little children, and my entire life was mothering, like, my youngest had just been born.

2:51 And it was like, so I had like zero to seven or something. They were all so tiny. And like all of my friends had kids and we were just in that season of like, you know, diapers and strollers and car seats. And I just wanted a place to talk about personal finance and, and what I was learning and what I was thinking. And we had taken a number of mini retirements up into that point. And I was writing primarily in the financial independence community. And people found this kind of a novel, unique approach of, wait, on the path of financial independence, like I could take breaks, I could practice my retirement before I retired. Kind of the opposite of the FIRE movement, right?

3:33 Just go, go, go, then do nothing. Yes. And so 10 years ago, I started writing about this and it really resonated with people, it was really useful. And so it only took 10 years to come out with a book, basically an overnight success. But yeah, that's how, that's how I got here. And so when, when I hear of the subject, the way I process it, and maybe this is normal, maybe it isn't, but I start thinking, oh, can't do that. That would mess up my career development. That would mess up my accumulation phase of my life. That would mess up, you know, the whole list, all these obstacles, right?

4:14 Do you run into that with most people? Absolutely. I think our brain is really good at like looking at risk and challenges and, and imagining those upfront. But the reality tends to be a little bit different than the worst case scenarios. I've seen people leverage many retirements to actually improve their financial trajectory and to improve their career trajectory, not just their life. And it's, it's a little bit counterintuitive, but once you see it, you're like, oh yeah, I get how that could happen. And the, the outcomes are pretty, pretty reliable that this ends up being good across the board.

4:55 And talk about some of those responses or some of those data, some of that data that shows that, I mean, so you think about, oh, I'm going to leave my, my job, my income, fine, I've saved for that year and I'm ready financially for that year. But how, why could it, how and why could it be a positive for your, your career? Yeah. For a lot of people, I think the latest stat is like 89% of Americans have experienced burnout and it's really tough when you're burned out to be exceptional, you know, you can, you can get up and you can get to work and you can get through the motions and you can do the thing, but I compare it to.

5:38 If a, if a runner left for a month and, and came back and was 10 % faster than all the other runners, you don't win 10% more races, if you're 10% faster, you win all the races and there's a lot of jobs where being the best and being exceptional at what you do, being creative and innovative and motivated and intuitive really matters. Uh, I used to work in commission sales and whenever someone had something going on in their personal life, divorce, a death, whatever was happening, their sales would drop by 50% and you couldn't perceive it when they came into the office, like they didn't look like a mess, but there was something in those interactions.

6:25 And I think we take for granted, you know, we think, well, my 80% is good enough. And, and it is good enough, but there can be a huge advantage to really taking your professional success seriously and showing up as the best version of yourself. Maybe that means rest and recovering from burnout. Maybe that means additional training or improving your soft skills, but really you kind of compare it to, I played basketball in high school and we were a very competitive team. We took it very seriously, but every game you take a halftime, every single game, not because you're lazy or unmotivated or you don't care about the outcomes.

7:07 Like you take the halftime because you care so much about the outcomes. Yeah. You make adjustments, you get a little rest. Yeah, it's really important. And I think applying that same passion and that same discipline to our careers. Can you tell me a little bit about the lead up to this? I mean, I think many people have trouble making ends meet as it is, let alone having the structure and discipline to save sufficiently to have a mini retirement. How do you move from the mundane to having that kind of structural discipline?

7:54 Yeah, well, I think first I might, I might define what a mini retirement is. So I define a mini retirement with three elements. It's a month or longer, I think a month is like that minimum effective dose, stepping away from your primary career or your nine to five, and to focus on it matters to you. So when we're thinking about how do I afford this? Let's start with a month. How do we afford a month off, assuming that it's unpaid? And then there's the adventure that you're going to do, whatever the cost of that thing is going to be, which there's an enormous range of price points from some people actually save money on their mini retirement.

8:39 You know, maybe they're going to go travel and they rent out their house while they're traveling for that month. And the money that they bring in from renting out their house, it covers the entire cost of their trip. So I encourage people, if you're early in your financial journey, front load the affordable options like you don't have to start with the around the world cruise. Like you can do that when you're 70, 70 year olds love cruises. Start with the road trip. Start with volunteering. Last year, I took a month off and I learned tango and it was amazing. I spent a thousand dollars. It was such a good experience, like a great lifetime skill. But you can just start with the affordable ones. So then you have to cover the cost of that month off.

9:21 And for people who aren't like they're not money nerds like me, they don't love their budget and their spreadsheets and all that. A mini retirement can be great motivation to kind of tune into your finances and figure out what am I spending? Where is the money going? What am I earning? And you might. I don't think about it like saving money. You're just deferring that expense slightly, you know, instead of Chipotle burrito bowl every Friday at your desk in two years. If you if you forgo that for two years, that's a hundred meals in Mexico of street tacos on the beach while you're learning Spanish, like lots of margaritas.

10:02 You're not giving up your Mexican food. You're just going to have it in two years and hopefully it be a massive upgrade. It's really interesting. Talk about the professional impact. You know, one impression I think people would have is that this is going to disrupt my career trajectory or might undermine my ability to save sufficiently for a traditional retirement. Why isn't that so? There's a number of factors at play. One, for most people, your greatest opportunity for a significant raise or promotion comes when you switch jobs.

10:50 The it's the one of the easiest ways to increase your lifetime earning potential. So if instead of thinking, you know what, I'm going to graduate from college, I'm going to work with one employer and I'm going to work with them for 40 years. If you're like, you know what, I'll probably switch jobs every three to five years and you plan a mini retirement in between. And a mini retirement can be a great motivation to make that switch instead of feeling kind of stuck in in a company. And that can massively help increase that lifetime earning potential. Like I had one friend who ended up taking a year off. And when he came back, you know, he took some classes. He upleveled the skills a little bit during his year off.

11:32 The next job he received was a 50 percent increase over his last one, which sounds great, except the reason it was such a high increase was because he had been at his previous employer for 15 years, which means he had been underpaid for a long time. And if you love numbers like I love numbers, if we like run that math a little bit, let's say he was making a hundred thousand and he came back at 150. So he was underpaid for 50,000. Let's say maybe for eight years. Well, that's 400,000. Even if that year off cost him 100, he's still short 300,000.

12:18 And at 40, we like to run the numbers. If you had if he had managed to invest that 300,000 at 40, we're talking he shorted himself maybe a million dollars in retirement by not making those strategic career moves. And he could have been taking many retirements all along. So I think in the current economy, thinking through our career trajectory, as in maybe it makes sense to make a switch three years, five years, every 10 years and take this mini retirement in between to recover from burnout, to come back fresh, to uplevel our skills. Because the other reality is this this idea that you can front load all of your education by the time you're 22 and that you never need to learn another skill again.

13:06 You never need to uplevel because your job will never change at all. And AI is not going to affect it like that. I mean, to be true anymore. Machines are getting really good at being machines. And I think humans need to get really good at being humans. And many retirements give us gives us that opportunity. Jillian, I can see I can see the argument for younger people. Russ, don't listen for you for younger people and how that might be a lot easier to transition in and out and take many retirements. But when you get up into your 50s, you feel like if I and you're in a good job, you're in a job that pays you well, it's OK. Maybe you're burnt out.

13:46 Maybe you're not totally satisfied. But and you'd like to do the mini retirement or practice retirement, maybe. But you feel like if I leave this position and at my age, it's going to be super hard for me to find an employer who wants to take me on at 55 or 60. Is that is that an accurate perception for that age group? I think it's a really common fear. Right. And so if that fear is overwhelming, I would start by negotiating that time off, negotiate a month off, negotiate with myself, with your current employer, because it has two things. One, you get that many retirements, you get to start to experiment with retirement and you're better prepared for your full retirement.

14:31 But also I found once you're really good at being the exception to one rule, sometimes you get to be the exception to other rules. And I've seen people in this process of this negotiation and becoming the exception to really be able to create work roles that are very interesting, very meaningful, really dynamic for them and kind of accommodate that work life balance to where they're not itching to leave at 62 and a half. They're not they're not so anxious to leave at 65 or 70. One, because they've taken multiple many retirements, that bucket list is kind of satisfied.

15:11 They've been doing the stuff all along the way. They don't have this huge backlog once they turn 65. But also they've been able to carve out and create these really meaningful, interesting work roles that work is a huge value add for them. And their personal life, they're doing all the cool things. They're having all these amazing adventures with their spouse and their kids. And that desire to fully retire isn't isn't as present. Yeah, I see it's related, but not as you not as you position it, but where people have that built up. Desire to retire, and they do. And six months later, they're like, hmm.

15:53 Yeah. Hmm. I wonder if I should go back. Yeah. Can I go back? What can I do? Right. Because they're just the idea of retiring and being on vacation only lasts so long. Yeah, they're I think sometimes we underestimate the value of work in our life, in creating structure and meaning and solving interesting problems and leveraging our skill set and the collaboration. But the great thing I've seen when people start taking many retirements in earnest, like in their 50s and into their 60s, is they maybe they end up switching employers and they find one that's a little bit more flexible. They start to suss out, how do I move in and out of seasons of intense work and seasons of like retirement?

16:39 I have one coaching client who kind of thought she was going to fully retire from this, you know, important corporate job and ended up she was in a very male dominated industry. But during that time, she had mentored a lot of other women in this industry. And when she left, they were all successful in their own companies and doing their own thing. And they're all like, could you? We have this problem. Like, would you be able to come and fix it? Like, you're the person we trust. You're the person who's always had this expertise. Like, could you just come for like three months or four months? Like, help me fix this problem. But I can hire like a normal person to fill it. Like if you fix the difficult problem. And so now she you know, she's in her later 50s now and she'll work for three or four months and do this intense project.

17:22 And then she'll like semi-retire for, you know, three or four or five months and hang out on the lake and, you know, hang out on her boat. And then she'll do this other consulting project. And why would you ever leave that? Like, why would you ever stop that? She has the absolute best of both worlds. Both worlds. Yeah, absolutely. Russ, did you have a question? I do. Yeah. So I've been hearing about this trend of job hugging for people, you know, millennials and Gen Z, where it's like in the current job market, people are really hanging on to the jobs that they have, as opposed to, you know, jumping around quite as often as they might have in previous economies. Has that kind of come up at all in your conversations in regards to, you know, rather than switching jobs, maybe like doing this sort of mini retirement, also staying, but not having the fear that, you know, by doing so in a difficult job market, that might be at a disadvantage or, you know, make it not really possible.

18:19 I think there's a few factors. I think in the economy, such a vague, broad thing. I always encourage people like your job economy is your industry specific and it's kind of you specific. How many connections do you have? How marketable are you specifically compared to your co-workers? So just the fact that your co-worker can get a job might have no reflection on your ability, but sussing out kind of your current profession your marketability. There are a lot of people who opt to just negotiate that time off and that feels better. You know, I think honestly, like minimum, minimum effective dose if people could do one in a decade, I think it would be amazing and perhaps even more enjoyable to be one every five years, every three years.

19:11 But what a decade, the good start. And so it might be negotiating that off with your current employer and you work there three more years and then maybe you get laid off and you're like, well, that's a bummer, except. Now, maybe I take a six month break. And then and the cool thing when you take when you frame a layoff as a mini retirement and you have money planned and you have these of this term called mini retirement go bag, you said you've set some money aside, you have all these cool plans and these ideas and you go do something interesting because a whole bunch of other people in your field are probably also laid off and you're all competing for the same jobs. They stayed home and watched Netflix. You went and traveled and you learned a language and you did these courses and like your resume looks different and you interview different because you're not worn down from the discouragement of being laid off.

20:04 You have an energy, you have an optimism, you've done some cool stuff. And the reality is sometimes people are like, well, but if I go do cool things, people are going to think I'm flaky or lazy. The reality is to plan it around the world trip and execute that is logistically challenging. It takes vision. It takes creativity. It takes courage to do interesting stuff with your life. And when you're sitting in front of another person and you've done a whole bunch of interesting stuff, like there are also people and they're like, oh, that's interesting. Like you didn't just stay home and watch Netflix and apply for jobs for the last six months. Do you think? Go ahead, bro. Sorry. Yeah. Sticking on that topic of planning, I'm curious about how you think about planning these many retirements.

20:50 If you're talking about one every three or five years, like you have different savings buckets for those different trips. Like how far in advance do you set those in motion? And do you have like what your, you know, third mini retirement in the future? What that's going to look like? You know, how does how do you coordinate all that? I think it's a good practice, even if you don't have the next one planned to start squirreling away a little bit of money. I think about it. You know, we have emergency funds, but I think about it more like the opportunity fund because there are planned mini retirements. I say there's three ways you can take a mini retirement. You can negotiate it off. You can do it in between jobs.

21:31 The third way is sometimes life just throws you something unexpected and you're not going to work on Monday for a whole variety of reasons. And so you can do these unplanned ones, but you need a little bit of money set aside. And ideally, you will have brainstormed a couple options because I find when those unexpected opportunities show up, it's usually a little bit negative. And it can be tough to shift that emotional energy from like, I'm discouraged this thing happened to I'm ready for an exciting adventure. And if but if you've already planned the adventure, you've already done the emotional, mental work of coming up with those ideas. It's so much easier to pivot.

22:13 And then it's like an opportunity and it's more exciting. Yeah, it happens. You get a couple of days of mourning the loss and then you're like, let's go. So my guess is some of our listeners are getting excited. Hopefully. Right. So let's talk about some of the downsides. So what are some common mistakes that people make in this area of mini retirements or practice retirements? Yes, it can go off the rails, though. It's amusing. It's usually never the things people are worried about on the on the front end, finding a job, health care, the money, like for whatever reason, that stuff usually sorts itself out.

22:53 But things do go awry. One of them is people are really burned out and they have this huge backlog. And so they're like, I'm going to do 87 different things during my mini retirement and they're burned out. Um, you will accomplish far less than you think you will accomplish. Things will just take a lot longer. And sometimes that burnout is much more severe than you realize while you're in it, because one of the ways our bodies are just like so smart and brilliant, like the function of burnout is to get you out of a situation. And so it keeps your adrenaline high, your cortisol high. Like it gives you the motivation to keep going.

23:33 But once your body goes, oh, we're safe and we have access to rest, you will feel the full weight of that fatigue. All of those hormones will rebalance and you'll be like, oh, I'm tired. I thought I was going to clean out the garage. And all I want to do is take a nap right now. And that can really throw people for a loop. Yeah. Any other mistakes that people make other than like the physical stuff like. That to it, they're too ambitious and they might need some rest. Anything else? Well, so work, work is a fantastic distraction from what I call like the messy kitchen.

24:16 Before when I worked a nine to five, like sometimes, you know, be making dinner and it'd be really messy and like tired. And so just leave it in the morning, like trying to rush into the house, you know, the kids are like, ah, just leave it. And it's fine because I went to work all day. And I didn't have to see the messy kitchen. Sometimes in a mini retirement, you're just in the kitchen and you're like, oh, it's messy. I was I was able to successfully ignore all of this before. And now I'm like living in it all day long. And so sometimes a mini retirement, it doesn't necessarily create problems, but it reveals problems that were there all along. It was kind of like COVID.

24:57 And all of a sudden we were like stuck with our spouses. And a few people were like, hey, actually, I don't like hanging out with this person that much. It was way better. And we never saw each other. We see that in the full retirements. Oh, yeah. Great divorce. Yeah. A hundred percent. And this is a great opportunity. So I tell people many retirements, well, it reveals challenges. It's also the perfect opportunity to fix those challenges, whether that is we need better communication skills or actually me and my kids aren't as close as we thought. Or I've been out running this trauma from childhood by being super successful at work. Maybe I should actually go to therapy and sort some of this stuff out.

25:38 But it helps you kind of micro dose this this growth and this progress so that when you do fully retire and you're staring down the barrel in the next 30 years, you're not like, oh, crap. I have all this stuff that I've avoided. The first 65 years is all catching up with me. We might as well just like I guess we'll just like take it in little chunks, sort things out as we go. Julian, how do you handle this as a family? You mentioned you have a number of children. You and your husband presumably work simultaneously at times. Someone takes that one month.

26:18 I can see how you could logistically make that work. But if you're dealing with a six month break, is that something you're doing together or is that something where you one person is still working and and how does it affect family life and all this kind of challenging logistics? People do it both ways. Sometimes, you know, I always say, like, start with like the lowest hanging fruit. Start with whatever is easy. If it's negotiating a month off, start there. If it's one spouse staying, you know, being able to like take a mini retirement and the other one keeps working. You've got income, you've got health care. You don't have to stress about that. Like, it's totally cool to take turns.

27:01 And the great thing about taking turns is that you'll recover from burnout. You'll catch up. You'll invest in your health, your hobbies, your relationships. And then maybe, I don't know, five years, ten years. You're both able to do it together. But you you don't start at this massive deficit. Like you've been doing the maintenance all along. And so sometimes with if one partner is doing it, it can be great because you can kind of just catch up on life as well. And they can have time for hobbies and interests. And sometimes it does take a little bit of that load off of the working partner. So their life improves a little bit, too. But that's another challenge I talk about in the book. Specifically, if one partner is taking off and the other one's still working, those unexpected expectations can arise and it takes more communication.

27:52 So I encourage people to do like a weekly check in. How is this working for you? How is this working for me? What are the challenges? What are feelings that we didn't know we would feel but are now bubbling up? Like, hey, I, I, I assumed, I guess, that being you were going to be off work, you would be taking the kids to all the dentist appointments. Like, I didn't know that would still fall on me. Like, but you need that opportunity to have those conversations outside of times when you're like unloading the dishwasher and super frustrated. But when you do it as a family, like that's another amazing opportunity to do long term travel or slow travel or these other really big adventures and give your kids this kind of once in a lifetime experience for them and for you, like you might only have, you know, these moments of whether your kids are young or whether, you know, maybe it's their junior year summer of college.

28:49 And this might be one of the last chances you have to travel Europe for two months with them before they go off and have a career and a family and all of that. Yeah, very interesting. I know we've covered a lot. I wanted to ask one other thing, because it probably relates to your conversation on the podcast that I mentioned. And that is, how do you help people find what's really important to them to do with the time that they need to rejuvenate to and maybe find their passion for what they're headed toward in retirement? Yeah, the whole for I broke the book into four sections in the whole first section is figuring out that what's the right thing for your next mini retirement?

29:38 What are the things that feel really important right now? Maybe urgent right now, as in what is it that you really want? And is it what is it that maybe you need? Because it can be it can be easy to be like, I've got a bucket list of all of these things. I'm going to try to do all of them at once, which we talked about doesn't doesn't work exceptionally well. And so there's a few things, a few different filters that I kind of work through one, like financially, like let's front load the affordable ones. But also one of the things I consider is seasons of life that have an expiration date. Sometimes we have this feeling of I'm in this season right now, but it's it's going to be ending soon or it might end soon.

30:25 You know, I did I did a 10 week road trip with my kiddos when they were all little to 10 national parks in a pop up camper. And I remember being on that trip and going, oh, I couldn't do this in 20 years. Like this wouldn't wait till I'm 65. I couldn't I couldn't pack a bunch of 50 year olds in a pop up camper for 10 weeks with me. Like that season was going to expire. And you might be feeling that with sometimes it's an age thing, you know, with your parents. You're like right now. Yeah, they could hike through Ireland with me. Can they in 10 years? I don't know. Like this season of life might be coming to a close. And maybe it's in your own health or just, you know, those transitions.

31:08 I had someone do someone I was talking to did a mini retirement just before him and his wife decided to start having kids. They're like, this is we know, like this season, I must be able to travel through Southeast Asia and do these crazy trips. Like it's going to be on hiatus for the next 15, 20 years. So like, I think that can be a good filter. Is there anything in your life that you feel like we could use this now, but it's not guaranteed in five or 10 more years? Well, you're saying with the parents, I mean, you never know. So we can be around, right? In that scenario. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was just thinking I I have a granddaughter in college and I said to her, where do you want to go?

31:53 Anywhere in the world? And, you know, maybe next summer before she gets out there in the world and do something, you know, just my wife and myself and her. Because after that, she's not going to be able to do it. She's not going to be able to do the employed or something. Or I hope so. I hope that's the idea of college. You know, you can take them. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. So where do people find your book, Retire Often, what's the best way to someone to purchase this? It's available everywhere. If you go to retire often dot com, you can find the book. I've got coaching some free worksheets of like different ideas of how to how to figure out what to do.

32:36 Yeah. All of my stuff. It lives at Retire Often dot com. I have a really unhinged newsletter, if you like that sort of thing. And on social media, I'm at Jillian Jonsrud. Thanks for being with us. And until next time, everybody keeps striving for something more. Thank you for listening to something more with Chris Boyd. Call us for help, whether it's for financial planning or portfolio management, insurance concerns or those quality of life issues that make the money matters matter. Whatever's on your mind. Visit us at something more with Chris Boyd dot com or call us toll free at eight six six seven seven one eight nine zero one. Or send us your questions to A.M .R. Dash info at Wealth Enhancement dot com.

33:20 You're listening to something more with Chris Boyd. Financial talk show. Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services and Jay Christopher Boyd provide investment advice on an individual basis to clients only. Proper advice depends on a complete analysis of all facts and circumstances. The information given on this program is general financial comments and cannot be relied upon as pertaining to your specific situation. Wealth Enhancement Group cannot guarantee that using the information from this show will generate profits or ensure freedom from loss. Listeners should consult their own financial advisors or conduct their own due diligence before making any financial decisions.