Why retire when you're too old to enjoy it, Take a break, quit your job now Taking a break to travel isn't a crazy move, especially for millennials, because it can help give workers the stamina for longer, more sustainable careers
Millions of Americans obsess over their careers and fret about saving, terrified they won’t have enough to ever retire. The advice now being offered by some experts may surprise these worried souls: Take months or years off from work, travel the world, and enjoy yourself.There’s a prudent logic behind a relaxing midcareer break. With longer lives come longer careers and longer retirements—the first so that you can afford the second. But a 40-year career, ending at age 60 or 65, is a very different prospect from a 50-year career ending at 70 or 75.“It’s just too gruelling. We have to take breaks,” says Lynda Gratton, a London Business School professor and co-author of The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity.
“Why wouldn’t you want to take some of the retirement at the end of your life and distribute it to the middle of your life?”The sabbatical—a chance to recharge midcareer —is hardly a new idea, and it’s still common in academia. But until recently most wouldn’t dream of quitting their jobs just to have fun for a year or two. And, as Gratton acknowledges, doing so is still a financial impossibility for the vast majority of workers.For well-paid workers in high-demand fields such as technology, however, the idea may be catching on. Wealthfront Inc., the online money manager based in Silicon Valley, launched a tool on Wednesday that allows clients to estimate whether they can afford to take time off for travel. They can set a months- or yearslong trip as a priority alongside other goals like retirement or buying a home.Kyle Parrish and his wife, Kate, both in their early 30s and clients of Wealthfront, returned to San Francisco in November from a 15-month roundthe-world trip. They visited 25 countries and every continent except Antarctica. They made friends, and kept costs low, by staying with locals—working on farms in Slovenia and Patagonia. The trip cost $40,000 and required Parrish quitting a good, if intense, job in sales at Dropbox Inc., the San Francisco-based cloud storage company.They have no regrets. “You only have one life,” he told Bloomberg over the phone. “As a human being, you have to stop and refresh.Wealthfront co-founder Dan Carroll, 36, said the attitudes of clients, particular younger ones, have shifted: “Retirement is no longer the ultimate goal. We want to live enriched lives today rather than waiting to begin life at retirement.”When the robo-adviser surveyed its clients, more than half listed “take time off to travel” as a top priority, listing it ahead of all other goals except “financial independence” and “early retirement.”Taking a break to travel isn’t a crazy move, especially for millennials, because it can help give workers the stamina for longer, more sustainable careers, says Jamie Hopkins, a professor and director of the retirement income program at the American College of Financial Services. The prospect of a future trip also gives young workers an extra reason to save, live within their means, and pay down debt—an incentive that’s far stronger than the dream of retiring in several decades’ time. “I’m not sure we can picture what retirement is going to look like in 30 or 40 years,” Hopkins said. By the time millennials hit their 60s, technology could have fundamentally changed work lives, and medical advances could have fundamentally lengthened human lives.Of course, two years living in Paris in your mid-30s can make it a lot harder to afford your other long-term goals—like sending children to college. Wealthfront tries to help customers assess the true financial costs of their travel dreams, allowing them to customize the costs of their trip, and the amount of time they’ll be away from work, and factor in other costs (such as continuing to pay a mortgage) or benefits (such as collecting rent) while they’re gone.
ARTICLE SOURCE- BUSINESS STANDARD.