Here’s a new, flexible way to work that can ease your fears about retirement

“When I left Ford, I was struggling with the whole retirement thing. I was a little bit lost. And I realized I missed work,” Deane says. Her current lifestyle, she says, “is really nice because it offers me flexibility and the chance to keep busy.”

Her new life

Deane’s life looks like this these days: From Memorial Day to Labor Day, she doesn’t work, instead spending time with her husband, who is fully retired, in northern Michigan. The rest of the year, when the couple lives in Phoenix, Deane runs a consulting practice to help solve manufacturing challenges.

Deane says she needs at least a month away from work to feel she’s truly had a break. “I really think it takes that third or fourth week to feel detached,” she says.

She felt she needed to wait until she left her longtime career to implement this new arrangement, rather than asking her boss at Ford to let her take months off while employed there. “I think I would have been completely stressed out trying to ask for that,” she says.

Reducing the financial fears of retirement

Splitting your time between months of consulting or gig work and months that are carefree can allay financial fears you may have about retirement. Those worries are understandable, based on recent studies. Bankrate’s 2025 Retirement Savings Survey found that more than 64% of people age 55 and older said their retirement savings are behind where they need to be. In Nationwide’s Protected Retirement Survey Report, only 39% of retirement-plan participants felt very positive about their plan and their financial investments.

And as people live longer, a multidecade traditional retirement doesn’t always make sense. Many people don’t feel financially ready to retire, nor are they ready to give up the sense of purpose and engagement that comes with working. Taking a series of small breaks throughout a career can enhance personal satisfaction and circumvent burnout.

Embarking on a series of one- to 12-month breaks from work, or “mini-retirements,” is the theme of a new book by Jillian Johnsrud of Kalispell, Mont., titled “Retire Often.” Johnsrud runs a coaching practice, hosts the “Retire Often” podcast and has taken over a dozen such breaks in the past 22 years, often with her family.

Johnsrud recommends taking career breaks or sabbaticals years before quitting work for good, if possible.

“Mini-retirements can really help people start to play with the idea of retirement before jumping in,” she says.

Regardless of when you take them or what you call them, Johnsrud says, such breaks give you opportunities to focus on things that matter to you. That could be pursuing passions, picking up skills, spending time with family and friends, traveling, renovating your home, focusing on your mental health, writing a book, taking on elder-care responsibilities or something else entirely.

They can also help you better afford retirement, Johnsrud says. Taking an intentional break can provide a chance to earn extra cash by renting out your house during months when you’re traveling, for example. When Johnsrud and her husband took a cross-country trip in a camper, they rented out their home, which covered most of their travel expenses.

But in order to pull off this lifestyle, you need to ask three big questions:

Paying for it

Deane was able to afford her new life by staying at Ford for as long as she did: Her tenure was a key reason she didn’t ask for a sabbatical earlier in her career. “There was nothing I was going to do that could risk the last few years of getting to my 30-year pension,” Deane said. She and her husband also left Ford with nine months of severance pay when the company was downsizing.

But Johnsrud says you may be able to afford one or more mini-retirements before quitting, regardless of your salary. In fact, she took many career breaks while earning $25,000, including the trip with her husband across the U.S., which cost less than $3,000 a month.

Taking extended career breaks while holding down a full-time job, however, likely requires making a few adjustments to your finances. The plans Johnsrud reviewed required an extra 50% of average monthly expenses. She suggests saving 6.5% of your income for 24 months to amass a cash reserve to cover your expenses. That works out to about $500 a month for someone earning $90,000 in take-home pay.

You can also help make a mini-retirement more feasible, Johnsrud says, by investing in rental properties. Johnsrud and her husband have owned two single-family homes that produced income of $18,000 a year. “The rental properties massively helped our net worth and our cash flow,” she said.

Getting your boss on board

If you’d like to snag a one- to three-month break while keeping your job, Johnsrud says, send your manager a heads-up email and set up a meeting to discuss the idea. Call the break a sabbatical.

“It’s not super risky to request a month off,” she says. Most employers have the logistical back end to support people taking up to 12 weeks off, because that’s the family- and medical-leave mandate for most companies. But employers generally won’t be open to the idea of a longer break, Johnsrud adds.

Explain that you want to use the time off to pursue something fulfilling and that the break will be a one-time event. You’ll improve your chances if you map out a negotiation strategy for your meeting. Come prepared with ideas to handle potential problems your boss might bring up and be ready to collaborate on solutions, such as suggesting who could handle your work while you’re out.

Whether the leave will be paid or unpaid will depend on your employer’s policies. Some firms might pay 25% of salary during a sabbatical; others, not a penny.

Returning to work

In today’s job market, the odds of returning to your position after a break or of finding another one may depend on your field.

Johnsrud says her clients who work in healthcare have easily found jobs after career breaks because the demand is so high. Similarly, fields like insurance regulation that require decades of experience are easier for older job hunters with that expertise.

Some people fear that taking short career breaks will be detrimental to their professional growth, Johnsrud writes. However, she’s seen just the opposite, with people earning more when they return to work than they were making before.

“For most workers, your largest wage increase is going to come from switching jobs, and that’s probably your most effective way of increasing your lifetime earning potential,” Johnsrud says. “A mini-retirement is the perfect opportunity to switch jobs.”