My family of three is nearing the end of our three-month mini-retirement. Both Mr. MH and myself were off work for the summer. We spent two months in Canada and one here at home in Ireland. This post goes into how we managed it, what it cost and how it went.
I contemplated not writing this post, as in the wake of the cost of living crisis, it feels a bit insensitive. But after some thought, I think different people will be at different points of their journey at different times and it’s ok to show what can be achieved along the path to financial independence should you choose to follow it.
Starting off I should say, we did not get here overnight. We are probably 15 years into our journey of getting and staying out of debt, consistently spending less than we earn and using the remainder to either pay for big life expenses in cash such as cars (albeit old), our wedding, two down payments, renovations and extended maternity leave or building up some investments such as paying down our mortgage, stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs)).
It’s important not to compare the beginning of your journey to the middle of someone else’s, so keep that in mind as you read on.
What is a mini-retirement?
In short, a mini-retirement is an extended break from your regular work, it can be for 2 months or even a year or more.
This will be our family’s second mini-retirement. The first was 2 months in duration in Portugal at the beginning of 2020 right before the first lockdown at the tail end of my maternity leave. You can read that series in the posts below.
Why we took a mini-retirement
The short answer is, because we felt like it and because we could.
The long answer is, the pandemic was hard, as it was for many. I hadn’t seen some of my immediate family for 3 years. My twin nephews were 1 the last time I saw them, now they are 4. There were points during the pandemic when I wasn’t sure I’d ever see them again – this may seem dramatic but my mental state was not normal at that time – actually it still isn’t but I’ll get into that later. I wanted to be able to visit and catch up without being rushed. I wanted to make up for lost time.
Second, I was and still am recovering from burnout.
How we managed a mini-retirement
You can read more about how to plan for a mini-retirement in general in my previous post, but for this time for us, we made the decision in January 2022.
Budgeting
First things first, could we afford it?
I track my expenses in detail 3-4 times a year so I have a fairly good idea of what our monthly expenses are month on month. At the moment, our monthly expenses are 3,000€/month on average.
We knew we wanted to take 3 months off and that if I went back contracting it would take 2 months of working before I would get paid again – when you work on contract, you invoice at the end of the first month and the company generally has 30 days to pay it so you have to work for 2 full months before you are paid. This meant we needed money for 5 months to get us to our next paycheck.
Simple math is 5 months times 3,000€/month = 15,000€.
Our bank balance at the beginning of January was 15k. We like to keep 10k as an emergency fund so we had 5k extra to put towards our next goal. I figured we’d be able to save the additional 15k back up by the end of my contract so I added 5k to my ETF investment portfolio in Degiro*.
I finished my contract at the end of June but had 1 final paycheck due at the end of July, so by the end of July we had built our savings back up to 26k (including our 10k emergency fund). Meaning we were saving about 2,500€/month towards this plan.
Getting off work
I was working contract work and Mr. MH was already off as a stay-at-home-Dad, so we only had to worry about getting work off for one job. In March, I told my Manager I would not be extending my contract at the end of June but that I would like to come back in October if they had work for me. I was told it wouldn’t be guaranteed but that I should get in touch a month before I wanted to come back and they would see what they could do. Worse case, I would be applying for a contract somewhere else. With the way the job market is at the moment, this was a risk I was willing to take.
Preparing to go
In terms of preparing to go, we installed a lockbox for our house along with a Ring battery operated security camera for the outside and we re-purposed the camera we used as our baby monitor to watch the back door. We told our friends and family to use our house while we were away, which was made easier by the lockbox. They kindly watered our plants when they stayed meaning we only needed to bug friends of ours to drop by twice while we were away.
The last time we were away for a long period, our car battery died which we solved in the past by taking the battery out and putting it back when we returned. We thought we’d do the same this time however since we now have a hybrid, this caused the battery to prematurely die. We have since learned that hybrid cars, especially those with stop/start functions need a special battery and for that battery to be fitted by a garage in order to sync it up properly with the onboard system. So, depending on what type of car you have, you may need to get friends or neighbours to drive your car intermittently while you are away, if gone for extended periods.
Packing-wise, due to all the baggage delays and stories of lost baggage, we only brought our stuff in carry-ons. As we are fairly minimalist and used to travelling light for the likes of Ryanair, I’d been doing some research into the best/biggest carry-on which fits even Ryanair’s size limits. I invested in this Osprey 40L backpack which I’m fairly pleased with and managed to fit all my stuff in for the 2 months. We did have one suitcase filled with baby stuff for my sister but even that managed to make it through ok.
What our mini-retirement cost
The below table outlines what we spent our money on from July-September 2022. This includes 2 months in Canada and 1 month in Ireland and the flights we purchased in March.
In total, we spent 9,741€ or an average of 3,247€/month. Adding on the additional 2 months of 3,000€ to our next paycheck, this comes to 15,741€ which is almost 1,000€ over what we had estimated.
As the flights were purchased in March, that brings our actual monthly average for Jul-Sep down to 2,625€ and our total actual spend during that timeframe to 7,876€, add onto that the additional 3,000€/month until our next paycheck and that comes to 13,876€, so slightly under our estimated actual spend for that timeframe.
Out of curiosity, when I looked at the money we spent while in Canada only (including ongoing Irish costs such as mortgage etc), the monthly average came to only 1,874€/month.
| Item | Cost (€) | Monthly Avg (€) |
| Bank Charges | 21 | 7 |
| Blog | 16 | 5 |
| Entertainment This includes alcohol, cinema, phone applications, books, netflix, nights out, video games, Christmas event tickets (they sell out early!) and our blarney castle 6 month passes | 567 | 189 |
| Food This includes coffee/snacks, groceries, take-away and restaurants. We ate at restaurants a lot more than usual while in Canada catching up with friends and family. We also treated as a thank you for people hosting us. | 2,961 | 987 |
| Giving This includes charity and birthday presents | 207 | 69 |
| Kid Stuff This includes supplies (sunscreen) and toys | 69 | 23 |
| Medical This includes some unexpected medical costs in Canada as Mr. MH ran out of some supplies and had to pay out of pocket as well as dentist, GP and pharmacy supplies once we got back | 380 | 126 |
| Monthly Bills This includes electricity, gas, internet, mobile, mortgage, life insurance and refuse | 1,699 | 557 |
| Personal This is mainly clothes, we both updated our wardrobes in Canada which was much needed | 998 | 332 |
| Transport This includes flights, petrol and taxi fares as well as annual car insurance and motor tax which fell due in this timeframe. My parents lent us their spare car while we were in Canada so we only had petrol to pay rather than car rental (thank you!) | 2,792 | 940 |
| Total | 9,741 | 3,247 |
How our mini-retirement went
On the surface, we had a wonderful summer. We got quality time and catch-ups in with friends and family. Mr. MH and I had date nights and nights away on our own. We got to go to the cinema and splashed out on a fancy-tasting menu. Little MH learned to swim. We had pool time, beach time, lake time, boat time and nice weather. Little MH had lots of play dates with cousins. Mr. MH read lots of books. I made jigsaw puzzles while singing along to my favourite songs. We got to eat food we hadn’t had in years. We shared many meals in good company and ate in restaurants.
Once we were back in Ireland and back into the routine, Mr. MH and I had a few hours each day to ourselves as Little MH had started back to playschool. We went on long walks in nature on our own in the fresh Autumn air. We got to catch back up with Irish family with cousin play dates for Little MH here too.
For all of this, I am so grateful.
Digging deeper, I am still struggling mentally and physically. I am tired all the time. I don’t have the energy to do the things I want in life. Mood-wise I feel mostly numb. About a month into our time off I was frustrated with myself for not feeling more rested, even with all the support and no work, I was still running on empty. For the first month, I was obsessing, planning and analysing our next move (more on that to follow). I remember basking in the sun on my parent’s pontoon boat surrounded by family feeling nothing and being mad at myself for not being able to be present and feel joy at what should be a most joyful moment. I then vowed to stop my planning and to spend the last month being more present. This helped somewhat but not as much as I’d hoped.
Reading some other FIRE blogs, for those that had already retired, some said it took them a year to decompress from the working world. So maybe my expectations for feeling rested are too high.
Somewhere along the way, I decided I needed to take some more time to try and heal. I feel like I’ve been troubleshooting for a year and although I’ve definitely levelled off and am much more stable, I’m still numb most of the time. I do get moments of joy every day and some moments where my heart is just brimming with love and gratitude but I very quickly fall back to my baseline of numbness.
So, Mr. MH will be going back to work while I focus on getting better. I’m very lucky to be in this position and am thankful for that. Since we’ve been back, my routine looks like this:
- Wake up with Little MH between 6:30 and 7 and have breakfast together
- I’ve started taking the Revive Active energy sachets before eating/drinking anything each morning
- Get Little MH off to playschool
- Come back and exercise with either a brisk walk in nature if it’s nice or some strength training and/or yoga for 30-60 minutes
- Shower, clean the house, make the beds and collect Little MH
- Have lunch
- Food-wise, we’re following a 4-week gut health program featured in the book Fibre Fuelled.
- Putter around in the afternoon, go to the shop, library, playground, give Little MH snacks (so many snacks) etc
- Start dinner around 4
- Chill out for a bit after dinner
- Get Little MH to bed around 8:30
- Go to bed myself between 8:30 and 9 – I downloaded a sleep tracker and have been seeing that my sleep quality is very poor (very little deep sleep, awake for 1.5 hours most nights) so I have to go to bed very early if I’m to get 7-8 hours actual sleep.
I’m about 2 weeks into this routine and feeling more energized most days, not waking up as groggy. My default mood has not really improved so I will give it one more week before heading back to the GP. I think it may be a matter of going back on anti-depressants for a while and maybe getting referred to a sleep clinic.
All-in-all, I’m so grateful for having this time with friends and family. For being able to take time to get better.
I do think that as we are living and working longer, mini-retirements will one day become the norm. People will be able to take extended career breaks to enjoy life while you are still able to do things you love.
The beauty of reaching financial stability is being able to choose when to do things like this and not feeling trapped to keep going when your body says stop.
What do you think? If you could take a mini-retirement what would you do? Has anyone experienced what I’m going through and what did you do to get better?
* This post contains a referral link where I get a bonus if you sign up and use the service at no cost to you. Note investing comes with a risk of loss. Do not invest any money you can’t afford to lose.
Glad your mini retirement went so well. Great you’re taking some time off. I’m considering dropping down to 4 days a week at the moment, it will push my retirement date back slightly but I think it’s worth it.
I do think it sounds like you’re depressed. Been there. It’s great you recognize it. Are you seeing a counselor? Most people do best on a combination of meds and counseling not just one or the other. Hugs and support x
Thanks so much Kirsty. I have a counsellor yes but probably need to check in with them again, it’s been a while. I think I will go to the GP sooner than later. Thanks so much for your support.
In terms of going down to 4 days, there are some things that are more important than reaching a retirement goal more quickly, and if you have an abundance mindset, you may more than make up for it when you do go back full-time again. Just be careful not to push yourself too hard on the remaining 4 days so that you are outputting 5 days work in 4 anyway. It’s a tricky thing to balance. Best of luck with it. x