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.

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.

Actual costs for Jan-Feb in Portugal and Mar-Apr in Ireland: 13,984€. This was over what we had budgeted by 2,684€ or 19%.

Portugal costs

The total cost of our time in Portugal came to 4,357€ for almost 7 weeks. This comes out to 622€/week or what would be an average of 2,488€/month.

This included:

• 1,874€ accommodation
• 877€ Groceries
• 355€ restaurants
• 838€ travel (flights, bus, train, airport snacks etc)
• 419€ misc (cash withdrawals we didn’t track, unexpected child related costs)

Overall we spent 750€ more than we budgeted even though we came back a week and a half earlier than planned.

Accommodation

Accommodation was 233€ less than what we had planned mostly because we came home 1.5 weeks earlier than planned so had less accommodation to pay for.

Food

Food was a lot more expensive than we had read, we think partly because we were in Portimao for 5 of the 7 weeks which is more touristy, and we thought that Lidl would be as cheap as Ireland. We also ate out at restaurants more than we would have at home so while we had budgeted 750€ for food for the 8 weeks, we actually spent 880€ on groceries and 355€ on restaurants which brought us to 483€ over budget.

Half of the restaurant cost was an unplanned day date when my sister was over and graciously minded baby MH for the afternoon. We went to a fancy french restaurant and had the tasting menu for 165€, an unusual splurge but oh so worth it.

In Mar and April once we were back in Ireland we spent an average of 152€ and 160€/week on food. If we look at the 880€ plus 190€ on dinners out excluding the pricey day date that comes to an average of 152€ on food per week as well. According to numbeo, we were expecting groceries to be 40% lower than Cork. Even if we exclude restaurants in Portugal (new average of 125€/week) and take-away in Ireland (new average of 146€/week), the difference still only comes to 14% less in Portugal.

Travel

Travel was over by 337€ as we had originally budgeted the flights we had booked at 250€ plus 250€ additional misc travel for bus trips, uber etc. We went over on this item as Mr. MH sadly had to come home for a funeral and to visit a sick family member, we also decided to come home early and booked additional flights, though this was offset by the savings we made by not needing to pay accommodation for the last 2 weeks in Portugal.

Misc

We had budgeted 250€ for misc items, things like outings and sightseeing or unexpected expenses. This came to 410€ (160€ over budget), the biggest portion of this was cash withdrawals that we didn’t track where it was spent.

Basic comparison

Overall we spent an average of 622€/week (or an average of 2,488€ for 4 weeks) for our time in Portugal. In Mar and Apr in Ireland we spent what would be an average of 2,474€ for 4 weeks (more or less the same).

This isn’t a fair comparison though as the Portugal costs include air travel and other costs we wouldn’t have in Ireland.

For a more fair comparison, if we look at accommodation and food costs alone (accounting for 35% of the typical Irish household budget) and compare to our costs in Ireland, in Portugal we spent 2,945€ for 7 weeks (or an average of 1,682€/4 weeks). In Ireland for Mar and Apr we spent 2,337€ (or an average of 1,168€/4 weeks). This shows that our current cost of living in Ireland is 514€ less per month for these 2 items. The Irish accommodation costs I included was mortgage, electricity, gas, internet and refuse bins which would have been covered by the accommodation we paid for in Portugal.

Ireland costs

So the Portugal portion was 750€ over budget leaving the remaining 1,934€ overage to the 2 additional weeks in Ireland in Feb which were unplanned and other unplanned costs in Mar and Apr.

For Jan and Feb, I originally only estimated mortgage, electricity, gas and internet as fixed costs we would have while in Portugal. As mentioned, Mr. MH came back for a week during our stay and we all came back mid-Feb when we had planned to come back at the end of Feb. This added most of the additional costs in terms of food and transport etc.

We also found that our mattress was making us itchy and decided to get a new one which was almost 600€ we hadn’t planned for. I also splashed out a bit and got a new mirror for our bedroom and some other decorations for the house.

March and April were pretty much what we had planned.

Take aways

If you’re planning a mini-retirement yourself and will only have a set amount of money to cover your expenses be sure to add in a 20% contingency. You will always have unexpected expenses which cannot be planned for. I should have known this from all my time working on projects! Life is no different. If you under spend, great! But if the unexpected happens at least you’ll be prepared and not be looking to sell off other assets (which also happened to take a 35% hit at the same time due to COVID-19) or go into debt to cover them.

Nitty Gritty

And for those who love tables. Here is our full expense listing for the last 4 months. A total of 13,984€ and a monthly average of 3,496€.

Our early retirement plan

We were leaning towards the option of reaching FI, selling our Irish home, and becoming tax residents in Portugal, after looking at all the shortcuts to FI which I outlined in a previous post. We would then live part-time in Ireland, part-time in Portugal and possibly part-time in Canada. The reasons for this were:

• Portugal had a tax regime where foreign income would be tax free for 10 years. This meant that my ETF portfolio would not incur the 41% exit tax on gains or dividends. We would also need 115,000€ less in our portfolio to reach FI if all our investments were Irish ETFs. This is due to needing 28 times our annual expenses vs 25 times. Or a withdrawal rate of 3% instead of 4% due to the higher tax
• Portugal’s cost of living is lower than Ireland’s according to Numbeo. It shows that our current cost of living of 38,500€/year would only cost 27,504€ in Lisbon. Meaning we would need 275,000€ less in investments to reach FI (in addition to the 115,000€ above)
• The weather is preferable in winter
• It is accessible via direct flights to both Dublin, Cork and Montreal. Making it easy for friends and family to visit

What changed our minds?

So what changed our minds in the span of one month?

Adaptability

This might be down to lack of sleep but as we’ve gotten older, we are less adaptable than we once were.

Initially the idea of living in Portugal for 2 months was exciting. We thought we’d like experiencing new places and nicer weather. And we are, but at what cost?

In terms of energy, the effort required to: get the house ready, get packed up for Christmas, travel up and down the country (twice, including a 2nd trip to bring up the cat), get packed for Portugal, fly over, unpack, get familiar with new surroundings, accommodation and appliances, one of us fly home for a funeral (catching a cold in the process and getting us all sick upon return) while the other stayed alone with the baby, pack up, get settled in a another new location, figure out how to use new appliances and where everything is stored, pack up again and fly home again left us a lot more tired than if we had just stayed home (or so we think).

The idea of having to live between two homes on a continual basis in order to retire early and avail of tax breaks seems less and less appealing.

I also don’t like the idea of HAVING to live in a certain place for a minimum amount of days per year in order to be considered tax resident there.

Plus, if we wanted to own only one home and rent in the other location we would have to live half of the year without certain comforts like a full spice drawer, nice cook ware, potentially a comfortable bed, nice shower and so on.

Cost of Living

It may be hard to judge but so far, we have not found the cost of living to be much less than Ireland.

Food

We’ve tried doing groceries at Lidl/Aldi as well as local shops. We still seem to be spending more on food here than at home.

Part of this may be because we have no staples. We are spending more to get things like spices and condiments which add to our shopping. We’ve been eating more meat since veggie meals usually need a variety of spices which we don’t want to buy and waste as we won’t get through them in time.

Another reason may be because gluten free foods are more expensive. Mr. MH is coeliac. We were also buying more than usual as we were excluding gluten from Baby MH’s diet in an attempt to clear up an eczema outbreak so that may also be a contributing factor.

Dinner’s at restaurants are cheaper but we don’t eat out that much. Though we have been eating out more since we’ve been here. It’s hard to pass up 10€ 3 course meals.

Accommodation

Though we’ve been staying in holiday rentals, I’ve been looking up apartments to rent and you’d be hard pressed to find a similar standard of housing in the city as we currently have in Ireland.

Our current housing costs are 940€/month for a 3 bed house within walking distance to the city centre. We have the house finished the way we like it. We have a yard and off street parking.

I haven’t been able to find similar standard of accommodation at that price point in the Algarve or Lisbon. There are definitely rentals for that price point but not with the same finish and features we’d have in Ireland.

Transport

Since I’ve been in Portugal, I’ve been getting Quora (an online discussion forum) updates on Portuguese based questions. Gotta love big data and location tracking. Anyway, one of the questions was why second hand cars are so expensive in Portugal. Mainly because new cars are taxed twice resulting in older cars costing more too. Cars last longer too due to the weather I’d imagine so a 6 year old car here would cost almost 10,000€ more than elsewhere. And they’ve clamped down on any imports with high import taxes and ongoing annual registration taxes so that’s not an option either.

All that to say, owning a car might cost more than in Ireland, even for a really old one.

Public transport may be better so if you live in a major city you might be able to do away with having a car all together, but we don’t think we want to live in a city in Portugal anyway.

Isolation

Even though we had family come to visit us for almost a third of the trip we still felt isolated. We missed being able to pop over to visit family and friends on weekends. We missed our community.

If we lived here longer term I’m sure we’d settle in and make friends here too but we struggle to keep up with our already vastly dispersed family and friends so not overly looking to make new ones.

Also in the one month we were here, a close friend of the family passed away and there was an illness in the family resulting in a last minute trip home, highlighting the fact that even though flights are accessible, it’s more of a struggle to be there for family in times of need.

Tax changes

The government passed a change to the foreign income tax exemption in the month while we were in Portugal. I will do a more detailed post on what the changes mean for Irish investors but ultimately it makes the tax benefit far less favourable.

Child benefit

Becoming tax resident in another country for tax purposes would mean giving up the child benefit we get in Ireland. For one child this is 1,680€/year meaning we’d need 47,000€ more invested to make up that loss.

If you have 2 kids, you’d need almost 95,000€ invested to make up that loss.

Long term illness cover

Mr. MH is diabetic and in Ireland there is a long term illness scheme which covers all costs related to diabetes. If we were tax residents somewhere else we would no longer have access to this benefit. We haven’t figured out what that would mean in terms of insulin and other costs but I’m sure it would be prohibitive and negate any tax benefits we may make elsewhere. He also has an excellent team of specialists in Ireland which is not something we’d like to give up.

Stability

The idea of living in two places would also cause issues for our son and schooling. I’ve looked into the option of worldschooling/homeschooling in order to facilitate this lifestyle but being part of a worldschooling Facebook group, I see a lot of posts where families have had to settle for longer periods of time as their kids crave stability.

Even if we managed to get our son enrolled in school in Ireland for part of the year and homeschooled the rest of the year, it doesn’t feel fair to impose that on him and seems like a more complicated option when the whole point of retiring early is to live a simpler life.

Pets

We love having pets. Moving between two places would make this hard to manage. Our cat has had two homes in the this last year between Cork and Mayo due to all of our travel. This isn’t fair to our pet and we miss him when we’re gone. I know people travel with their pets but getting pets into Ireland is quite expensive. When we moved to Ireland back in 2014 we figured it would have cost us almost 5,000$ to bring in our two cats due to all the anti-rabies precautions and protocols.

Food

An unexpected find is that we miss the food in Ireland. When we moved over from Canada I remember finding that the food in Ireland was more fresh and flavourful, perhaps as it has less distance to travel or is closer to in season foods year round? In fact I find the food better in Ireland than most places we have lived and visited.

Obviously beef and dairy are unrivalled in Ireland but even fruit and veg were fresher, despite them being imported.

Things like pastries, breads and local citrus fruits in Portugal are on par but so far that’s all we have found.

Even though the food in restaurants is cheaper, the quality is nowhere near what you’d get in a restaurant in Ireland. I’m sure there are exceptions but has not been our experience so far.

In terms of groceries it seems Lidl is similar to what Lidl was in Ireland 6 years ago. The food isn’t as fresh, the displays are disheveled, and you can’t get a full shop there. It seems the grocery shops go as below in terms of price and selection from most expensive to least:

• Corner stores
• Lidl
• Continente
• Pingo dolce

One tip we got was that foods are marked down at the end of the day if you can go in then.

Respect of Women

This was not even on my radar until I was reminded with an unfortunate incident.

I was walking to the grocery store with my 16 month old son during the week that Mr. MH was back in Ireland and I was on my own.

In Portugal all drugs are legal and there are many dealers trying to sell drugs as you walk about. There seems to be an unwritten rule that they do not offer to young mothers out with their babies but that night one guy didn’t seem to get that memo. First I was offered smokes, then hash and when I refused that I was offered sex. I laughed it off and continued walking but as the night went on I got more and more upset.

I felt like I should have spoken up, but was alone and didn’t want to put myself or my son at risk of retribution. If my son was any older I would have wanted to set an example and stand up for myself to say that was not acceptable especially in the presence of my son.

And while this was just one comment in the whole month, I struggled to think of the last time something like that happened to me in Ireland.

I even thought back to when I lived in Canada. In my college days when sexual harassment was a normal part of going out in public. Being grabbed, groped and grinded against in night clubs was the norm. I would be cat called and called names when the cat calls didn’t result in a response. We would go to gay bars just so we could dance in peace. I thought that was normal.

Then I moved to Ireland and all of that was gone. At first I struggled with the lack of response, thinking that the men of Ireland did not find me attractive, when actually they were just respectful.

Anyway, all that to say, that is the culture I’d like to raise my son in. Where women are respected far more often than not.

Not all bad

I don’t want you to think I had a horrible time in Portugal. I’m very grateful that we were able to have this experience. It’s not wasted on me that most other people returned to work after Christmas as usual and struggled through sick houses and the usual daily struggle of rushing kids to and from creche or school and working full time.

Our first days in Portimao were relaxed with two leisurely walks a day including stunning views of the ocean and time at the beach with our son.

The people are extremely friendly, especially to people with babies.

We then went onto Lisbon and had a nice time catching up with my sister and brother in law. Our walks were a little laboured with a buggy but a really cool city.

What does this mean for FI?

So what does this all mean for our financial independence plans?

Basically, taking a mini-retirement helped us confirm that we love where we live. We’re happy to work a few more years in order to fund a retirement there.

We will live a simpler life as we will have one set home base.

And we can still travel to new places in winter for a few weeks at a time if we wish. Or to my family in Canada without having to worry about tax residency limitations.

It also means I will spend more money on our home as we now know we want to be there longer. This may slow our savings rate but life is for living and you have to enjoy the journey.

All of these realisations would not have happened if we hadn’t done a mini-retirement. We have confirmed the grass in in fact not greener (at least for us).

Although it was costly to take the time off work, it would have been far more costly to reach a certain FI number, sell our home, quit jobs and move to Portugal only to realise then that we would have preferred to work a few more years and kept our home.

I feel like, although our FI date has been pushed out, I’m actually far happier with the approach. I’m not striving to get to FI as soon as possible. I’m less obsessed with tax breaks. Instead I am focusing on making sure our lives are as simple and happy as possible along the journey.

When

How long to save up

First, you will need to figure out how much your mini retirement will cost and how long it will take you to save up. If you are tracking your expenses or know roughly how much you spend a year then this will be a big help in your planning.

Say you will be off for 3 months and without income for 4 months (keeping in mind you will need to work for a full month before you get paid again if you are paid monthly) and you spend 40,000€/year (the average for a family in Ireland) then you will need 13,333€ to fund your cost of living if you are staying home.

If you are taking the time off to travel or start a business etc then you will also need to factor in the additional cost of living of those activities. I go into some of my tips for figuring out cost of living abroad below.

If you will be travelling and you will still have fixed expenses at home, be sure to include those. If you will be renting out your home while you are away, have a look at why we didn’t do this here.

Once you’ve figured the cost out, then figure out how much you can save per month and how many months it will take to save up that amount.

Getting work off

Once you have an idea how long it will take you to save up for your mini-retirement then you should start laying the ground work for asking for time off. There are some great tips in this post on how to make it very hard for your boss to say no to your time off.

Basically it suggests, in the months coming up to requesting your time off, work extra hard, be super helpful to your coworkers (especially if they will cover for you while you are away), mention your dream/goals for your time off in passing so they are not surprised and lay as much of the ground work for your cover while you are away so there is very little for your boss to consider. How you frame your ask for time off will make all the difference.

If you are asking for parental leave in Ireland, then this is already hard for managers to say no to since it’s a statutory leave.

Your employer can only refuse parental leave if you are not entitled to take it.

Your employer can also postpone your parental leave for up to 6 months. They must do this before the confirmation document is signed. After that, the leave cannot be postponed without further written agreement. Grounds for such a postponement include lack of cover or the fact that other employees are already on parental leave.

Normally only one postponement is allowed, but your leave may be postponed twice if the reason is seasonal variations in the volume of work.

Where

If travel is in your plans then here are some of the criteria we considered.

Flights, Weather and Distance

For us, we would be travelling in Jan/Feb and wanted to go somewhere warmer than Ireland, but also somewhere that wasn’t too far from home. As we were travelling with a smallie, we didn’t want to take a flight that was more than 4 hours total. We also wanted the cost of living to be cheaper than staying home.

From Ireland, we checked out:

We googled average temperatures in each for the months we would be there (equally important for hotter months if the weather would be unbearable).

We used google flights to check out direct flights from a specific airport and to find the best rates and dates to fly.

Cost of living

In terms of figuring out cost of living in each location we looked at a number of areas.

Accommodation

For accommodation we used sites like booking.com and Air b’n’b.

Our accommodation checklist included:

• a balcony with sunlight so that we could sit out while baby was napping and not having the hassle of leaving the house (Michael McIntyre’s skit comes to mind)
• washing machine so we could pack as little as possible (plus we use cloth nappies so definitely needed one for that)
• walking distance to Lidl or large supermarket (to help keep our costs down)
• and obviously cost, the lower the better

Keeping all that in mind I searched for the cheapest range first and then ticked off all the other boxes to get a sense of accommodation costs in each location.

Millennial Revolution also have a good travel series where they report their cost of living in each location so I also cross checked my findings with their specific location pages. You can search for a location in their search bar to see if they have a post on that location or scroll through the list here. They live quite frugally so I know their spending would be in line with ours.

Food

In terms of food costs, we had been to Tenerife so we looked at what we spent when we were there. While we felt the shopping was cheap, we actually spent quite a bit more than we thought (260€ for a week) which would be over 1,000€/month if every week was the same as that one.

For Malta and Portugal we looked at sites like Numbeo (where you compare cost of living between two cities, it gives you a percentage difference which you could apply to your typical food expenditure at home) and other blogs/vlogs.

The Our Rich Journey vlog details their living expenses in Lisbon each month since Sep 2019, so that was a good recent indicator of costs to expect.

Getting around

I mentioned how we found our flights above but in addition to Google flights you can also use skyscanner. Both have notifications you can setup to get pinged when a certain flight price has increased or decreased. If you are planning on something far in advance this feature might be of use to you.

We also took into consideration the cost of getting around once we got to where we were going. We tried to find cities or places which wouldn’t require a car rental to keep costs low.

In terms of getting from the airport, often vacation areas will offer shuttle services but usually at triple the price of public transport (though potentially half the time). We scoffed at the 60€ quoted for airport shuttle to our location but may have been short-sighted (read on below).

Google maps and Rome2Rio are other useful sites when trying to figure out routes to get places.

I also googled how to get from and to certain places and read local forums or travel sites detailing typical costs and options.

In the end, as our flight was getting in past our son’s bedtime, we decided to book a cheap airport hotel which had a place for breakfast, when we got up the next day, we popped down for breakfast and then got an uber to the train station where we got a train for the 3 of us to Portimao for 12€ (babies go free). It was about 40 minutes longer but was nice as baby got to nap on me while I read my book.

In the end it may have been much of a muchness to pay for the more expensive shuttle. For example:

• Cost of airport hotel: 50€
• Cost for breakfast for 2: 15€
• Cost for Uber to and from train station: 13€
• Cost for train: 12€

Total: 90€ minus 30€ for extra night in other location = 60€ minus say 12€ for breakfast = 48€ vs 60€ for the shuttle in half the time.

That said, maybe the train was a safer route for a baby without a car seat (although probably cancelled out by the two uber’s we got to get to the train station).

In Portugal, Uber and Kapten are cheaper and more convenient ways of getting around.

All that to say, you’ll need to take into account your added transport costs whether you use public transport, airport shuttles, taxis/ubers, or rent a car be sure to include a line item for this in your budget.

Travel insurance

If you live in the EU and have a tax number where you live, you should be eligible to apply for an EU health card. This allows you to have possibly free health cover in any EU country. We found out about this last minute and went into the office just before Christmas, we were given temporary cards straight away which last for a month and were posted the full versions once available. This doesn’t replace travel insurance and only covers necessary health care but is nice to have as a back up. Even I got one, even though I am not yet a citizen. Your partner can apply on your behalf as well so you don’t need to lug your baby in as long as they have the necessary documentation. You can read more about it here.

In terms of travel insurance, check your employer health insurance plan to see if they have an add-on where you can select travel insurance instead of additional cover for other health cover you may not use.

Visas

If you’re planning on going somewhere for longer than 3 months, make sure you can stay there for that long. Most places have a 3 month limit before you need to leave and come back again. I nearly forgot this as I have been in Ireland so long, I just assumed I could travel to Portugal for 3 or 4 months. Obviously as an EU citizen you can travel to any EU country without a visa.

Getting there

Packing

If you’re keeping costs low by traveling on budget airlines, you will need to pack light. 1 20kg checked bag costs about 50€ for the return trip, which can be hard to swallow when you’re only paying 70€ for the flight.

As we were going for 2 months with a baby, we decided to “splurge” and pay for 1 checked bag between the three of us.

Here is what we ended up bringing:

• 1 20kg checked bag
• 1 5kg small carry-on bag for baby supplies (allowed by Ryanair for free – other airlines allow 10kg though I can’t remember them weighing it)
• 1 handbag
• 1 rucksack
• 1 travel buggy

The first place we were staying had an additional baby package where we got a travel cot, high chair and baby bath for 25€ for the 32 nights so that saved us bringing any of that over.

In terms of clothes we brought 1 week’s worth for each of us and packed a variety of warm and cold clothes.

We also managed to fit all the baby nappies, wipes, creams, travel potty, nappy bags etc into the 5kg carry on bag.

House prep

Insurance

In terms of getting your house ready if you’ll be away for a longer period of time, make sure you check your home insurance for their unoccupied clause. Ours states that after 45 days your home is no longer covered for vandalism, or burst pipes. Having a family member stay for a weekend doesn’t re-start the clock either. Their definition of occupancy is 4 nights in any one week. In order to reduce this risk we gave a key to a friend who will check in every few days. We also let our neighbour know and gave them our numbers in case anything needed urgent attention. As we were leaving in winter, we also left the heating on low and turned the water off at the mains in order to significantly reduce the risk of a burst pipe.

If you’re planning to rent it out, have a look at some of the reasons we didn’t do this before making your decision.

Car

If you’ll be away for more than a few weeks, it’s also a good idea to disconnect your car battery before you go. We forgot to do this last time we went for 6 weeks and came home to a dead battery which needed to be replaced.

And that’s all the tips I can think of. Hopefully it was of some use and gives some food for thought on your next adventure should you be planning one.

As you may have seen in previous posts, I alluded to the fact that my family would be in Portugal for 2 months trailing a mini-retirement. This post goes into why we did it, how we’re managing it from a financial perspective and how it’s going so far.

What is a mini-retirement and why do it?

A mini-retirement is an extended break from your regular work, it can be for 2 months or even a year or more. Jillian Johnsrud (formerly Montana Money Adventures who also has a really good free email course on living with intention) mentions she uses them for things that have an expiry date. Things like backpacking with friends (before everyone settles and/or has kids) or taking an RV around the country with your family while your kids are small. Another reason might be for you to focus on building a side income, a passion project or taking on renovations for your home or investment property etc.

For us, the idea came to me last summer. As I was still on maternity leave we decided to take an extended 6 week trip to Canada, where my husband got approval to work remotely for half. While we thought this would be a chance for us to catch up on our sleep as we would have family around as well as both of us to mind our son for most of it, it didn’t work out that way for whatever reason. My husband had also just taken over for a team member who was on rotation while training someone new to cover his work and the trip left us both more tired than when we started.

To help remedy this, I proposed the idea of a mini-retirement where my husband would apply for parental leave and I would remain on maternity leave for an overlap period before I went back to work while my husband stayed home with our son, which also allows us to delay putting our son in childcare for as long as possible.

I also liked the idea of my husband being off with our son as I think it’s good for their relationship/bond and for our son’s development. My cousin’s partner stayed home with their child when my cousin went back to work and as men tend to be less risk averse, my cousin felt that their daughter was more confident and self assured by the time she started daycare.

In Ireland, each parent has a statutory parental leave where you can take 22 weeks unpaid (going up to 26 weeks this Sep) before your child’s 12th birthday where your job is protected in the same way as the initial maternity leave. You can take this leave as:

• One continuous period of leave or
• 2 separate blocks of a minimum of 6 weeks each
• If your employer consents, broken into working days and/or hours

The vast majority of parents will use the 3rd option where they work 4 day weeks, and as both parents can take it, some parents work it so their child only has 3 days in child care while one parent takes off Friday and the other Monday or something like that. Still others use it for summer or term time once their kids are in school to ease scheduling. While these are all great options, we hope to be financially free by the time our son is in school and possibly even be homeschooling so won’t have to worry too much about the schedule shuffling required for term times etc.

But what if you don’t have kids or need to use your parental leave a different way? Check out this post (also by Jillian) on some other ideas on how to negotiate a mini retirement.

How much is it costing?

Before I went off on maternity leave I had saved up a year’s worth of living expenses (for just my expenses), I also got a big tax refund throughout the year on top of the state maternity pay and child benefit, adding that to the fact that our expenses are low enough to live off just my husband’s income, it ended up that I hardly touched the savings. At one point I decided to invest a big enough chunk of it but kept a cash cushion just in case. When I decided I was ready to go back to work, we still hadn’t touched that cushion so this is what we ended up using to fund our mini-retirement.

As I track my expenses in detail, I had a pretty good idea what our outgoings would be for each month we planned to be off basing it on the same month last year. I looked at a few options in terms of where we could get the best bang for our buck. First I figured out what our expenses would be if we stayed in Ireland. Then I looked at accommodation and estimated food and remaining expenses for Tenerife, Malta and Portugal.

I also figured in the fact that even if I started back to work in March, I wouldn’t get paid until the end of April and so we needed to have enough cash to cover us from Jan to Apr as well cash to cover the costs of a family wedding when we return at the end of Feb.

Each month nearing Jan, I reviewed the budget to ensure we were still on track.

Staying in Ireland was going to cost us an estimated 11,000€ from Jan-Apr

The below options looked at staying away for Jan-Feb and returning home for Mar-Apr. It also took into account the fact that we would have fixed expenses at home like mortgage, electricity, gas and internet which we would still need to pay while we were away.

Tenerife came out at 300€ more than staying home.

Malta was going to cost 70€ less than staying home.

Portugal came out on top at an estimated 1,600€ less than if we stayed home.

Why not rent out our home?

Obviously renting out our home would have reduced the cost of being away even further but we crunched the numbers on that too and decided against it for the following reasons:

There is new legislation in place banning short term rentals in rent pressure zones for any period over 2 weeks (you can rent up to 90 days in a year but no more than 2 weeks at a time). There is no limit on renting out rooms in your house so we figured a loophole around this would be to rent out 2 of the 3 rooms and knock off a few hundred from market rate. We even took out an ad and found someone to rent it out to but then…

We had a hard time finding insurance. Our existing policy was up in December but very few insurers provide cover for short term rentals within a home owners policy. We could have taken out a home owner policy, cancelled it, then taken out a rental policy for the two months, then cancelled on our return and taken out the final home owner policy but you are racking up cancellation fees. Some brokers said we could ring up and ask for a mid-year change team but that may have resulted in the cancellation/new policy route anyway. We also looked at rental policies and couldn’t find any that covered stays of less than 6 months and the fine print required a lease for a min of 6 months (which we would not have). We finally found a non-standard policy that would cover both us as homeowners and letting out to short term strangers while we are away, including home swaps but the cost was almost 800€ for the year (just over double our standard policy rate).

Add onto all that the rental income tax we’d need to pay (even with reduced rates as we’d have less income from being off for 4 months), it was only going to net us 1,800€ extra for the two months.

Adding onto that the fact that we would have had to get the house “rent ready” on top of getting ready to go away at Christmas and then away for 2 months, it just didn’t seem worth the hassle and the risk to us.

We may have even needed to finish our attic in order to store some of our belongings up there while it was rented out which would have further reduced our take home.

If furniture or flooring got damaged by the rental on top of that, it would have totally wiped out our earnings.

So all that to say, we decided it wasn’t worth it to us, at least this time.

How is it going?

As the point of this mini-retirement was for us to get rested up (as much as possible with a toddler who still doesn’t sleep through the night), we are taking it pretty easy.

We also wanted to see for ourselves what the cost of living might be like for our lifestyle if we did end up wanting to spend more time here once we are financially independent and get a feel for what it would be like to live here longer term. So we are doing our best to live like we would at home.

That said, we are somewhat in holiday mode and buying more alcohol and eating out a lot more than we would at home.

We are also checking out two or possibly three locations: Portimao, Lisbon and still to be determined.

I’m also trying to work more on the blog, but don’t really have much more time than before.

Our daily routine looks something like this:

And some pics of where we’re staying which is costing us about 30€/night excluding water, heat and electricity (unsure of those costs and only additional as we are staying for longer than 20 nights but will be good for us to get a sense of what our usage would be if we lived here).

And some beach pics

I’ll do another post further on in our trip to let you know how the cost of living stacked up against my estimates.