What I mean by a mini-retirement
I'm planning a mini-retirement — a real break from the 9-5, not a two-week vacation where I'm still checking email. The idea is to step away from a full-time job for a stretch of time while I'm still young enough to enjoy it, then decide later what work looks like when I come back.
It's not a spontaneous decision. There are five specific things I've done or am doing to get there, and none of them happened overnight. Here they are, in the order they mattered for me.
1. I built a business that covers my expenses
I started taking content creation seriously at the beginning of 2024. I put so much work into it, and it can finally cover my expenses consistently.
That word consistently is the whole thing. One good month doesn't tell you much. What gave me the confidence to plan around it was seeing my expenses covered month after month, not just in the best months.
This is the piece that makes the break feel like a mini-retirement instead of a countdown to running out of money. I'm not planning to live off savings — I'm planning to live off income I built while I still had a paycheck coming in.
2. I'm planning how I'll actually spend the time
There are so many things I want to do, and I want to make sure I actually do them instead of blinking and realizing the time is gone.
So I'm getting specific:
- Signing up for Spanish classes at a local community college
- Focusing way more on my health and my fitness
- Helping out at a food pantry my friend is going to manage
Writing it down changes how the break feels. Unstructured time sounds amazing right up until you have it. I'd rather walk in with a short list of things I care about than figure it out on day one.
3. I saved six months of expenses — separate from everything else
I saved six months of expenses in a high-yield savings account, which is just a savings account that pays more interest than a standard one while the money stays easy to get to.
I can cover my expenses with my business now. But emergencies happen. Things just happen. So this money isn't the plan — it's the just-in-case underneath the plan.
Keeping it separate matters to me. If my income dips for a month or the car needs something, I don't want that to turn into a reason to end the mini-retirement early.
4. Eight years of investing came first
I saved and invested consistently for eight years. That's the part that doesn't fit in a highlight reel, and it's the only reason I'm in this position at all.
This isn't something I could have done overnight. There was no single month where I made a big move that unlocked a break from work. It was years of boring consistency, and then one day the numbers were far enough along that a mini-retirement became a real conversation instead of a daydream.
I say that because I think the timeline is the most useful thing I can share. If the plan looks appealing, the honest version of it starts way earlier than the fun part.
5. I set a CoastFIRE goal before I quit
Before I quit, I set a CoastFIRE goal I had to hit first, so I wouldn't sacrifice my retirement for my mini-retirement.
CoastFIRE means having enough already invested that, if you never added another dollar, growth over time could still get you to retirement by your target age. My target was hitting CoastFIRE to retire at 50 before taking the break.
Getting there gives me so much more confidence going in. I don't technically need to invest anything during the mini-retirement — I can focus on covering my expenses and having fun, without the feeling that I'm quietly borrowing from 50-year-old me to pay for this year.
That's the trade I was most worried about, and setting a number I had to hit first is how I stopped worrying about it.