Why wait to retire? These Canadians are embracing the adult gap year instead

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Nick Thompson and his wife, Melanie, love to watch their kids swim in the river near a waterfall on the property where they live in southern Ecuador, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest.

"It's the land of eternal spring, so it never gets below 16 [C] and never gets over 27," Thompson told Cost of Living. "It's sunny every day and there's no bugs because we're just high enough in elevation. So it's kind of like this really cool Goldilocks zone."

Right in their rented backyard, in an area referred to as the Valley of Longevity, they have chickens, mango trees, avocado trees, passion fruit and seven different kinds of bananas, he says. 

The couple left their home in rural Ontario's Norfolk County a little over a year ago with their four kids, ages five to nine, in tow. "We're on a mini-retirement," Thompson said, and the kids are homeschooled. 

Human resources professionals say Canadian companies are seeing more employees asking for permission to take longer absences from work than standard vacation time allows. Some call it a mini-retirement; others refer to it as an "adult gap year."

"We hear from clients that they have more and more employees asking for unpaid leaves of absence," said Cissy Pau, an HR consultant from Vancouver.

Philippe de Villers, chair of CPHR Canada, an association that represents HR professionals across the country, said while there's no hard data to quantify how many people are taking longer leaves from work, "it's definitely a trend" he's seen.

The pandemic effect

"Generally people are more burned out post-pandemic…. That's been documented," said de Villers, who lives in Brossard, Que.

Pau said she, too, thinks the COVID-19 pandemic is part of it. "Post-COVID, we are certainly hearing more requests than before. They don't want to wait 40 years until they retire to go travelling."

She said the sentiment is "might as well go hike Machu Picchu when I can, not wait for [some] time down the road." 

That describes Nick Thompson's philosophy, which he attributes to his mom dying at age 58. 

"It was like one year before my dad was going to retire, and then they had all these plans to travel the world. And then she passed. So … I'm not doing that. I'm not waiting till I'm 65." 

The couple, both 38, have settled into a routine of working hard for three years then taking a year off, usually spending time in an interesting but inexpensive place while renting out their farmhouse while they're away. To save, Thompson will work a conventional job 40 hours per week, and spend another 20 hours a week fixing up a house to sell or rent out, he said.

This isn't an option for everyone — in the middle of an affordability crisis, taking long breaks from paid work is simply out of reach for most Canadians. A Leger survey conducted online in September found that 47 per cent of Canadian respondents were living paycheque to paycheque.  

"To be able to do a micro-retirement for quite some time, you need to be somewhat financially independent or really plan it well," said de Villers. "And we've seen obviously huge amounts of pressure … with a cost of living that's been quite dramatic."

But despite difficult financial times, Pau said there appears to be a change in how some Canadians are thinking about their employers, and how willing they are to wait until retirement to live out their dreams — whether those involve travelling, pursuing other interests or simply spending more time with family.

Shifting views on work

"Employees are not willing to sacrifice their lives for their employers," she said. "If you look 30, 40, 50 years ago, you had your job for life. The employer demonstrated loyalty to you…. You actually worked in a company long enough to get a pension."

Mel Dorion and her husband managed to get a little taste of sabbatical living when they took a month-long trip to Mexico with their family in January 2020, just before travel shut down.

"The pandemic hit, and that was a big turning point for me. I found myself with my two little kids at home and at a moment where lifestyle balance really mattered more than ever," said Dorion, 36, who lives in Gatineau, Que. "And my secure job with a nice pension and everything, it just didn't offer me that flexibility I needed as a parent." 

What her federal government job did offer, though, was a one-year unpaid leave, which she used to "test the waters" with building her side hustle as a personal finance coach into the full-time — but flexible — career she wanted. 

Extended leave

Jillian Johnsrud, host of the Retire Often podcast, says she's taken about a dozen mini-retirements ranging in length from a month to a year, despite starting with a very modest income. A resident of Kalispell, Mont., she now coaches others on how to take career breaks.

She says that if people can set aside 6.5 per cent of their income to draw upon later, it will cover an unpaid month off every second year. 

As for securing the time off, she encourages clients to start by asking their employer. "Maybe it's paid, maybe it's unpaid. Maybe there's a type of leave that you would qualify for. But if not, you can position it between jobs."

De Villers points out that, for a while now, many collective agreements have allowed for some kind of extended leave, whether that's for six months or two years.

"And there's even collective agreements that allow you to budget for it," he said. "So you can work, let's say, 40 hours per week, but be paid only 32."

A program like that allowed travel writer Heather Greenwood Davis and her husband to spend a year on a round-the-world trip with their two sons back in 2011. Greenwood Davis was 39 and her husband 44 at the time they departed.

While Greenwood Davis could take her freelance work on the road, her husband's municipal government job for York Region in the Greater Toronto Area offered a "four over five" that allowed him to take a reduced salary of 80 per cent for four years, and then receive that same pay while taking the fifth year off.

Greenwood Davis said she hears more and more from people who are interested in taking the same kind of sabbatical they did.

"It doesn't surprise me because I think the culture we live in has for a long time prioritized work over everything else," she said. "And I think the pandemic, in particular, opened people's eyes to the possibility of living with a different focus."

The tradeoffs

However, not everyone works for an organization large enough to shift employee resources around to cover a staff member's request for a longer leave of absence, said Pau.

"If you've got a 20-person company and one person wants to take six months off, a year off, to travel to Brazil, who's going to do that work if you don't have a bunch of other people who are trained in that role?"

There are also financial and career implications to consider, says de Villers. If you're an early-career person lucky enough to be part of a group RRSP or pension, missing six or 12 months of payments could have "a huge toll" on long-term retirement savings, he said.

In terms of advancement, de Villers says an absence from work has a bigger impact the earlier you are in your career. "This is where you build your skills. This is where you learn to be a professional, to engage in the workplace, how to work collaboratively with colleagues in different kinds of situations," he said. "Maybe your colleague will [get] the promotion before you."

For Nick and Melanie Thompson, climbing the corporate ladder isn't a priority. Melanie is a social worker currently parenting full time and Nick just changes jobs between their family's adventures. They drive an old car, shop at thrift stores and generally live frugally.

"By stepping back, it's allowed us to realize what's really important in life to us and realize that we don't need to have 100 grand a year in retirement, or even now, in order to experience that," Nick Thompson said. "We can live off of very, very little."