More Money Podcast - Financial Freedom Through Mini-Retirements - Author of Retire Often, Jillian Johnsrud

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

For the season finale of Season 22, I am thrilled to welcome Jillian Johnsrud, author of Retire Often, to discuss how we can redesign our lives to include multiple career breaks instead of waiting until 65 to enjoy our freedom. As I wrap up 10 years of the podcast and prepare for my own hiatus, Jillian explains why we should treat our careers like interval training rather than a marathon to avoid burnout, sharing how she has successfully taken a dozen mini-retirements over the past two decades while raising six kids.We dive deep into the practical logistics of designing a break of one month or longer, covering everything from negotiating sabbaticals with employers to the specific steps entrepreneurs must take to automate their businesses. Jillian also debunks the fear that time off ruins your finances, explaining how to handle healthcare costs and schooling while traveling, and revealing why mini-retirements can actually serve as capital investments that boost your future career trajectory and lifetime earnings.For full episode show notes, visit jessicamoorhouse.com/449Follow meInstagram @jessicaimoorhouseThreads @jessicaimoorhouseTikTok @jessicaimoorhouseFacebook @jessicaimoorhouseYouTube @jessicamoorhouseLinkedIn - Jessica MoorhouseFinancial resourcesMy websiteMy bestselling book Everything but MoneyFree resource libraryBudget spreadsheetWealth Building Blueprint for Canadians course Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, Lulu, and welcome back to the more many podcast. I am your host, Jessica Morehouse, and this is the season finale of season 22 of the show. I'll be taking a little bit of a podcast break over the holidays. And honestly, I don't have a set schedule for 2026 yet because I actually really do need a break to figure out where I want to take this podcast after 10 years and almost 450 episodes. So I'll let you know what's going on sometime in January. with a solo episode, but to stay in touch while I'm off, make sure to follow me on Instagram at Jessica I'm Morehouse, YouTube, Jessicamorehouse.com slash YouTube, or just Google my name and YouTube, and of course, subscribe to my newsletter, jessicamorehouse.com slash subscribe.

Speaking of, taking a bit of a break, I've got the perfect guest to close out this season. I've got Jillian and John's Red author of Retire Often, How Anyone Can Take Multiple Career Breaks to unlock adventure, advance their career, and find financial freedom. Gillian has taken a dozen mini-retirements over the past two decades while raising a family with six kids, allowing her to pursue her dreams like living abroad, traveling to 27 countries, investing in real estate, and touring the U.S. in a camper. And now she teaches and coaches others how to set up their own mini-retirements and has now written the guidebook on how to do it as well as hosts the Retire Often podcast.

I kind of wanted to end this season with a bit of a, you know, some inspiration, something kind of fun, something to look forward to as we get into the holidays, the end of the year, but then start thinking about what's next, what are we doing next year, what are we doing with our lives, what is happening? I haven't had a minute to really think because we're just on autopilot and working all the time. And I think sometimes we need to take a minute and really reflect on what do I want in life? And do I need some more time off?

am I burnt out at my job? And what could maybe a mini retirement do to help me with that? Honestly, I cannot wait to start integrating this idea of many retirements into my life. Probably should have done this a long time ago. But a bit of a workhorse. And sometimes it's hard for me to say no as someone who runs their own business. So I'm excited to really take all of Jillian's advice. And her book is really, really great. So you're going to love this interview. We get into a bunch of stuff. Answer probably all of your questions. questions. And I will be giving away a copy of her book. And I'm going to share all that stuff and kind of some other things at the end of this episode. So make sure to listen to the entire

episode up until the end. But with that, lots of good stuff going on in this interview. So let's get to it. Welcome, Gillian, to the more money podcast. So excited to have you on, especially as the final episode of the more money podcast, kind of tying a bow on year 10 of the show, which I specifically wanted you on the show and for this last episode to talk about your book, retire often so we can discuss many retirements. Because I feel like it's been a year for me. It's been a very busy year, but also just for I think everybody, it's been a very challenging year for so many, you know, financial reasons, the economy, just the world at large

and thinking about, you know, what are we doing with our lives and with our time? And can we restructure or create a different structure for ourselves instead of waiting to 65 or whatever? ever to finally do what we want in life. Why can't we do something a little bit different? So I'm so excited to have you on the show to talk about it. And I've never needed a mini-retirement more in my life. So I'm definitely going to take some of your words of advice to figure out what I'm going to do, 2026. But welcome. You know, before we get started, tell me a little bit about yourself. I know in the intro of your book, you shared that it was back in college when you were

newly married. You got the idea of many retirements. And now, all these years later, wrote the book about it. So tell me kind of how things started with you. How did we get to this point where now you're like, I've got all these stories, I've got this experience, all this knowledge, and I need to share it with everybody. Well, yeah, 20-some years ago, 23 years ago. But I think I was in a spot that a lot of people are in today in that we had a ton of debt. We didn't have super high-earning careers. And so the idea of early retirement or even accomplishing these other goals and these dreams, like how do those things work together when the financial circumstance wasn't like so abundant.

And so the idea of a mini retirement was like, yeah, we've got these dreams of traveling, doing all this cool stuff. I don't really want to wait until I'm 65. I don't think I'll be able to retire early necessarily. So how do we split the difference? And so it came from the idea of like a sabbatical year. And I was like, what if we did that? But, you know, my spouse at the time, like I think everyone has all of these logistical

questions. Like, how do we save this much money? How much is this going to cost? What about our careers? What about health care? And I didn't have any of the answers. It was just like a fun idea. And so it's taken, you know, we started taking many retirements in our 20s.

I've done a dozen now about to start by 13th. But over the years, we kind of figured out the answers to all those questions. And then I started writing about this online 10 years ago. And other people were interested. So it's 10 years. I've done one-on-one coaching. I've done group coaching. I've written about it. And through that process, I was like, oh, there's a system. Like, all of those questions, there's answers for us. Like, it's all figure outable. So that's what I wanted to put into the book. Yeah. And I'm sure, that's the thing. idea of mini retirement sounds so appealing because especially when I talk to young people,

it seems like, oh, retiring early out of the question. Retiring at all, I'm not even sure if I can do that. I don't know if I can ever own a home, all of these kinds of questions because we are in a very different world. So thinking of, well, maybe I can do a mini retirement. That's more accessible and tangible and realistic. And also, many retirements can look like whatever you want. I know in the book you discuss. It doesn't have to be a year long. sabbatical. I feel like often when I think of sabbatical, we're taking a year off, but it doesn't have to look like that. So tell me a little bit about what does a mini retirement, what could it look like? What are the kind of different forms it could take? Well, I define a mini retirement with

three elements. It's a month or longer. I think a month is really that minimum effective dose. One, it helps you recover from burnout or rest, but you can also do something really cool in a month. The second one is stepping away from your primary career or your primary nine to five. So that for a lot of people looks like travel or something that's like kind of vacation vibe, but it could just look like other personal goals or maybe even starting a side hustle or, you know, during two of our many retirements, we bought rental properties and renovated them and got that whole thing going. Which leads me to the third thing is just focus on something that matters to you. And like I talk about in the book, that might be a number of different

things. Like, I love many retirements because they're a little bit of like a Swiss Army knife. They can fulfill a lot of different functions. Yeah. No, exactly. And I think you mentioned burnout. I think that's another thing that young people especially, or me or millennials or anybody, could quite honestly really kind of grab their or sink their teeth into because it has been, I think not an epidemic, but we're talking about it a lot more. And so for me, it seems like, oh, are we all on this? We're all overworking. We're all working multiple jobs. We're all burnt out. And there isn't much of an outlet to recover because a lot of us might only get two weeks if we're lucky vacation, paid vacation from our work or yourself employed like me. Sometimes

it's like hard to book that time off for yourself because you feel like the fomo of if I take time off, will it negatively affect my business or will I lose opportunities? And so then you just keep on working and then eventually get to a point where you're, you know, you're not making the choice. Your body and your mind are making the choice for you. So how can this be kind of a solution to prevent burnout? Do you find? Yeah, the economy is set up very different than it was for our grandparents for sure, but even our parents. How companies approach work-life balance and burnout is, you know, 50 years ago, companies anticipated maybe you would work there for 40 years. Maybe you would have these long careers. And so there was an incentive to make sure that you

could run at a reasonable pace for 40 years straight. There's no longer that incentive. It's now companies are really optimizing to burn through your human capital in three, five, maybe 10 years. They anticipate, like, we will burn them out, we will throw them away, we will get a new fresh model. And that's really the approach of how they're structuring the demands on you, the 24-7 nature of the work, the feelings of stress. And I probably can't change that. But how do we as employees respond to that?

And I think of mini-retirement is a perfect solution of like, okay, So we're not going to have like this slow marathon pace. We're going to have more of this hit training, more of this interval training, where we're going to sprint and then we're going to rest. And we're going to sprint and then we're going to rest. And taking that initiative to be like, okay, this is how I can design my work. I can go to a job. I can sprint hard for three years, five years, maybe 10 years.

And then I'm going to take a break, refresh, recoup, rejuvenate, get motivated and creative again and then bring my best self to my next job. Yeah. No, it's, yeah, it's interesting how you frame that because I'm like, that's exactly, yeah, I think that's also the disconnect. Like when I was just starting to work, I could not really understand my parents in that they did have long careers. My mom has worked for the school board her entire, like for decades. My dad worked for a media company for like 30 years. And even though, you know, it was still hard work, I'm like, I'm burning out after two years. Or, you know, I quit, you know, every job. The longest job I ever stuck to was three years. And I was, I was, you know, checked out at the end of that. I was like,

I can't be here anymore. And that's definitely what I'm hearing from other Gen Z's millennials is no one's staying at their job longer than five years, unless maybe it is a industry. I mean, the last job I worked at, I got burnt out probably just because I just did too much. And I was running a, business on the side, but it was for a law firm. And the people that, um, worked there, they did stay there longer. And I think it's because it was kind of an old school structure in that you can cut, you could coast if you wanted to and not get fired somehow. Um, and a lot of the people that I work with are still there. And I think they were able to find a groove in there. For me, it just, it, you know, I'm an entrepreneur at heart. And so I just, I always was like,

I just can't get what I need out of this job. But yeah, it's interesting just to, to kind of reframe that yeah it's we need to create it we can't use the old rules of retire by 65 then relax when the industries and just jobs in general they're not the same so they're not you know set up for you to like finally do that and also I guess the other thing as I get older especially is 65 I know I'm not going to want to do the same things as I do want to do now like in terms of travel especially I mean I I still have the energy where I could walk around all day and you know have a heavy backpack. Sixty-five, I'm not doing that. And so that limits me on what my experiences could be. And I think often we don't really think about that. Like, oh, worry about that when I'm

65. But, you know, talking a little bit more about, I guess, the practicalities, because I think this all sounds well and good. But how, how is it, like, possible to leave a career, especially if you're building a career, to take some time off? Because that was always my worry. Even taking vacations from some of my jobs is, am I going to be left behind or, you know, not be put in certain meetings or not get certain opportunities if I take longer than a week or two off. So taking a month or many months off, how does that look? Or does it depend on, you know, you finding a job that is compatible with that? Yeah. So there's three kind of ways that we can get the time off. One, you might be able to negotiate it off with your employer. Even if your

company doesn't have a sabbatical program, it doesn't have this kind of setup. If, you, and I go through the book, it's like hyper-specific, like exactly how to structure the conversations, how to craft the story, how to do that negotiation. And I find when people kind of follow that formula, they have a pretty good success, right? Like usually about 80%, even if they're like, oh, no, no one in my company ever does this. If you do it right, usually we can pull it off. So you might be able to negotiate it off. If not, like I said, if you're planning on switching jobs every three years, what if you took a month off in between? What if you took three months off in between? And for some people, that means waiting to apply for the next job. For others,

if they want more security, it's, you know, if you're applying in January saying, hey, I can start mid-February because I've got some other commitments. I need two weeks to wrap up this job. I've got some other commitments on my calendar, and I would love to start after that. And you've had these cool mini retirement plans that you're like, yeah, this is, this is kind of booked. So can we start? Can we push that start date out? Or the thing, third thing is sometimes life unexpectedly happens. And it hands you a mini retirement, whether you get laid off or there's a health issue. And if you love your work, but you are really burned out, you know, in the U.S., most companies, if you're like 50 or larger, they have FMLA. They have medical leave. And, you know,

And burnout, stress, anxiety does help you qualify for that. And so I always encourage people like, take the time, take care of yourself, and then come back as the best version of yourself. Like it's really better for everyone. Yeah. No, absolutely. And that gives you some food for thought for how to kind of approach this. And I guess the other thing, too, I guess what most people are probably fearful of is

bringing it up, being that 20% bringing up to their employer and getting a no. And when you're in that circumstance and you're like, well, many retirements are something that I really want to do, is that when we start to look at other options, like, okay, maybe I'm going to quit, give myself some time, and then find another job or start applying and then kind of build in that kind of time off for that. Yeah. The upside of asking is then at least you know. Yeah. Yeah. You know, either your company goes, oh, that's reasonable. And you've put in work to figure out how to make accommodations and how to make this work for everyone. Cool. We can work with you. Or your company goes, yeah, we don't

really actually care about you at all. So please just show up and do your job. We don't, we don't care. Which is a bummer, but then you know, you know exactly who you're working for. And you know how long maybe you should stay at this and how quickly you should make that exit plan. You know, is this a job you're going to stay at for another year or 10 years when you've gotten a very clear picture of what they think of you and how they plan to treat you. Yeah, I guess the other thing being self-employed for almost nine years now is when you're working for yourself or you run a business, maybe you have staff. How do you work? You know, it's sometimes a little bit easier to ask an employer because you know, okay, I see how this can work. But when you're working for yourself and maybe you have people

that depend on you as well, how do we kind of structure that? Is it just a lot of planning? How does that kind look like? Yeah, I put a whole chapter in the book just about self-employed, Because it's so easy if you're an employee to be like, oh, well, you're your own boss. You can't tell yourself, no. Like, that's so much easier. And self-employed people are like, this is so much scarier. Because you've put so much of your life, so much of your time into building this business. You don't want it to burn down while you're gone.

You know, it's like if you're working for Google and you take a month off, Google will still be there. It will still survive without you. Google will not shut down in your month off. but there's that fear that our business could. And so, you know, for nine to five employees, I encourage starting these conversations like two to four months in advance, usually about four months, three or four months. If you're self-employed, it might take you six months. It might take you 12 months to really clean up and prepare your business for it to survive and hopefully kind of thrive while you're gone. And I think about it like, it's like creating a high

performance machine. It's usually not one thing you need to do. You need to tweak and adjust 10 things, 20 things. So in the book I go through the four kind of big steps that apply to most people in most businesses. And the first is to simplify. Sometimes we have complexity in our business. We have underperforming products. We have underperforming services. We have clients that are difficult. We have things that are redundant. And that takes, you know, it's more work to fix it than to just like deal with it. But fixing it frees up that time and that bandwidth for you to take a mini retirement. And then the second thing is to automate things. Like there's stuff that we do manually that we could maybe automate part of it. We could maybe automate all of it.

Like I have one coaching client who runs a business and he was like, no, well, I have to write, I have to write all of my, like, when people inquire about my services, like I have to respond to those emails because it's so unique. And I'm like, is it? Like, I bet there's a basic structure of like you address their concern, you offer some solutions, you make other suggestions, you set up a time for you guys to talk in person. Like, I bet there's a basic framework, which is the third step of documenting that. How do we create that documentation? And there's so much resistance for so many people of why we don't document things.

It's a pain. It's a hassle. Maybe you don't want to know. We bring all this magic that no one else could ever do. But after you do those first three, which like I said, it might take you six months, it might take you 12 months. Then the fourth one is to delegate. Right. If you were in a business and have ever tried to hire an assistant or someone and it totally was a disaster, generally it's because you didn't do the first three steps. You just brought a person and hoped that they could simplify and automate and document things, but you did not set them up for success. So after you do the first three, you can start to pass that off to other people. And then the last encourage my have is like, don't go cold turkey, especially in your first mini retirement.

plan to work about 10% of what you typically work. So if you put in 40 hours a week, do four, do the most critical tasks, the most high risk things that you really don't feel like you can delegate, check in on the most important things. And for most people, you know, let's say you're traveling in Europe or something, it actually psychologically is more restful to just jump online, do 30 minutes, check in with everyone, answer questions. And then you can close your laptop and go enjoy the next 14 hours of sightseeing or whatever because you know that there's no fires like nothing is nothing is imploding in your absence no that's true actually that's interesting that you say that because yeah i always kind of figure that if i took a mini retirement

um that you know i'd be hard to step fully away so knowing that you don't necessarily have to especially for your first time around that actually makes me feel way more comfortable so i'm like okay i could i could manage that i think i can manage that um so i you know now I think we need to talk about kind of the money part because I know a lot of people are maybe fearful of, okay, well, if I take that time off, I'm not maybe earning money. If I'm an employee, I'm not earning money. If I'm a small business owner, I could potentially set it up. So I'm still earning some passive income, but it depends on what your business is. If it's like service based, then you're not earning anything. And then the saving up component. We're already trying to

save up for all of our other goals, including future retirement when we can no longer work. How am I also going to save up for these many retirements on top of that. Yeah. So I encourage people, especially if you're in the beginning of your journey, let's say there's 20 things on your bucket list. Front load the affordable ones. You know, if you're thinking about doing a road trip to national parks and you also want to do an around the world cruise, we don't need to start with the $50,000 around the world cruise. Like we can start with the $1,500 road trip. So front load the really affordable ones. And And there's a lot of ways to make this more affordable. I had a guest on my podcast who did, I think six months with his fiancé, South East Asia and Europe.

They rented out their apartment while they were gone. And it covered the entire cost of their trip. And so it was actually cheaper for them to live traveling through Switzerland and Cambodia than it was to live at home in Austin, Texas. Wow. And so it might not be as expensive as you think. But the other nice thing about saving for this versus like saving for a house or for eventual retirement is that you're not really going without things. You're just pushing them slightly into the future. You know, if you're like, I want to do this in two years. The things that you might be giving up today, you're going to have probably those. same things just in the future. Like, if you're not doing Starbucks today, it's because you're going to be doing a cappuccino, like under the Eiffel Tower. If you're giving up your Chipotle Burrito Bowl that you have at your desk every Friday for

two years, that would pay for all of your street tacos and margaritas in Mexico for a month on the beach in two years. And so you're just trading this thing for that other thing that hopefully feels like a massive upgrade for you. And the other thing is if it can also incentivize if you want to, instead of maybe saving, maybe your spending is already fully optimized you. I've got no more to cut here. It can make it a little bit more enticing to bring in extra money.

You know, if you're like, oh, well, if I say, like if I earn an extra $300 a month, that would be $6,000 for my mini retirement in two years. And you're like, you know, my area, $300 a month is. dog sitting like twice a month. You might be like, you know what, I like dogs. Maybe it's worth doing that twice a month to have a month-long mini-retirement every other year for the rest of my life. That seems like a good trade-off. That's so funny because my husband, we've been thinking about getting a dog for the longest time and the biggest reason we haven't done it is because, and now that I know you do many retirements, but you also have dogs. So like your perspective on this,

But part of it is we were worried about, you know, the cost of, like, boarding the dog, but also we just felt like kind of, you know, it would kind of trap us at home a little bit, like less travel. And so we were, he was joking. He's like, you know, maybe I should just be a dog walker on this side just for fun just so I can get my dog fix and go for walks. Like you, and I'm like, now I should bring up, be like, you know, it actually can fund a mini-retirement. Yeah. You know, best of both worlds.

But, but yeah, speaking of that, what about some of the things? that, you know, say you would have pets or you have kids or you have, you know, parents you kind of have to check in on or take care of or any of those obligations that I feel like we use as maybe an excuse or maybe a reason to not do it. What would you say to that? Or what are some things that we should think about to like, well, there is a solution? There is typically a solution to most things. It's just logistically challenging. And I kind of joke that the cost of many retirements after we figure some of the big rocks out, it's that it can be emotionally fraught and it's logistically challenging. Like you're going to feel some feelings and there's

going to be some logistical challenges. That's the price of admission. The nice thing is the more and more and more you do it, the cost of those things go down. It's less logistically challenging. You know, like I'm about to start my 13th one and because I've been working almost 10 years just like you. But I've been doing many retirements this whole time. So I've really geared in my business to make it easy for me to step away. And we have all of those things in place. So with this one, I honestly, like, I planned for like a week. I'm doing like a week of prep and then I'm taking a month off. And so it's not like the six to 12 months. It doesn't take me six to 12 months. It takes me about 10 days to get everything squared away. And so, you know, I have five kids. And we,

We traveled all around the U.S. in a camper. We would travel for three months or six months at a time. And, yeah, figuring out schooling, we would homeschool while we traveled, we would plan all this stuff, but they do public school. And so in Montana and most of the U.S., you can unenroll your kids from public school, sign them up for homeschooling, and when you get back, you can re-enroll them in public school. It's not like they will not accept your children again. no, you decide homeschool. They never get to come back to public school. No, you can just

re-enroll them. And they go right back into their classrooms. So it's taking the time to be, I encourage people like fully articulate what the challenge is, what the fear is, because then you can start to figure out the solutions. You can figure out who else has done this. Because you're not the first one. Like lots of people have figured this out, whether it's with their pets. I know some people who travel with their pets. I know some people that they've done. done a six or 12-month trip. And so they, you know, took their pets to a family member or to a friend. Actually, two of my family members are about to embark on a three-month Europe trip, and they have a cat. And so they're finding someone to come stay at their place for free

for like three months and just to show it with a cat. So for like house sitter, like, yeah, a three-month gig and all I got to do is take care of a cat. Like, that's pretty sweet. Absolutely. I know another thing that you touch on in your book, and this is more, well, it's not really just specific to the U.S. I think it's for, you know, in Canada as well, is the cost of health care. Now, in Canada, we, you know, it's government, you know, pretty much it's all free depending on kind of what you're looking for. But I think some worries if we do go to Europe or go to Asia for an extended period of time and something happens over there, you know, there's definitely like obviously a travel insurance you can get, but there's definitely some considerations. Do you want to kind of talk about when we're talking about health care, whether you live in the U.S. or somewhere else, what are some things that you should keep in mind to make sure you're always kind of protected? Yeah. For people in the U.S., it's so stressful. It's so stressful, mostly because most people don't feel confident navigating the system. So I put a whole chapter in the book just about U.S. healthcare. And my

publishers actually based out of London. And they were like, we really want everything to be globally applicable. And I'm like, oh, it's harder to do. You don't know how stressed out Americans are about here. We just need to do one chapter just for them. Yeah. I don't know if we do it. The whole world. Yeah. In most other countries, they at least know how to go about it. They're like, oh, yeah, no, there's a system. Like, we know how to navigate the system. Americans are like, we don't know how to navigate this. And so I kind of outlined nine different options of what health care could look like in the U.S. But the reality is there is a solution.

I think especially in the U.S., we have a lot of resistance to paying more for health care. It's very intolerable. And so, but some of that's just mental framing, you know, it might be expensive. It might be $1,000 a month. It might be $1,500 a month. But it's like any other payment. It's like a student loan payment. It's like a house payment.

It's like a car payment. And if you're thinking about taking three months, off and you're going to pay an extra thousand dollars a month. Well, the reality is that's $3,000, which is a lot. But when you're 70 and you're looking back at this amazing three months off you had, will you be like, oh, wasted $3,000 on health care? Like, that was silly. No, like the experience will be really valuable. But traveling outside of the U.S., travel insurance is pretty affordable. It's pretty good. There's lots of options. It's not complicated or hard to sign up for. But you can also, in addition to that, look at just the cost of health care

in those countries. And for most people paying out of pocket, even for a broken bone or stitches or getting dental work done if you end up with a chipped tooth or something, ends up being really reasonable. Like $50, a couple hundred dollars, a thousand dollars. A lot of other systems are really set up to where the cash payment is like a normal amount of money. So the cost of that, I had a friend who I think she needed her gallbladder out or appendix or something. And it, you know, kind of a big surgery. And yeah, it was super reasonable. And health care in most parts of the world is actually really good. I think sometimes we think, well, in the Western world, it's amazing. And everywhere else it's shoddy. And that's not exactly the case.

Yeah. Speaking to about kind of finances, again, there's a section in your book that talks about how many retirements can actually improve your finances, which I feel like the argument you usually hear is it's going to hurt my finance. It's going to lose money. I'm not going to be earning money. And maybe there's even some consequences with my career. I think, you know, again, I've always been afraid either when I was an employee or working for myself that if I take any, you know, long period of time off, that when I come back, then I'm starting from ground zero. And I'm like, you know, I'll, you know, I've built up all this momentum, you know, is it going to negatively impact all my other kind of future financial plans? Do you want to kind of speak to what are some of the benefits to your finances for taking these many retirements that people may not consider? I think this is a little counterintuitive and often surprising for people in that when you step away, there's all these different levers. There's all these different possibilities of things that could happen. So on the, on the career side, and you can kind of plan this.

Like, you can be like, I'm going to be intentional to try to pull this lever. On the career side, oftentimes people end up finding better jobs when they get back. For most people, your biggest raise, your biggest promotion is going to come when you switch jobs. So being strategic about switching jobs every three to five years. And then as a bonus, you take this mini retirement. It's something interesting and it's exciting. You come back. refreshed, you come back creative and motivated, which is such a different energy than everyone else who's burned out. We talked about burnout. Like 89% of Americans are burned out in the last year. You come back with such a different energy and such a different performance that it can

really help you excel at your new job or at your current job, which might put you on a very different lifetime earning trajectory and can make a big difference. Or you could even be strategic. The reality is with AI and the way the economy is changing, the way careers are changing, the fact that you did four years of education between 18 and 22 probably isn't going to hold you over for the next 40 years. You're going to need to retool. You're going to need to reskill periodically as your job changes, as AI takes part of your job, and so you have to get better at the other part of your job. And so many retirements give you that opportunity to take some new classes, to get some training, to get some new education, and then to come back

better qualified than your peers who are just burned out and like pushing through. But on the financial side, like I had mentioned, you know, two of our many retirements. We bought rental houses. One of the house I eventually live in right now. And just that one choice. Yeah, it cost. a few thousand dollars of income 12 years ago, the house has appreciated $300,000 over that time period. Like, I probably actually couldn't afford to buy this house today and live in it. And so you can create financial opportunities. You know, I'm this next mini retirement, I'm starting a company, which for the for the sole purpose to fund future mini retirement. So I'm taking a mini retirement to build something that will pay for all my future mini retirements. And I think a lot of

people have those ideas of like, there's something I would like to try or I'd like to explore or maybe I'd want to do a career pivot. But they can't do that alongside of their job. So be able to step away, rest, recover, reimagine, have that energy and that motivation. You really do come back as your best self. And for, because I feel like another fear of people that they have, is if I take a long break, a month, maybe not so bad, but like a year, that is, if I'm, you know, seeking employment, you know, working for a company after that, how am I going to explain that gap? But you're kind of saying, if it's not just like you're on vacation for a year, you can also be like, oh, I took some courses, I retrained a little bit, that. That's kind of how

you'd be able to explain that. Because I know most people are like, how am I, you know, then it just looks like I was unemployed for a year, not taking them any retirement. Yeah, I was just, I did a webinar and someone on it was a recruiter and she had just placed someone that had gotten hired who had taken a year off. And she said that they listed it on their resume of I did a year off and here are all the cool things that like ways I grew and things I did and things that I learned. Like they listed it like it was experience. And the reality is like we're humans dealing with humans. And if you do something cool and interesting and exciting, other people think that that's cool and interesting and exciting too. And there's this, I think there's

this concern of like, well, what if people think I'm lazy or I'm unmotivated or I'm not dedicated or I don't care about my career? But the reality is to pull off a minimum retirement, it takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of creativity. It takes logistical planning. It takes motivation. It takes initiative, like you're doing something interesting and hard that other people haven't been able to figure out. And those are valuable skill sets. Yeah, I think, yeah, the one positive is it would probably make your resume stand out because most people probably don't have that. And again, you can list it as if it is kind of a job. You did all of these things. And that should hopefully kind of, yeah, maybe get rid of some of those fears. But I think, yeah, you kind of mentioned something.

what if it does make me look like, yeah, I just, I haven't been using that time wisely. I guess it's really about when you're building that mini retirement, getting really clear on what you're doing with that time and how to explain it when you are looking for employment after, really having that guide. So I kind of want to talk just for anyone who's listening who's getting really excited and really inspired, especially as we're heading into the new year and kind of making some plans, what would, you know, for somebody who's never done anything like this, what would be, the first couple steps that they should do. I know you already kind of mentioned, you know, let's start small. It doesn't have to be a year off. That's kind of a big lofty goal. We don't have to go that far right away. But how should someone kind of start taking action? Yeah, the first step in my book is to like imagine and plan what this could be. And it's really where I encourage people to start because like the employment stuff, the money stuff, it is logistically challenging. It is emotionally

fraught. So you need to start with the vision, start with the upside, start with all of the ways that this is exciting and incredible and going to be amazing. But start planning out what those could look like. What are some possibilities to become emotionally invested and excited about that, to give you the motivation to push through the logistical, scary things, you know, having that conversation with your boss to negotiate it off. Like, it's emotionally fraught. Like, there's definitely it costs like nobody's like oh yeah whatever that's not a big deal like they're like oh like you you feel the big feels and so definitely starting with that that motivation yeah and I guess I'm curious just because you've mentioned you're you're going to be doing your 13th what have your many

retirements look like from start to kind of middle to now and how have they kind of evolved over time yeah they definitely started more travel kind of heavy like big adventures and we still do a number of travel ones. Like maybe seven years ago, we did a 10 week road trip to 10 national parks with our kids in a pop-up camper. Two years ago, we did a six-month trip all through like Montana to D.C. down to Florida and then back. So travel, time with people we love, like visiting friends, visiting family. It's so hard to do that within your two weeks vacation to see all the people that you love and care about. So we've definitely prioritized that. But, you know, we've done two that were real estate focused. This next one's business focused. I did a month off last year and I learned tango for a month. You know, I think about these as like capital investments in my future self. I took a month off and did a month of intensive therapy in my 20s, which was like amazing. It was like remodeling a house from the ground up. Like, you know, it set me in a whole different trajectory of personal growth.

of mental health, that that was an investment that continues to pay dividends. Like, I continue to benefit from that work I did when I was 27 and I'm 42 now. And so thinking about those things that matter to you that are investments, I took time off maybe three or four years ago to figure out how to like exercise and feed myself. I was like, I was in my late 30s. I was going to my 40s and I was like, oh, it's different now, huh? I can't just like eat candy for breakfast. I think I require vegetables. This is weird. And so like I had to work with a personal trainer and a nutritionist and like read all the books and like rework how I feed myself as an adult. But that's an investment in my future self. I want my 60 year old self to be healthy. And apparently she needs vegetables is what I've learned. I love the idea because I think often we think of many retirements as yeah, many vacations or travel. But for anyone who's like, I actually don't care about travel. So why would

I would do this. I love the idea of, like, well, this could be a month or several weeks or half a year or a whole year of whatever thing that you've always wanted to do and you never felt like you had the capacity or you didn't, you know, like, believe me, I'm talking, I'm thinking all the time of I would love to do a cooking class. I would love to become a simolea. I would love to do all these things that have nothing to do with my day to day or my business. And then trying to find the time to do that. It just never happened. So I love the idea of find that time. And I guess, too, one thing we didn't really discuss is there's always seasons, whether you're an employee or your self-employed, where it's slower than, you know, the busy time. So probably don't choose to go to the busy, you know, the busiest time of year to take your time off.

That might be just too stressful. But try to identify what are the periods, like it could be the summer or June or whatever, where it's like, oh, yeah, it's really slow anyway. And blocking that time off for whether that's like, you know, personal development, personal growth. or travel and really kind of figuring it out from there. But I think it's going to get a lot of people excited. Myself included, I'm already thinking about what can we do. I mean, me and my husband, for the first time in, like, honestly, gosh, 10, 12 years, we're going to be taking three weeks off to travel.

We're going to Italy. It's like a big bucketless thing for me to celebrate my 40th birthday. The last time we did three weeks away, we went to Thailand and we were mid-20s. And I'm like, how did we? wait all this time, you know, after that amazing trip, which was life-changing, I'm like, we need to do this every year. And then we waited like 12, you know, come on. We need to do better. And so I'm so excited to think of not only just doing that trip, but also can we tack on an extra week, even if it's just at home where I can spend the time just to kind of reframe and what are we doing

with our lives because now I'm entering a new phase of my life. So I'm excited and I'm excited for people to really dive into, again, you have so many specific guides and action steps in your book that are beyond everything that we kind of talked about in this episode. So I'm excited for people to really check it out. Before I let you go, where can people find a copy of your book and also find you online if they want to get in touch or just see what you're up to? Retireoften.com. You can find the book, the podcast, coaching. I've got free worksheets. I've got an unhinged newsletter. All of my life is there. And on social media. I'm at Jillian John's Road.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Gillian, for coming on the show. Excited for it to hear about your next mini-retirement. I guess you could probably find out, you know, subscribing to you on social media or your newsletter to find out how that goes and all that kind of exciting stuff. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. Thank you for having me. And that was my episode with Jillian.

Make sure to buy a copy of her new book, Retire Often. You can find more info at Retireoften.com, but you can find her book on with any major retailer, but on her website, retire often.com. She has a bunch of free worksheets and resources you can check out and make sure to follow her on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube at Gillian Johnsred. And like I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I'm going to be giving away a copy of her book. And actually, I'm going to just remind you of all the other books that I'm giving away because I am giving away copies of books that have all been featured by guests on this current season. And there's quite a few books. I'm going to see. One, two, three, four,

five. We got six books I'm giving away. So let me remind you what we've got going on. We've got At a Zero by Rose Hahn, Money Proud by Nick Woolney, the wealthy barber, the updated edition by David Chilton, the double tax by Anna Gifty Apoku Ajuman, How to Be a Rich Old Lady by Amanda Holden, and of course, retire often by Jillian and John Spread. So six books you can enter to win. Honestly, this is, honest, I never promote this contest outside of this podcast. So you're chances of winning are pretty good because I'm not just blasting it to my Instagram or anywhere else. So this is for you. It's a nice thank you for supporting the more money podcast all these years and being an amazing podcast listener. So enter to win, jessicamorehouse.com

slash contest. Maybe I should be giving away a copy of my book. Maybe I should. I'm not going to, though. Instead, I'm going to still encourage you to buy a copy because we need to sell some copies. we got some work to do so if you want to support your gal jesska a little bit more also too as you're listening and you're like what should i get my friend or my family member or my co-worker for our secret santa you should get them a copy of everything but money by jessica more house right um and you know depending on where you live there might still be some signed copies you know in some of the bookstores in like quitlam Vancouver robson they might still be there unless they're all sold out from the summer. And last time I checked, just like maybe a month ago,

at the Indigo at Eaton Center, there's a few signed copies left. I should do another round of just going to some bookstores around me and signing copies. And last time I checked, too, about maybe a month or two ago, if you go to the book city on Danforth, there were two signed copies. So if you live on Danforth, get a signed copy. That is kind of my local bookstore. I love going to that bookstore. Honestly, if you go there, you might see me there. I go there all the time. I love it. Everything but money. Buy the book, please. And also, as a reminder, if you do buy the book, or again, you can get it from your library. I'm not mad at that. Support the libraries. Love them. You can access. I'm just making this free now. I've got rid of the thing where it's like,

give me a review, though I would appreciate it. If you do read the book, please give me a rating or review, good reads, story graph, Indigo, Amazon, whatever your preference is. It does help me as an author. So I really appreciate if you could do that. But I also want to give you access to all these book extras that I originally just gave access to all the people who did pre-orders of the book. But now I'm giving it to anyone who wants access to all these extra videos, audio, worksheets, all these kind of companion resources and tools for anyone who's read the book or is reading the book. And you can find info about that at either Jessicamorehouse.com slash book or Jessicamorehouse.com slash shop. Some other things I'm just going to remind you of.

I do have a bunch of budget spreadsheets. So if you are looking to the new year and want to get your financial house together, get one of my budget spreadsheets. Actually, you get access to all of them. I have seven different ones. So you can, you know, see which one is the right one for you. Jessicamorehouse.com slash shop is where you can find info about that. And don't forget, I also have an amazing investing course for Canadians.

Wealthbuilding blueprint for Canadians is what it's called. Jessicamorehouse.com slash course is where I can find info about that. I will probably in the new year share some updates about. some things. Now that I am a qualified associate financial planner, QAFP over here, I do have some kind of ideas about some new things I want to integrate with like my budgets, my investing course. I just have some plans that I've been putting on hold until I got this credential. But that's really all I can say. But I've got some exciting plans for the new year and I can't wait to share them with you. So again, follow me. Instagram. The newsletter is really kind of where

you can really know exactly what's going on. But yeah, that's that. Well, I don't know what to say. This has been one of the craziest years of my life. Coming out with a book, it becoming a national bestseller on all the big lists, becoming a QAFP, something that I've been working towards for five years, meeting so many people on my book tour across Canada, which was exceptional and so exciting. And, you know, it's, it's, I do need December to reflect on everything that's happened. So I just want to say, you know, thank you again for supporting me on all my different platforms and all the different things that I do. It really makes a big difference in my life. You may not realize it.

But every time you give me a comment, give me a like, DM me, do a review, it I notice, I see it and it really does make a big difference in my life. So thank you so much. And especially too, thank you so much for supporting this show over the past 10. years. Someone, was it David Chilton? He was the one. He's like, oh, you're one of the OG podcasters. And I'm like, oh my God, I am. I mean, just not to say there weren't podcasters before me, but there aren't too many personal finance podcasters who's been doing this for a decade. And here we are. I'm old. Anyways, that's enough rambling for me. Thank you so much. And I will see you in the new year. Have an amazing holiday season and amazing new year. And see you in 2026.

The More Money podcast would not be possible without the amazing talents of video editor, Justice Carrar, and podcast producer Matt Rideout, who you can find at MRABCanada.com.