The idea of a “mini-retirement” was first made popular by Tim Ferriss’ in his New York Times bestselling book; the 4 Hour Work Week.  This book, despite its title, doesn’t encourage people to just work four hours a week.  It’s all about changing their paradigm from one of being a wage slave where more is better, to focus on how to propagate “quality of life” in the sense of having both the time and money to be “free”.

Make sure you read my Beginner’s Guide To F.I.R.E (Financial Independent Retire Early)

One of the core concepts, suggests people should take a mini-retirement at regular intervals throughout their career and explore the world in their twenties, thirties and forties rather than use up the best years of their life working for someone else, feeling exhausted the whole time, barely able to squeeze much juice out of life!

Once upon a time, the vast majority of people subscribed to something known as the 40×40 Plan, which referred to the fact people would get an education then work for forty hours a week for forty years of their life then retire on 40% of their salary.

It was at this point that people would finally begin to travel and explore the world and squeeze the most out of life, but think about that for a second.  At sixty fives years old people have very different levels of health, fitness, and vitality than they did in their twenties – thus people aren’t always able to pursue the activities on their bucket list if they wait until retirement.

There’s also the sobering realization that not everyone makes it to retirement.  What if you spend your whole life working, thinking that tomorrow will be better, only for tomorrow to be taken from you prematurely.

Today, many people are looking for ways to squeeze the most out of their lives, particularly with regard to travel, as young as possible, and one of the best ways to do this is to take regular mini-retirements.

The emphasis today appears to have shifted from amassing great wealth to creating a “freedom lifestyle”.  

In today’s flourishing digital economy the opportunity to work remotely, from anywhere in the world, providing you have a laptop and a decent internet connection is in abundance.  For many people, “living the dream” no longer features a corner office, fancy title, and fast car parked in their garage – it’s more akin to jetting off to an exotic location and working from their laptop on a beach whilst drinking from a fresh coconut.

The idea of mini-retirements was first introduced by Tim Ferriss in his New York Times bestselling book, but since then the concept has peaked the interest of bloggers, freelancers and digital nomads alike.  This article digs deeper into the idea of mini-retirements and looks at some of the destination choices you might want to consider.