How I paid for my sabbatical

Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona / Santa Marta, Colombia

One of the primary questions people may have regarding taking a sabbatical is, how would I pay for it? Everyone’s financial situation is different, but I’ll share how I paid for mine. As background, I’ll share a few things that influence this response:

• I’ve worked as a product manager in the tech industry for over 10 years

• I’m single and don’t have children or other caretaking responsibilities

I took my sabbatical in 2022, but I actually, unintentionally, started saving for it in 2019. At the time I was working as a 1099 independent contractor. For fear of getting burned come tax time (which had happened to me in the past when I didn’t understand how 1099 taxes worked), I had aggressively set aside a portion of my payments to cover taxes. I had been so aggressive, that after I had paid taxes I had a substantial amount left. 

Originally I was going to use that amount as the start of a down payment to buy a place. I stopped to consider it though. At the time I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, a location that goes neck and neck with New York for being one of the most expensive places to live in the U.S. I realized that buying a place in the Bay would shackle me to high paying jobs that crushed my soul in order to pay for my place and life. I swapped that dream and instead decided that I wanted to travel, but I didn’t make that decision until I decided in February 2021 to plan my sabbatical. Working with my sabbatical coach, Roshida Dowe, in her group coaching program, I calculated an estimate of what a year long sabbatical would cost, and I began setting aside money each month into my sabbatical fund.

Making key choices

Choosing to take a long sabbatical will involve understanding your current financial situation, drafting a budget and making choices about how you want to make it possible financially. Here are the financial and lifestyle choices I made leading up to and during my sabbatical that impacted it:

• Product management is a field that pays well. Although I was 40% underpaid in my first role and have taken breaks from product, once I course corrected it helped me set aside money for my personal goals.

• In relation to the above, even when I wasn’t being paid as much, I’ve always had an emergency savings account. Having this account enabled me to draw resources from it, rather than my sabbatical fund if an emergency came up.

• Except for my last year living in the Bay Area, I lived with housemates for 14 years, which helped me save significantly.

• Because I wanted to take such a long time off, I moved back to my parents’ place in a state with a lower cost of living.

How can you make a sabbatical a reality within your context?

I know that not everyone has the same options and privileges that I’ve had. What I want to offer though is, where can you start within your context to make a sabbatical happen if you want one? 

Perhaps you can start with a 1 month break, strategically planning it around holidays and your paid vacation time, so you don’t need to leave your job. To decrease accommodation costs during a sabbatical, some people embrace housesitting. That’s one of the primary approaches Stephanie Perry, one of the people that inspired me to take my break, advocates for. At 41 years old she saved $14k in 15 months during her former job as a hospital pharmacy tech. She now helps black women exit crushing jobs, take career breaks and build the lives they want. For some folks, you may actually have the financial resources and set up to make a sabbatical possible, but what are the stories you’re telling yourself that prevent you from even exploring the option?

There are very real barriers and challenges that can make taking a career break difficult, but no one else is going to make this opportunity happen for you if you don’t first decide that you want it. Once you make this decision, the resources are there to help you figure out how you can make it happen.

Additional Resources

• Come to my Illuminate Your Muse workshop on September 14 to get inspiration and practical insights on planning your sabbatical.

• Check out “Taking a Career Break for Dummies” by Katrina McGhee, another sabbatical coach.