Summary
Younger generations are embracing “micro-retirements,” short sabbaticals or lifestyle shifts, to combat burnout and improve work-life balance.
This trend is fueled by pandemic-related stress, declining workplace flexibility, and increased burnout reports.
Millennials and Gen Z, facing financial and mental health pressures, are prioritizing their well-being, even at the expense of promotions, as they reject the traditional career model of working until age 65.
Meanwhile, older generations like boomers and Gen X struggle to retire due to financial insecurity and rising costs, with many “unretiring” to stretch limited savings.
Who the fuck can afford to do that?
Put it in the same bag as the stories about “19-year-old works 15 minutes a week and makes $100 gazillion” and “Laura and Joe run an organic artisanal buttplug business and their real estate budget is $4 million.” Not worth expending mental effort on.
I put it in the “teddy bear” category. If we see people with a teddy bear at the carnival, we’ll try the games
Spam us with getrich quick schemes and we fall in line…
OK… I’m interested… Is it like organic rubber? I hope they don’t test on animals, although…
Alt: gelatinous cube
Edit: Alt Alt: tire from the movie rubber
They pour the latex into the mold straight from the tree.
I mean, without further context I assume Laura and Joe both organic and artists, so couldn’t the butt plugging be is less a manufacturing and more a per-hour rental-type business?
I wonder how many of these “micro-retirees” are people looking for jobs, or people who are burnt out and no longer looking after having been looking for months. My main freelance gig dried up over a month ago, and I haven’t been able to find anything substantial, that pays my bills, since then. I’ve been looking at all sorts of different things, but the reality is, I can leave the industry I’ve worked in for 15 years and take a big pay cut to take a job with skills I gained from hobbies. Or, I can somehow come up with ~$5k to pay for additional training and certifications I would need to get a better job that would pay my bills. That’s an oversimplification of my situation, but I really wonder how many people are caught in situations similar to mine in which, there aren’t really many options that work for me, or that I can reasonably obtain without outright lying on my resume.
Especially given that US unemployment metrics drop people that can’t find work off the unemployment percentage after 6 months, so it never shows a true picture.
Why is downsizing or reducing spending not an option that could work?
Not going to read the article, but I take it as sugar coating unemployment for a period of time.
Yep. LinkedIn added “Career Break” as an experience type. It just means “I couldn’t find a job for a while and thought it was too much of a gap for the people who care about that.”
I can - not easily but with careful planning.
I’m able to work remotely and my partner is on disability so for the last three months of this year we’ve been in a significantly low CoL area of Spain with our costs only marginally higher than living at home in BC. When the cost of air travel and trains is amortized over three months it’s pretty minimal and we hunted for affordable long term accommodations.
It’s definitely a luxury not available to everyone, and we’re not staying in high class digs, but it’s worth skimping during the rest of the year to afford as we both deeply love being able to explore a new place.
A lot of professionals.