Save this amount per month and you can go on sabbatical next year

Whenever I say that I could easily let things go for about three months, someone looks at me doubtfully, as if I’m not quite right in the head. When someone looks like that, you know the tirade is about to start in three-two-one: but your career, you just bought a house, and how will that work with your income? The funny thing is that the people who are not part of my potential sabbatical worry more about it than I do. Of course, I do want to know what I need to do to actually make it happen.

First things first: you don’t have to physically leave when you take a sabbatical. It literally means putting your career on pause and taking a small (or large) break from daily life. Think carefully in advance about what you want your sabbatical to look like and discuss this with your employer, if you have one. It helps if you think along in a realistic way; for example, suggest someone to take over your work or agree to work remotely one day a week. That makes you more of a digital nomad than a sabbatical taker, of course, so that’s something to weigh as well.

Does such a break sound appealing to you too? I gathered the best tips from the pros for us.

You need to determine how long you want to be away and what your budget will be. Sjaak Zonneveld wrote the book ‘Travel Around the World in Your Best Years’ and says that 10,000 euros should be sufficient for about half a year, which would mean you need to have 5,000 euros saved for my two to three months. Of course, this depends on how you set up your sabbatical. Are you staying home or going away, and if you’re going away, what is your destination? In Asia, you can stretch 100 euros much longer than in America. Calculate your basic costs and add everything up; this will give you a realistic amount to save.

Keep the costs low is the motto of a sabbatical. It’s great if you have a house to rent out, as that reduces your fixed expenses a bit. But try to do the same with your car, and if that doesn’t work, pause your insurance and road tax. Furthermore, there’s a lot to sell. A barbecue that you use once a year? On Marktplaats. That ugly gold bracelet you once received? Return it to the jeweler. An old iPhone lying at the bottom of a drawer, while your insurance covers a replacement device? Get rid of it. Put the proceeds directly into your savings account; that saves you a month of saving.

Spread the word. Even if you encounter the same tirades as I do, it might just be that someone has a distant cousin with a house in Timbuktu where you can stay for very little. For example, I would like to live on a Greek island for two months, and maybe you’ll all start emailing me later because you have a house on a Greek island that I need to look after. You never know.

Visualize your sabbatical. I’m going to do this in the form of a map of Greece in my living room. For every savings milestone I reach, I’ll color in a group of islands. And on the day of my last island, I’ll book that ticket. Why wait for your retirement when you can do it now?