Candid question: how do you finance your sabbatical ?

I feel like a lot of people (I'm in there) are dreaming for exactly what your are living right now, but won't EVER be in the position to do it.

I am 36 with about 14 years of software engineering, and I need LOTS_OF_MONEY per month just to finance my mortgage, the school of my children and the basic living expenses that rose about 50% in the last year due to energy and inflation. If my wife and I quit for 3 month, we are out of our saved money and will be losing the house.

Mostly luck* that my wife and I worked for a company that compensated largely in stock, and we worked there (and both got promoted) during a period of strong stock performance.

We also planned our expenses around one base salary. So about 1/4 of gross income covered mortgage, child care (one kid), etc. We live way beneath our means. The rest (after taxes) went into index funds and a few lucky investments.

We're at the "FU money" stage of wealth, and we'll go back to work to ensure we get to "very comfortably retired" stage.

*I'd like to take credit for being so brilliant as to land the job at said company, and maybe I should take some credit for that, but honestly it's mostly good luck.

One more comment, since there's a sibling comment about not having kids. I live in a US state with a pre-paid college tuition plan, and it's pre-paid for four years of tuition for my one kid. I know there's more to college expenses than just tuition, but it gives me peace of mind that at least that is taken care of. My kid will go to public schools until then.

Now if only I had universal health care!

Essentially, spend quite a bit less than you earn. Figure out how and where cuts can be made so that your financial situation is decoupled from your job. It’s not easy and a lot of people will find themselves in a place where they’re convinced they need to spend every dollar they’re currently spending (and find new ways when their income increases).

One method is to look for a better paying job, jump to it, and keep your budget the same as it is now.

Use your resources wisely and take time to think about the best way to use them.

Not OP, but I’ll tell you how my wife and I were able to take a year long sabbatical. I had some stock options for the company I worked for, which had gone public during my employment, and buying and selling it all provided enough to live very comfortably off of for about a year for the two of us.

The key part seems to be not having kids. For me, I feel like I need to keep pushing at least until they are launched off to college.

I think the author is not stating "don't bear any responsibilities", but rather "work is infinite, do not try to finish it by dedicating 10 hours per day", which is a fallacy many people fall in (myself included)

I try to reason about this a lot, and the trouble is everything I aspire to do happens across decades. Nothing that can be accomplished in a day or a week seems satisfying.

But this is not the point. The point is not to engage in meaningless or easy stuff only. The point is to recognize that you should not dedicate more than 8h per day because for many jobs (including software engineering) there are no deadlines or most are made by people that are not involved in the actual process so they are artificial limits imposed to make you fret.