
Human resources professionals say Canadian companies are seeing more employees asking for permission to take longer absences from work than standard vacation time allows. Some call it a mini-retirement; others refer to it as an "adult gap year." "Post-COVID, we are certainly hearing more requests than before. They don't want to wait 40 years until they retire to go traveling," said Cissy Pau, an HR consultant from Vancouver. Jillian Johnsrud, host of the Retire Often podcast, says she's taken about a dozen mini-retirements ranging in length from a month to a year, despite starting with a very modest income. A resident of Kalispell, Montana, she now coaches others on how to take career breaks. She says that if people can set aside 6.5 percent of their income to draw upon later, it will cover an unpaid month off every second year.
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