How I take a mini sabbatical every year

Every year my wife and I take a mini sabbatical – 4-6 weeks of traveling. To view this email as a web page, [click here]() {NAME}, Every year my wife and I take a mini sabbatical – 4-6 weeks of traveling. Below, I’ll show you how we do it. Past trips have included Paris + London, Japan, and India. We also spent a month or two in NYC, where we used to live. [Ramit in NYC] Eating pizza at Scarr’s Pizza in the Lower East Side a few months ago. This tweet got homeowners really mad In today’s newsletter I’m going to share how I do it – how we decide where we’re going, how to make it an unforgettable experience, and how I set up my logistics so my business can run smoothly without me. --------------------------------------------------------------- Today’s newsletter is sponsored by [Facet](). [Facet logo]() You know that I never want you to pay a financial advisor who takes a percentage of your assets. With Facet, you get your own CFP Professional to work with and a team of financial experts—all through a flat fee membership. As an IWT listener, Facet will put [$500 into your brokerage account when you invest $5k within your first 90 days](). Sponsored by Facet. Facet Wealth, Inc. (“Facet”) is an SEC registered investment adviser headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. This is not an offer to sell securities or investment, financial, legal, or tax advice. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance. Terms and conditions apply. Find special deals here from [all of our sponsors](). --------------------------------------------------------------- How I take a mini sabbatical every year “How do you decide where to go?” - We set up “boxes” of approximate times we want to travel, e.g., once per quarter. Some trips are small weekend trips, but the longer ones are where we spend a lot of time thinking and planning. We’ll decide if we want something relaxing or adventurous, if we want to be in a city or a remote location. I keep a list of things to do in different cities, and I read a bunch of travel publications like [Flyertalk]() and all the major travel magazines. - One of our big surprises is that some years, we want to go back to the same place we’ve been. Recently we went to Tokyo, which we’ve been to before, but we wanted to go deeper. It feels awesome to go someplace a few times and start to understand the city better and create your list of favorite spots. “How do you do that when you have a regular 9-5 job with only 2 weeks PTO?” - The truth is you don’t. Most people can’t take 2 months at a time with 2 weeks of PTO, unless you run your own business, which my wife and I both do. - However, you can still get creative working at a 9-5. But it takes being a top performer, courage, and a lot of luck. Here’s one example… - I used to have a coworker who was very good at her job. She asked if she could move to France for a year with her family. We had a discussion about it and I told her: Yes, I’ll support her moving there...but she has to attend every meeting that she used to, regardless of the time zone. She agreed—and she had a great time! - Would that work if you have to show up at a physical job every day? Of course not. But she proposed a creative idea, she told me how she’d handle any problems, and she was good enough at her job to earn the flexibility. - I’ve also had friends who let their boss know they want to take unpaid leave 18 months from now. People hearing this roll their eyes, but for my friends, it was important to them to take a mini-sabbatical. They saved for it. They let their bosses know and made arrangements. And they got it. This means having savings, confidence to talk to your boss professionally, and also being willing to walk away. - Finally, if traveling more is important to you and your current job won’t allow it, consider switching jobs. We have an entire methodology on finding jobs in the Lifestyle career season, which will let you live more flexibly. [Get my Dream Job program](). [Cass and Ramit] Cass and me on a recent trip to Japan. “How much do you work when you’re traveling abroad?” - In general, less and less. - The first time I took a trip, I was working all the time. But later, I would spend one hour per week answering emails from my team — that’s it. - Here’s how I did it: After being glued to work while traveling, I decided to engineer a way for my business to run with me gone. I told my team ahead of time that I’d be traveling. We spent a bunch of effort documenting items, creating SOPs, etc. - I’d travel, then we’d come back and debrief on what worked and what didn’t. - Eventually, my team and I got the process to me responding to a curated email for one hour per week. Everything else was handled by very talented IWT team members. The things that made it to that email had been vetted and escalated and only I could handle them. - When I come back, I have new experiences to share, I’m more focused, and my team has much more autonomy. “Do you disconnect the battery of your car if you are not using it for two months?” - Uh, no. I never thought about this. “How do you eat healthy when traveling?” - I learned tricks of the trade - When we went on our honeymoon to Italy, Kenya, India, and Thailand, we started off eating healthily, then we realized we were surrounded by the world’s greatest food and we weren’t going to pass up the opportunity to eat it all. - Now we’ve learned that if we’re traveling for 1+ months, we can eat mostly healthy food but also indulge in the foods of wherever we are - Examples: We take our protein powder, we try to find a real gym for training ~3 days/week when possible, we limit the amount of sauces and look for grilled chicken a lot. But if we see something we want, we’re going to get it. “How do you find reasonably priced short term housing?” - We don’t. In the locations we’re going to, there are not reasonably priced housing options available. - In NYC, for example, you can find AirBnBs, or Sonders, but they’ll typically be 2-3x the rental price you’d pay. They’re outrageously expensive. That’s the cost of long-term stays in a city like NYC. - I would say if you’re looking for reasonably priced housing, I’m not the guy to ask. We pay a lot because we want to stay in specific neighborhoods and specific hotels, even specific hotel rooms. But there are some more affordable options such as sublets or more flexible locations that are much cheaper. “Always wondered how people do this—what if you get something critical in the mail?” - I use a virtual mail service where I get things mailed. They can scan it, forward it, shred it, etc. Very helpful. - Also, I minimize the amount of mail I get [Ramit] A bit of writing time from my hotel “Do you set an exact budget? If so, do you stick to it?” - We’ve learned how much it costs us per day when traveling. For example, let’s say (for easy math) that it’s $100/day. If we’re traveling for 30 days, we know it will be $3,000/month. - We know the number includes hotel, food, excursions, and it averages out to days where we’re out and days where we stay in. - So by the time we sit down at a restaurant, we’re not thinking about if we can order appetizers — it’s already been factored in. This is the crux of the [IWT system in my book](). - We also know that the majority of that number comes from hotel/housing, then airfare or food, then excursions. - So if we want to economize, we know that housing is the place to do it. We also know that if we can use points for airfare, that is a big savings driver. We don’t eat at a bunch of fancy restaurants so that’s less of a concern. - Recently we went way over budget. We learned this when we came back and we talked about money in our regular money meeting (join [Money Coaching]() to learn how these work). We dug into the numbers, realized where we overspent, and created some new rules to avoid it in the future. “How do you justify spending on business class / luxury hotels rather than saving?” - Why would I need to justify anything? - I have a vision of a Rich Life, and as long as I can afford it and love it, I do it Hope you enjoyed this. [Signature] P.S. One of my mentors, Jay Abraham, has a new book out. I used to fly across the country for the chance to learn from him, and he taught me about business, revering my customers, and the principle of Preeminence. If you run a business, I highly recommend all of his books, [starting with this new one](). P.P.S. This week on the podcast, a special Q&A episode: [“Ramit’s travel tips, real estate FOMO, and talking to kids about money”]()   You may be new to IWT. 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