Six Months Off: How to Plan, Negotiate, & Take the Break You Need Without Burning Bridges or Going Broke

Six Months Off is an extremely inspiring and informative book. Once you start reading this book, plan on having travel fever! The authors do a great job explaining why you should take a break from your boring, dull, repetitive job and expand your mind and grow as a person by taking time to traveling the world, write a novel, go to cooking school, or attend some other educational program. Not only do the authors convince you to do these things, and list great programs to look into, but they also describe HOW to do it, in realistic terms. The book is full of case study examples of people from various backgrounds and income levels (including very low income levels) who found the ways and means to accomplish a sabbatical and return back to their former lives afterwards (for those who wanted to return anyway). Don't doubt that you can this. The authors show you how step-by-step. The sample programs and opportunities listed in the book can't be overlooked either. Not only am I looking into some of them now, but I also plan to use this book in the future for other great adventure ideas. Live is very short, and this book will help you make the most it.

If polls are to be believed, nearly 70% of people with incomes of $40,000 or more a year (that's tens of millions of people out there) fantasize about taking time off from work (besides the standard 2-week vacation). Well, my wife and I were two of those people just a few years ago, feeling tired and burned out after almost 10 years in our jobs, and just basically in need of a break big-time. Plus, some friends of ours had taken a year off to travel the world, and we thought that would be awesome, since we both loved to travel and wanted to do a lot more of it before we "settled down" or got too much older. But how? I'm not saying it was simple or for everybody, but it CAN be done, and Six Months Off helped show us how. Actually, my wife and I ended up taking MORE than 6 months off (by 2 months, to be exact). During our time off, we were on "Leave Without Pay" from our jobs, which we negotiated with our employers, but were still covered by health insurance. Mainly, we traveled: around Central and South America, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. We also took immersion Spanish classes and lived with local families in Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Ecuador, took some time to travel the United States (mainly through Kentucky, Tennessee, and down the Mississippi River to New Orleans). We rented out our condo, put our stuff in storage, called the IRS to find out what we needed to do as far as taxes were concerned, and found someone (my father) to handle our finances/personal affairs while we were gone. In all of this, Six Months Off was a great help in planning, as well as in knowing what to expect in terms of expenses and a million other things, including adjusting back into the "real world" when our sabbatical was over! Budgeting (we didn't go broke) is important, of course, as is health care, insurance, and having a job when you get back (although some decide to just wing it and look for a job after -- or more accurately, IF -- they come back).Basically, we probably could have figured most of what we needed to do on our own, but Six Months Off (and other resources, like friends) were extremely helpful in making things go more smoothly. Many people dream of taking time off to pursue a dream, but very few actually do it. Six Months Off shows you how you CAN do it, and leads you through it step by step. I strongly recommend this book, and I strongly recommend taking Six Months Off if at all possible! What an amazing experience!

I found Six Months Off to be a phenomenal help in planning a sabbatical. The book gave me an an entire, but concise, philosophy or way of thinking about my sabbatical. The book also gave me a concrete and useful strategy for planning the sabbatical, covering ALL the bases from how to tell my boss to how to save money to places to help plan the actual time off and, then, finally for how I could re-enter the work force again. Truly phenomenal. The authors, led by Hope Dlugozima, have hit a home run with me.

After reading this book I started planning my six months off. I spent the last six months of 1998 on vacation and in three months of training for a career change. This book helped make the journey possible. Read it ahead of time while planning for your time off.

I was interviewed by the authors back in 1994/95 as they were writing this book. When the book was published, I was blown away at what a great job they did accumulating and organizing the information. If you are dreaming about taking some extended time off, buy this book and you'll see how easy it is!