I saved $80,000 to take an 18-month sabbatical. It changed my life.

After serving hundreds of clients, I can tell you with full confidence that we all want a sabbatical — a paid leave from work that lasts for a few months to a year.

Usually, sabbaticals are reserved for tenured professionals in academia, healthcare, or tech after five to seven years of service. But the truth is, anyone with a high salary, low expenses, and healthy savings habits can fund their own sabbatical.

My friend, Angela Kim, took an 18-month, self-funded sabbatical that changed their life. Read on to see how they did it.

— Leo

I saved $80,000 to take an 18-month sabbatical. It changed my life.

By Angela Kim

In February 2023, I quit my job and got on a plane to Ecuador with no return date. 

At the time, I worked at the Los Angeles mayor’s office. It was a stable job that paid well. Before I quit, I asked my boss to save my place. I told her that I’d be back in three months. Planning my exit took a lot of dreaming and waiting for my nervous system to feel safe enough to do it.

Three years later, I have traveled to nine countries, completely changed careers, and still haven’t set foot back at City Hall. Here’s how I made it happen 👉

My salary progression

• 2017: After grad school, I did a year with AmeriCorps making $17,000 per year
• 2019: I had an internship with the United Nations that paid $6,000 over 6 months
• 2019-2020: I started my job at the mayor’s office, earning $55,000 per year
• 2020-2021: I got promoted and my salary increased to $73,000
• 2022: I worked on a new project that brought investments into underserved neighborhoods in LA that bumped my salary to $90,000

In March-April 2020, I was working 12-hour shifts five days a week at the city’s emergency operation center as part of my job at the Mayor’s Office. The 5-week emergency assignment during COVID was followed by the Black Lives Matter movement. Everyday I would have to convince myself that change was possible from within City Hall. The voice that there was more out there in the world got louder and louder. The seed of a sabbatical dream was planted and I started saving aggressively.

My expenses

For two years, I lived with my parents and paid $500 per month to help with rent. Then, I rented a room in a house in Boyle Heights for $750 per month for a year before leaving for my sabbatical. I was used to strict budgeting through grad school and my time at the AmeriCorps. Having a $2,500 monthly budget felt like an absolute luxury to me compared to those early days in my career. 

My political philosophy is rooted in Grace Lee and Jimmi Boggs’ teaching that “we [in the US] are the ones who must begin to live more simply so that others can simply live.” A coworker once described my lifestyle as radical non-self-reliance. I started asking friends to cut my hair, asking community for hand-me-down phones and laptops, and being in the practice of asking for what I need and offering what I have. I had no car and relied on my bike, public transportation, borrowing cars, and asking friends for rides. So besides the dream of going on sabbatical, I also wanted to live more simply to embody my values.

Leading up to my sabbatical, my monthly expenses looked like this:

• $500 to $750 per month for rent
• $1,500 to $1,750 per month mostly for groceries and going out 
• $1,500 for savings 
• $1,000 in retirement contributions 

One of the biggest things that helped me get there was that I had no debt, thanks to education grants. Also, I did not have to financially support my family like many of my friends do.

My savings journey

• July 2019: I had $85 in my bank account when I started that job at the mayor’s office.
• August 2020: I had saved $26,000 largely thanks to living with my family and COVID limiting going out.
• August 2021: I had saved close to $60,000 thanks to my salary bump to $73,000
• February 2023: By the time I left my job, I had $70,000 in my savings and had also set aside $10,000 in a series I bond that I committed to spending for community needs. 

Financial safety is a very complex thing. With $60,000 saved in 2021, a sabbatical became a possibility but I still didn’t feel like I had enough. So I started reading a lot of articles about savings and sabbaticals to find what number I needed. I calculated what the blogs recommended:

• Three months’ worth of expenses: For me, that was $2,500 per month x 3 months =  $7,500
• The sabbatical budget: It became clearer to me that I wanted to travel through South America for my sabbatical, including visiting my family in Brazil. I budgeted $10,000 to give me a lot of spaciousness to be on sabbatical from anywhere between 3 and 6 months. This was based on trips I had taken to Mexico where my daily budget was $30 excluding flights and transportation. 
• Six months of expenses for the return transition: $2,500 per month x 6 months = $15,000

According to those blogs, I already had enough. As I kept calculating different possibilities and building up the courage to take the jump, my boss came to me with a new project opportunity with a salary of $90,000. The project and the income combined were too good an offer so I stayed another year.

At the end, leaving my job wasn’t about the money

By the time I had saved around $80,000, it still didn’t feel like enough. Ultimately what led me to leave was unrelated to money. I realized that I did not like the path that I was on and needed a drastic change. I got tired of trying my best to work on issues I cared about for a city I loved with nothing concrete to show for it. I got really scared that one day I would just be going through the motions. 

When I started this job at $55,000, it was already more money than I ever imagined making. I grew up in a household where my parents’ combined income was around $36,000. The fact that I was making $90,000 by sitting on a desk all day filled me with shock, gratitude, and deep deep concern about how the world worked. I imagined myself staying there, making double that amount in a few years, feeling like I “deserved” it. I realized that if I didn’t leave then, I never would.

My travels helped me embrace community living and building

I left in February 2023. That Spring, I ended up traveling through Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Colombia and my eyes were opened to a way of life I never knew was possible for me. I was met with incredible kindness and care and learned there are a million ways to live a good life. When I came back to LA three months later, I knew I couldn’t go back to my previous life. 

I still had money to keep going and spent the next three months building houses out of tires and dirt in the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. Then, I went to Detroit to visit urban farms and other projects inspired by Grace Lee Boggs. And eventually made my way to the Bay Area and stepped into the world of community living and building. Besides a couple of contracts and house-sitting gigs, I ended up not working until August 2024 — a full 18 months. 

I now work as a community teacher and facilitator. I live in a house operated through the gift economy, and continue to live on a $2,000 monthly budget. My life was transformed by trusting my gut feeling back in 2023 that there was something else out there for me. The friends, elders, and teachers I have met along the way give me a sense of security and hope in the world that no amount of money could have. There are times that the money anxiety comes back and I stress out about the future and retirement but I’d much rather put my trust in my community than in my bank account.