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Comment by pault | Hacker News Reader

I take a year or so sabbatical every four to five years. It has destroyed my ability to build a retirement nest egg, but I still love programming after 20 years in the industry.

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I worked with a few contractors who had what I thought was a great solution.

They would work IT contracting 8-9 months a year and during the other months, would do another job. One case, the chap was a waters-king instructor and did that in the summer as he loved it. Another was a Ski instructor and in both cases, they enjoyed their side-gigs more.

For me, I thought that was brilliant, an ideal balance and best of both worlds kinda approach to the problem.

[EDIT funny spelling mistake - Ski instructor - not skin :-]

I knew someone in Canada that operated a snow plow in rural area in the winter. Then back to programming the rest of the year.

I am so jealous. But I've also only been making decent money for about a year now so maybe in a few years I'll be able to afford this.

What do you do when you do this? Do you travel?

I worked remotely from Brazil, Thailand, and Belize from 2009-2017, so during that time I guess you could say I was traveling, but mostly just enjoying the local scenery. Lately my travel scratch has been itched, so for the last six months I've just been sitting around the house working on hobbies and watching youtube. :) If you don't have kids and/or a mortgage you definitely should take the opportunity to spend 6 months to a year living in a country with a favorable exchange rate, like central america or southeast asia. I believe that you can't really get a feel for a culture until you've been there for at least six months and made some friends. It will transform your entire perspective of yourself and the society you grew up in. If you wait too long you might not have the opportunity again.

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