They’re packing their bags and leaving hustle culture behind.
“Gap years,” once taken solely by college grads who yearned for an intentional break between graduation and full-time work to figure out their lives, are being redefined by today’s burned-out Gen Z and millennials, who are desperately seeking an out from the corporate grind.
With some strategic planning and saved-up money, working young adults, like Julia Fei, 29, are swapping the grindset mindset for “adult gap years” or “mini-retirements” to keep their sanity.
The stressed-out data scientist was over the 9-5 grind as soon as she was flung into it seven years ago. She quickly saw how rapidly her industry was changing, driven by advances in AI, and she wanted out.
“There’s a lot of changes at work with AI and with tech movement, and I saw a vision for myself and an opportunity to do something and build something of my own,” the former Manhattanite shared with The Post. “I really did like my job, but it just felt like a good time.”
“We only have five to 10 years left of a tech job as we know it today,” she said.
After carefully budgeting and squirrelling away money for the last several years, the 29-year-old “took a leap of faith” two months ago and quit her cushy, well-paying job without a backup plan.
Fei said she also took her gap year to be closer to her parents, who retired in Guangzhou, China. “I do support their retirement, and the cost of living is so much cheaper there,” she pointed out. “I’m here right now just spending time with them.”
She dips into her savings when needed, but living with her parents and subleasing her pricey NYC studio apartment keeps her expenses to a minimum.
Although the company Fei worked for was “very supportive” of her plan, she said she’s hesitant to return to the rat race but plans to spend her time off conceptualizing her own tech product while growing as a content creator, a side hustle that has now become her primary source of income.
While this break from the humdrum grind most adults have no choice but to deal with might sound luxurious from afar, it comes with its challenges.
The ex-tech worker struggles with the lack of routine she once loathed. She said that taking online grad school classes helps, but any adult who has moved back in with their parents knows how stifling it can be.
“It’s just little things where I’m obviously very independent at 29, living by myself, but they treat me like a kid,” she admitted.
And as an “impatient person,” Fei said she’s anxiously waiting to see what comes of her life in this next chapter.
“I feel like I need to prove something out of this gap year… right now I think there’s just a lot of internal pressure from myself to perform,” she confessed.
“There’s that mindset shift that’s like, this is scary, and I don’t know how to operate in such an ambiguous environment. Now I’m in full control of what I’m doing and where I’m going,” Fei explained to The Post. “But I’m excited to be a little bit bolder and riskier. At the end of the day, I want to say I gave this my best shot.”
Risky is exactly what taking an adult gap year is — but financial strategist and founder of Beyond The Green Coaching, AJ Schneider, believes that with some planning, anyone can do it.
“Getting your finances in order is so you can take huge leaps of faith in your life. It is not only so you can retire, buy a home, and make money in your sleep. It’s so you can say, ‘I am unhappy, and I’m safe to leave,’” she told The Post.
To take an adult gap year, Schneider advises to “Start making cuts to your daily lifestyle to increase savings.”
“Every dollar you save is going to fund you in the future, get excited about what you’ll be able to do with that money, versus feeling like your instant needs are more important,” she added.
In terms of how much you should save? “Figure out where you want to go, work with ChatGPT on how much you think it’ll cost you based on flights, accommodations, food, activities and divide that amount by how many months you have to save.”
Fei is among a slew of people her age who are seeking a life reset. Astaggering 74% of Gen Z and millennials admitted to experiencing moderate to high levels of burnout, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
As a result, the hashtag #adultgapyear on TikTok has thousands of videos of youngsters ranting about hustle culture.
“Hustle culture is going to be the downfall of this generation,” one creator pointed out in a viral video. While another revealed that she used to view being busy as “an aspirational status symbol.”
Tammy Armstrong, 31, a former medical secretary, used to have this same warped mindset.
“I had been working in my job for 10 years and it was becoming increasingly monotonous. I felt like I was living the same day on repeat,” the Scotland-native told The Post.
“I wanted to feel freedom again… I wanted to be pushed out of my comfort zone and hopefully come to some realization of what I want to do with my life,” she explained. “I also wanted to calm my nervous system and live more slowly.”
To embark on her gap year in January 2025, Armstrong worked extra hours and followed a strict budget, sacrificing her social life and her beloved beauty treatments.
She told The Post that she finds part-time jobs wherever she temporarily calls home and stays in budget-friendly hostels, hotels and campsites, as well as local accommodations when traveling with volunteer groups.
While working, “every day was urgent, but urgent for matters that aren’t of my own,” she explained, but these days, Armstrong allows herself to stop and smell the roses.
“It’s been hard to let go of a routine and not to feel guilty for having slower days. It’s also been hard adjusting to living with less money,” she said. “I’ve definitely had multiple moments where I’ve worried if this will put me ‘behind’ in life and worried about finances.”
“I was tolerating so much that didn’t align with me for years just because it had always been,” Armstrong told The Post. “I’ve really had to unlearn that going backwards isn’t a failure.”
A year into this new lifestyle, the 31-year-old calls Scotland home and has no future travel plans at the moment, so she can take time to decide what she wants to do next.
“There’s other options to life than the traditional path and people are settling down later,” she added. “Life isn’t guaranteed and working hard your whole life with the aim to eventually enjoy it in retirement isn’t guaranteed either.”
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