Anyone done a deferred salarly leave/sabbatical?

[Deleted]

Both DH and I are now in  jobs that offer this as a benefit, although I don't think very many people use it. Effectively, they reduce your salary to allow you to go on leave-with-deferred-pay for 6-12 months after a period of several years.

If you've done it, what did you do with the time off? I've just come back from my likely last maternity leave, and the idea of just working for 30 years with a few week long vacations is bumming me out. Taking a year every 6-7 years (sabbatical style) is very appealing. DH is a teacher and I'm an engineer. My sister lives in Australia, so if they were still there then, that would definitely be on the table.

[Deleted]

My old firm offered that option, and I knew a lot of people who took it. I kick myself for not doing it.

Things people did:
- Travel around the world (or one area of the world)
- Secondments at for-profit companies
- Internships at non-profit companies (some in America; some elsewhere)
- Hang around New York doing not much of anything, while getting paid for it

[Deleted]

My plans will be somewhat complicated by parenthood (our kids would be 6 and 8 or so if I can talk DH into my plan to do it). Still, I think it would be amazing to pull them out of school and go traveling for at least a semester. We could cover the basics homeschooling, I figure.

Or I could finally do some engineering work for a non-profit and travel somewhere awesome with that. I meant to do that, and then instead I got married at 23 and dove into responsible adulthood. And in a few years, I'll actually know something useful to nonprofits in developing countries.

[lime]

Yes, I've done something similar to that.

Professional stuff:
Learned a new (programming) language
Started consulting; worked through 2 very different clients and contract types
Incorporated and learned a lot of the legal and business side of my field

Personal:
Upped the type and intensity of my workouts. The person I was 3 years ago would be amazed at what I can do now even though I had a great baseline back then.
Dealt with a lot of family issues that I would not have had the energy to do without additional downtime and less stress.
A bit of traveling, but I don't want to do a ton without having the ability to bring H along.

[juliabug]

I did. I was still working on my degree so I took 6 weeks off unpaid one summer to do an intense summer class schedule. My DH was laid off during the 4th week of my sabbatical, so that part sucked.

[Deleted]

A good friend of mine did this when her kids were a bit younger than yours. They took a year and did a ton of travel. She says it was "the best year of her life" whenever she talks about it.

My company offers something like this, but Hs does not (vent: his company is run by a lot of old school engineers and some of his benefits totally suck grrr). So, I don't think I will do this any time soon. If I could find a way to get H involved, I totally would do it, ideally around 3 years before early retirement.

Sigh.