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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For our last 15 minutes today, we're going to talk about adult gap years. If you're back at work after a long weekend, you might be thinking that breaks from work are a really good thing, more than three days or even two weeks. A recent article in New York Magazine's The Cut, this is what got us onto this, focused on adults taking what they call gap years or even mini-retirements, not waiting until they're eligible for Medicare, let's say, or they can get health insurance and not work in the workplace but getting to clear their heads and see the world now.

We want to hear from you. Have you taken a gap year after starting working? Not the college gap year that a lot of people take, but an adulthood gap year. 212-433-WNYC. However you defined it, however it applied to you, maybe a long break between jobs or even between careers, tell us your story of why and how you took those breaks and what you did with the time. Not really talking about career changers here, but people who just took a gap year. Tell us your story. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. With us now is Charlotte Cowles, The Cut's financial-advice columnist who wrote the article. Hi, Charlotte. Welcome to WNYC.

Charlotte Cowles: Thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: What kinds of gap years did you most write about?

Charlotte Cowles: Well, I think the great thing about these gap years or sabbaticals or mini-retirements is that they really are what you want to make of them. As you mentioned, and I'm so glad you brought this up, sometimes it's just a matter of getting a new job and delaying your start date by a month, if you can, so that you can really take that time to spend time with family or travel or work on a passion project or--

I spoke to one young woman who saved as much as she possibly could for a little bit over a year so that she could take some time off and work on a book idea that she had. I think that they really can be what you want to make of them. You just have to make sure that you have a plan.

Brian Lehrer: I guess by that definition, I did it once when I was going to go to grad school. I knew I was going to go to grad school by the spring. I had a job. I was going to leave my job to go to grad school, but I quit my job in March and took the six months until school started to drive cross country and back and see a lot of the United States that I'd never been in before at that time. That kind of thing counts?

Charlotte Cowles: Yes, totally. How was it?

Brian Lehrer: Oh, it was amazing. [laughs] I won't waste our limited time by telling my own stories, but there are things that I feel like I learned on that trip that influence my view of the world even in this relatively stationary job to this day. It was amazing to meet all kinds of different people and see all kinds of different terrain and all of that, but you have to be able to afford to do it.

Personally, I did not have a lot of money at that time. I was in a relatively low-paying job, but I was saving up because I knew I really liked to travel. You have to be in a certain income category to take a gap year, right?

Charlotte Cowles: For sure. I absolutely don't want to characterize this as something that is easy to do or something that anybody can do if they just try hard enough. I think that a certain amount of luck is involved, but also, there are ways to afford it. You can maybe sublet your apartment. You can get what's known as a bridge job, which is when you take a part-time job that might have you working a little bit less and making a little bit less, but it kind of helps you cover your bills while you're, say, working on your book at home or doing something else.

A lot of people are also freelancing more these days. You can freelance and try to be a digital nomad if you want to travel. There are ways to supplement your savings if you can't just save up enough money to afford taking time off as many people can.

Brian Lehrer: To that point, before we hear a few caller stories, your article focuses a lot on Gen Z folks who are taking these breaks and seeing the idea as indicative of a generational change in our relationships with work. Yes?

Charlotte Cowles: Yes, and I think that that is really interesting. I think that a lot of younger workers are seeing this more traditional model of you graduate from school, you get a job, you find a partner, you buy a house, you have a family, you raise your family, you save up, and if you're lucky, you get to retire someday, and that's when you stop working. For a lot of people, that is looking less appealing or less accessible than it did for previous generations.

It makes more sense to them that, instead of waiting until they're 60 or older to retire, they are going to take smaller breaks and kind of sprinkle them around their life instead.

Brian Lehrer: Scott in Woodcliff Lake, you're on WNYC. Hi, Scott.

Scott: Hey, good morning.

Brian Lehrer: You and your wife tried this, I see.

Scott: Yes. As I mentioned to the screener, it was really difficult to shift into neutral, even though it was something that we wanted to do because we had been working pretty much all of our adult lives, as your guest mentioned. We'd been following the plan; graduate college, get the job, establish a family, raise kids, and keep chugging. We figured that we would take a whole year, but we got to about six or seven months before recruiters and former colleagues were calling us saying, "Hey, can you come and help us with this? Can you help us with that?"

Brian Lehrer: You told our screener that you felt guilty for not making money some of that time?

Scott: Oh, yes, and there was definitely some stress. There was a little bit of release at the beginning of the exercise but followed immediately by, "Okay, yes, we've saved. Yes, we can do this financially, however, how do we not work? What do we--" It's like we were missing--

Brian Lehrer: "What's our place in the world if we're not working?" Is that it?

Scott: I'm sorry, what was that?

Brian Lehrer: It's not that you were afraid of running out of money, you were asking yourselves, "What's our place in the world if we're not working?" Am I hearing that right?

Scott: Well, there was, I guess, some of that of as we are working and whatnot, when someone asks you, "Oh, tell me about yourself." A lot of us identify with what we do for a living and what our job title is and things like that. I guess there was a little bit of that and there was a little bit of some guilt and then just the trepidation of, "Hey, how dare we not be working?" That kind of thing.

Brian Lehrer: Scott, thank you very much. I'm going to go right to Paige in Brooklyn, who you're not going to believe this, is calling in, Charlotte, to say she is on Day 1 of exactly this today.

Charlotte Cowles: Oh, congratulations.

Brian Lehrer: Paige, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Paige: Hi. Oh my God, I just really felt like this was a crazy, hopefully good sign. [chuckles] I've worked at my previous job for 10 years, and this is my first day on gap year. Gap, like, taking it easy. I'm doing exactly what you said. I'm starting a part-time job, but not until October. I gave myself a little time and I'm just chilling.

Brian Lehrer: In order to do other things that you didn't have time for in particular, or to just chill more?

Paige: I'm allotting myself two weeks where I am basically just doing nothing. I'm allowing myself to bed rot, but then, yes, I'm hopefully going to start developing a freelance career. I just want to have space. I'm not traveling or-- I don't have that much money. I saved up a lot to do this, but, yes, I'm just taking it one day at a time.

Brian Lehrer: Charlotte, do you have any advice for Paige based on your reporting? It sounds like the first couple of weeks are going to be to dry out from 10 years of her job, and then she doesn't know.

Charlotte Cowles: Yes. First of all, congratulations. That sounds wonderful, and I really applaud you for figuring out a way to make this work. I think something that is important for anyone who's taking a gap year, or whatever it is they want to call it, is to know how they want to characterize it and describe what they're doing. That not only can allow them to really enjoy it and own it while they're doing it, but also, if they do have to put something on their résumé that explains this time away from the traditional workforce, if they are trying to get another full-time job or, for whatever reason, they'd be punching up their résumé, they know how to sell it.

I don't think it should be a hard sell. I think that everyone has a right to take time away to pursue other things but really thinking about how they want to characterize it, hopefully in a way that an employer or colleague would see it as an attractive thing that this is a person who's really self-realized and not burned out and pursuing things that they care about.

Brian Lehrer: As sort of a whole person.

Charlotte Cowles: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Paige, I don't know if that's going to help you beyond the next few minutes, but congratulations.

Paige: No, I got it.

Brian Lehrer: Great. Well, call us once in a while. Let us know how it's going.

[laughter]

Paige: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks, Paige. Let me get one more in here. Michelle in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Michelle.

Michelle: Hi there. I was a teacher for 45 years, and in the middle of it, my husband got a Fulbright and we went to live in Puno on the edge of Lake Titicaca in Peru.

Charlotte Cowles: Oh, I've been there. [chuckles]

Michelle: For six months-- Well, you know the air is thin.

Charlotte Cowles: Yes.

Michelle: For six months, I didn't work. The only six months in my 45 years that I didn't work was that six months, and it was quite an experience. He was dealing with teaching in a second language. I spoke Spanish, so I was able to help. It was in a cultural setting that was so interesting. Now he has Alzheimer's, and one of the things that he remembers intensely was how pleasant that experience was, so we can go over what it was like to be together.

Actually, our joke is that we had been living together for eight years before we went, and I always say that it was the lack of air, the thin air, that made him ask me if I would marry him.

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] Aww, you're leaving everybody in tears to end the show. That's one of the experiences that even in Alzheimer's stays with him.

Michelle: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Michelle, thank you very much. Well, you get 30 seconds of the last word after that one, Charlotte.

Charlotte Cowles: That's a beautiful story. I don't know if I can add anything to that.

Brian Lehrer: You don't have to, except to say, or I will say, that Charlotte Cowles, that's C-O-W-L-E-S, financial-advice columnist at New York Magazine's The Cut, has written this article about adult gap years. Obviously, judging from our caller board and our text messages that we could have gone on with much longer, this strikes a chord in terms of what people have done that stays with them or would like to do if only life wasn't so constraining. Thanks a lot, Charlotte.

Charlotte Cowles: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. We had Lucinda Empson-Speiden helping as our intern, Milton Ruiz and Shayna Sengstock at the audio controls.

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