[jyl]

I left my last job mid-Feb 2006, took a month to travel w/ the family in France/Spain, started this one mid-Mar 2006. No money worries, accumulated vacation pay more than replaced the missing month of income.

Before that I quit my prev job Dec 96, took most of 1997 off, traveled around the world w/ the family, before returning to school late 97. Had accumulated a lot of savings, carried us through the traveling plus two years of grad school 1998-1999. Was the best three years of my life, though we were pretty tapped out, financially speaking, by the time I started the next job May 99.

Being between jobs has always been a great experience. It helps that the "between" times were always planned and I had enough saved to enjoy myself. My rule is to have 1 year of living expenses in the bank, when my industry was blowing up in 2001-2003 and people were being laid off right and left, I was really grateful for that cash reserve.

If we buy a house here in Portland I will be skating on thinner ice, maybe 6 months of expenses + mortgage in the bank, so I will be scrimping hard to get back to a 1 year cushion.

It does suck to have to change jobs in order to get time off. When I'm working, I never get more than 10 days vacation - basically a week plus the flanking weekends. It burns you out.