FinanceGeek
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2007
- Messages
- 374
I'm thinking really hard about taking a career break / sabbatical. Here's my situation:
A 2 to 2 ½ year career break, broken down perhaps as:
When to do this?
I'm mostly concerned about health insurance access, as my family has pre-existing conditions. I have 3 ideas:
- mid 40s
- BSEE degree and 25 yrs work experience doing electronic system design and low level software
- Self educated in finance/portfolio mgmt
- Married with 1 grade school age son, wife a SAHM
- Our portfolio is growing, in addition to which we own our house free and clear. We have no debt. Not counting our home, asset allocation is roughly 50/45/5 equity/fixed/cash, with equity 50/50 US/intl and fixed income 50/50 short term nominal/TIPs. Style wise it’s tilted slightly towards small value. Its all indexed. Average living expenses for the last several years are running 2.5% to 3.0% of portfolio. We have significant capital loss tax carry forwards from harvesting which was done in 2008-2009 which can be applied to offset future capital gains.
- No defined benefit pension plan
A 2 to 2 ½ year career break, broken down perhaps as:
- 3 months of "downtime", e.g. R&R
- 3-6 months of "life experiences", e.g. I’ve got several eclectic thoughts in this area – anything from learning to ballroom dance to spending time helping on an archaeological dig to learning Chinese to building the Taj Mahal of tree houses with my son to learning to hang and tape drywall “so it looks good”.
- 12 to 18 months of full time masters program in computer science
When to do this?
I'm mostly concerned about health insurance access, as my family has pre-existing conditions. I have 3 ideas:
- Summer 2012 – assuming the ACA holds together, I could resign any time after July 1 and get coverage through COBRA for 18 months until the pre-existing condition underwriting system goes away in January of 2014.
- Early 2013 – finish out this year under the current (lower than 2013) tax brackets. I could arrange to max out my 401k contribution early next year, have a small amount of earned income to fund a Roth contribution, have access to my megacorp’s HSA reimbursement account for another year.
- Early 2014 - health care exchanges should be in effect, coverage available without underwriting at less than COBRA rates
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