Also known as the SKI's (Spending the Kids Inheritance)

The idea of retiring and pottering about your garden for the next 20 years is truly a thing of the past. My father, now aged 88 has just returned from a walking holiday around Greece and he leaves in 3 weeks for Spain. Until very recently he spent between 3 and 6 months in Africa, enjoying the warmth there while we shivered and shuddered here in the Northern Hemisphere.

When I told my children's grandmother about our planned trip she was quite quiet for a couple of weeks. Next her son told me that she had thought that if I could do it with two young children, there was jolly well no way that she was going to miss out on achieving a dream.

Using the trusty Trailfinders, she got together with a friend and travelled to Hong Kong, Perth, Ayers Rock, Sydney, Cairns, Christchurch, Auckland, Bangkok, Penang and then back home. The whole trip took a couple of months and we meant up at a few spots along the way which was absolutely wonderful for the children.

Back home now, her only regret is that she didn't do it sooner. At the comfortable age of 60 plus she is now planning an extensive trip across the States.

Humphrey Walters, an international management training guru (www.humphreywalters.com), believes that the most important element is the simple decision to take a break:

Once you make a decision to take a sabbatical, to do something, you don't need to base it on an event or activity. If you wait for something to drop out of the woodwork, it won't happen and a lot of people do.

People should simply take the plunge because the payoff is massive. The trick is to create the dream for yourself. Look for a dream. At the outset you don't need to know what it is.

Avoiding those 50's blues:

...Even if you don't plump for such an elaborate trip to commemorate turning fifty, you might think of a gap year-cum-party. For her 50th Jakki from Yorkshire found herself between jobs (in management of a housing association) and decided to rent a large villa with swimming pool in Andalucia for six weeks to which she invited all her friends and family to spend time there whenever they could.

This seemed to be a good place to be when the invitation to attend the mammogram clinic dropped through her letter box at home in Yorkshire and also meant that she couldn't succumb to the temptation of going to Glastonbury alongside all those other wrinkly professionals.

- Extract from Gap Year For Grown Ups - Susan Griffiths