<prompt> Human: Hi PF! In November last year, I decided that I would take extended time off work to spend time with my long distance Transpacific SO in California. I preferred unpaid leave because I believed itd improve my chances with US Border Control demonstrate intent to return home, and also since I would rather keep a bird on hand and my options open.I managed to pull it off without burning a hole in my pocket, so maybe PF will enjoy my tale all figures in USD!Phase 1: Laying the Groundwork aka, research and negotiateId been working in a fairly large organization, where extended unpaid leave was rare, but did happen. There were no HR guidelines or formal process, so I dug around, speaking to people from HR, people who knew people who tried taking time off. I found out that taking time off to accompany a spouse overseas on temporary assignment had a high-hit-rate while bearing the closest resemblance to my own reasons. I also knew that I had some leverage including being generally high performing and since HR was measured on negative attrition, they had a vested interest in keeping me from leaving.So I made my request sound as close as I could to the proven narrative, while remaining factually accurate in effect making it seem that my SO and I may be closer to getting married than we actually are. I also reiterated that I desired to stay and grow with the organization in the long term, but it was also balancing this intent against the shorter-term exigencies of being long distance with my SO hinting that I would consider resigning as a last resort.The process of getting support involved multiple conversations with supervisors and bosses, HR and higher levels of HR. It took weeks for me to get the approvals, and many more weeks to lock down an actual period and start date.In the meantime, I read up on long-term visa options for the US, horror stories about US border control, etc. Alas, my visa bid for a longer-term 6 mth visa was not granted embassy staff said I would need to be visiting my family spouse to qualify, which sent a 200 processing fee down the drain . My only option was to enter the US on an ESTA, which meant staying 90 days at a time, and managing the risk of being denied entry by border control in subsequent visits.Phase 2: Making a Plan aka budget like crazyWith a date in clearer sight, I was starting to crap my pants, because holy shit this is happening. Id never been one for very detailed budgeting and tracking, but I knew this would be an expensive year, with only 4 months of guaranteed income. On the upside, generally healthy PF habits have left me with no debt, an emergency fund, some money set aside for retirementinvestments, and some liquid savings in various high-interest savings accounts. My financial goal was to make it through the year without drawing down on my savings. This was how I saw my financial situation:Guaranteed income for 2016: 24,000 4.5 months salary bonuses from work last yearBudget for 2016: 23,450Lumpy Expenses Annual Budget-Flights Related Costs: 4200 2x long haul return flights-Healthcare: 500-Clothes: 350-Personal Care Hobbies: 800-Gifts: 500-Income Tax: 1000 my tax is billed after year of assessment-Emergency Fund Contingency: 2000Recurring Expenses-Accommodation in the US: 500mth, 6 mths SO said I shouldnt pay for accommodation, but I decided to budget for it anyway-US Phone Line: 30mth, 6 mths-Rent Phone Home: 600mth, 12 mths-Food: 200mth-Transport: 60mth-Entertainment: 50mthPhase 3: Hitting the Tracks pun intendedTo keep track of my finances, I started an excel workbook with the following itemized and categorized spreadsheets:-expenditures -income -holdingsThe data from these spreadsheets were summarized and consolidated into a overview page which provided a month by month breakdown of my expenditures, incomes, holdings, tracked my cumulative savingsdebt for the year, and gave a rough sense of my overall net worth.The Result Actual Income for 2016: 35000 and 4000 expected in DecemberActual Budget for 2016 extrapolated from 10 mths actuals: 24,200Lumpy Expenses Total for the year-Flights Related Costs: 4500 300 from budget-Healthcare: 900 400 from budget-Clothes: 1300 1000 from budget-Personal Care Hobbies: 1500 700 from budget-Gifts: 1000 500 from budget-Income Tax: 1200 200 from budget-Contingency Money: 100Recurring Expenses-Accommodation in the US: 500mth, 6 mths no change-US Phone Line: 35mth, 6 mths slightly more than budget-Rent Phone Home: 600mth, 12 mths no change-Food: 175mth slightly less than budget-Transport: 55mth slightly less than budget-Entertainment: 40mth slightly less than budgetI ended up keeping fairly close to budget, but splurged a little on some of my discretionary spend, particularly doing some travelling within the US, shopping for cold wear, work clothes, and high quality clothesshoes for camping, and because I got into gardening. In our initial plan, my SO insisted that I should not pay for accommodation, but I had budgeted for it anyway. Along the way, some crazy shit happened but in short his mum became flat broke and homeless, moved into the half of his duplex that was meant for rental out. She stayed rent free and borrowed money. He didnt want to burden me since I was technically unemployed, so I ended up squirreling money to him through a seemingly neverending stash of cash I had in the house. I also spent less on food, transport and entertainment than expected since we spent a lot of time cooking, cuddling and watching Netflix. On the income front, I ended up earning more than projected in part because I didnt count on returning to work immediately after my break, and also from the following:-taking up illustration commissions 2,000-interest and dividends 2,000-nice relatives who were worried I might run out of money and stuffed me bunches of cash 1,000-more bonus than I expected 2000-selling stuff 200Random things I learnt along the way-Manually keying in expenditures definitely made me a lot more mindful of my spending, and think twice about splurging on things I dont need. I highly recommend it!-Being prepared goes a long way. On my second leg back into the US, the border control officer held me back for a bit since Id just spent 90 days in the US fairly recently I buffered 2.5 weeks before returning. But when I whipped out my binder with documentation for every visa guideline ESTA, flight tickets, travel insurance, employment letter back home, approval of leave dates, last performance appraisal, latest statements of all my savings, retirement and investment accounts, and pictures with my SO, etc. he was like whoa, ok. I guess you did your homework, and he let me through pretty much immediately.-Its 100 worth spending on items of good quality. During the trip, I got a pair of very good, very waterproof hiking boots 70, on sale!, and it feels amazing waddling through streams without having to worry about my feet getting wet!-Plan using only your guaranteed income, and budget with contingency in the picture. Living the plan gets a lot less stressful when any additional income becomes a bonus, while unexpected emergency expenses are soaked up by your contingency budget.-Looking for work in the US is really hard! I tried testing the waters and sent out my resume, customized cover letters, etc. to maybe 50 companies. Most didnt reply, some rejected me, and I got a grand total of two informal interviews from companies that werent actually keen to consider me at all cause of visa, but thought my CV was interesting enough to meet me. Welp!-It feels pretty damn good to be on the airline priority list. It is an inexplicable joy exiting a long haul flight and seeing your luggage be one of the first out on the belt. If you fly often, dont forget to sign up on a frequent fliers program and be sure to claim your miles. -Sometimes life sucks and you just have to deal with it. Prior to my rejection at the US Embassy, I had tried calling them, and emailing them to clarify the visa eligibility and guidelines specific to my situation, but they gave unhelpful and non-committal replies that neither affirmed nor denied my eligibility, and stated that I should make an appointment with a visa officer who could better assess my request. Unfortunately the Embassy is not like a place where you can call in to demand that they process a refund fee waiver.TL;DR: I took six months off work to spend time with my long distance SO in the US. The goal was to be budget neutral this year. I made it through with net savings of 10,000, while picking up new hobbies gardening, great experiences in the American outdoors, and some pretty cool learning points relating to budgeting, planning, employment, immigration and being prepared in general. edited for formattingEDIT: Holy crap, i woke up this morning and my inbox was totally flooded. Ive been responding to comments, but am back home from work and can do a proper update. 1 Several of you asked if some of the things I did were legal. I clarified this in some of my responses. Basically, I did my best to research as much as possible, keep within the legal limits of what my visa type allowed me to do, and err on the side of caution when in doubt. For instance, taking on commissions only in my home country, keeping most job hunting activities outside of the US, and returning home with some buffer during the course of 6 months so I did not overstay. When in the US, I didnt work, but I did try a bit to fish around for possible future work opportunities. As I definitely did not wish to run afoul of immigration policy, I kept any job-related enquiries general, informal and exploratory, while caveating my emails letters with my visa situation and how I was open to exiting and entering the country on a different visa if they would sponsor me on a valid employment visa. 2 Some were curious as to how I eventually tracked my budgets and kept to plan. Theres a lot of very personal information in my 2016 sheet that I dont feel comfortable sharing, but heres a cleaned up version of the spreadsheet I made, with some placeholder info in each of the tabs to show how it works. The overview page is automatically populated by subsequent spreadsheets Spreadsheet here3 A few mentioned that you are in a similar long distance relationship with someone in a different country, and would like to do something similar in future. I thought that you might find a cleaned up version of my projection spreadsheet, with placeholder information useful, though you may need some excel knowledge to customise it for your specific purpose. projection template here 4 Yes, I am still with my SO. Were back to being long distance, but are very happy with each other.5 Feel free to ask more about the spreadsheets, or use adapt them. Do be kind.These were not designed to be templates for general use, and are certainly not the most intuitive or user friendly sheets out there.  <response>: Thanks for the write up! Definitely interesting to see the process of taking 6 months off. 