How do you take your vacation time?

[aneel]

I'm the kind of person who likes to use up all my vacation each year as I think the value of time off is much much greater than potential payout upon leaving the company.

Over the years I've settled into the habit of never taking "big" vacations.  I.e. the longest amount of time I ever take off at once is 5 working days.  This allows me to take many long weekends through the year and I have mini recharges all the time.

HOWEVER, I just returned from an extended leave (7 weeks parental leave for the placement of our adoptive child) and I feel amazing!  I'm wondering if I should give the "big" vacations a shot, even if it means not getting those mini-recharges throughout the year.

How do you take your PTO through the year and why?

[MrsDinero]

I've done long vacations and short ones.  It really depended on what I wanted to see or do that year.  If I have no particular place I want to go see then I'll just take a series of short trips or give myself a 3 day weekend every week in the summer.  Something like that.

[robartsd]

I've never taken an extended (>2 weeks) and like to accumulate some vacation time on the books every year to supplement sick leave hours in case of an emergency (about half my available leave was used for an emergency over 2 years ago but my current balances are higher than they were before the emergency). I work a 9-8-80 schedule, so I do have an extra day off every other week. As my leave balances have grown, I've slowly increased the amount of time off I take off each year. One advantage of keeping vacation leave on the books is that the value of the leave increases with your salary. If I ever accumulate enough vacation on the books that my employer wants me to take more time off (current policy is 640 hours), I'll propose taking off all my 8 hour days until my leave balances are adequately reduced.

[Greystache]

When I was still working, I had a pretty generous PTO package (at least by American standards).  We could not accumulate PTO from one year to the next. It was use it or lose it. I would take a two week vacation in the summer with the family and then in the fourth quarter of the year I would start actively burning my remaining PTO by taking every Friday off and extending my Thanksgiving and Xmas holidays.  It was a great way to ease out of the year and it left me recharged to start the new year.

[mm1970]

It varies.  I think that several years ago I took my first "long" vacation - 2 weeks.  It was GLORIOUS.  You are 4 days in, and suddenly you are finally relaxed.  AND THEN, you still have 1.5 weeks to go!

We have two kids, 10 and 4.  So generally, this is how it goes:

1.  Every 2 years, we take 2 weeks off in the summer and visit family. They are an 8 hour drive apart, so we fly cross country into city A, visit my family.  Then we take the train or rent a car to City B, spend it with his family. Then we fly home out of City B.

2.  The alternate summers we take a week off and go somewhere fun.

3.  We take a week off and go somewhere for spring break (late March) every year, because we are on the school schedule from now till FOREVER.


4.  Holidays like Thanksgiving (one week off school) and Christmas (2 week break) are hit and miss.  First, combined, we don't have enough vacation to take all of that (1 week spring break, 2 weeks summer, 1 week Thanksgiving, 2 weeks Christmas, plus 9 other school holidays = 39 days.  I only get 34 days off a year, total.)  Then there are sick days, us or the kids. 


Anyway, we have been winging it.  Last year we planned a trip for Thanksgiving and then we all got the stomach flu, had to cancel and stay home and eat saltines for dinner.  Then the little guy got the stomach flu 3 more times that winter (and give it to his big bro for Christmas, whee!)

This year, we thought about traveling for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and didn't do it.  And won't.  It was very relaxing to stay home.  Hubby and I split the first 3 days of the week working half days at home and going to office for half, so we were home with big kid.  We took Thurs/Fri off, and did household chores and plumbing and decorated.

For Christmas, will also be working.  Big kid in camp for one week.  Little kid off 3 days total.  Not sure if I will take any "full" days off because holidays are on the weekend.  I'm finding it tough with the kids because so much of the time off is during the winter when illness abounds.  And also because big kid gets carsick.  So, there are so many places I'd like to go and see!  But it's kind of a pain in the ass.

[Zikoris]

I'm up to four weeks now, and I split it up like crazy. Two international trips - a one week and a two week - plus extended long weekends in the summer (annual camping trip) and fall (north american destination). The January trips to warm places are a desperate need given how shitty Vancouver winters are. The rest are fun too, but not as critical.

[randommadness]

Single male, 30

I'd say 95% of my vacations have been long weekends. A Friday and a Thursday type thing.

My single friend group and I gradually got to the point where Vegas was 5 or 6 day trip and so we started taking a few more but very rarely has it been full weeks, ever.

Used a lot of my sick time this year for mental health ( ;) ) reasons this year specifically so I can get to my use-or-lose max in CY17. WHOO! 160 hours baby

[Dave1442397]

If I go to Ireland to visit family, it's usually a three-week vacation.

We've also taken three weeks to go to Lake Tahoe, where we get to stay for free with my sister-in-law.

We sometimes take one week at at time if we go somewhere closer, like Vermont, or the Carolinas.

I had 37 paid vacation days this year, and I can only carry 5 over to next year, so I try to use most of them.

[AZDude]

It seems to depend on the stage of your life. As a younger, single man I accumulated alot of unused PTO and when I inevitably changed jobs I would get a gigantic paycheck going out the door.

Once married and with a very young child, all my PTO would go toward taking of a sick kid, or taking kid to the doctor, or dentist, etc, etc, etc... With maybe a long weekend here or there.

Now with the LO older(and healthier), that PTO balance is accumulating again. I'm planning on a big, long vacation this summer. Long weekends are nice, but with WFH, escaping the "stress" of the office is not exactly a big deal. Might as well save up my time for things I really want to do.

[StartingEarly]

One thing I always did was try and take my day at a time vacations to coincide with weekends and sometimes holidays. I would take off a Friday and a Monday and have four days out of work, or I would take five days off and have 9 days I didn't have to come in.

[Slee_stack]

I mix it up.  We usually do (1) 1.5-2 week trip a year, but I also take a couple days for long weekends as well.

We are allowed to bank vacation up to a max limit of twice our annual accrual rate.  For me that means a bank max of 6.5 weeks roughly.

I've been saving an extra week each year and expect to hit my bank max about halfway into 2017.  At that point, its use-or-lose, so I'll finally be taking my full vacation each year very soon.  That'll be nice.

I like having my bank for the extra cash payout I'd get if I randomly get walked out the door.  (Its not an unusual occurrence where I work).  Thankfully I'm at or near FI.  I kind of hope I'm asked to leave at some point.  I would love a bonus severance!

[robartsd]

It seems to depend on the stage of your life. As a younger, single man I accumulated alot of unused PTO and when I inevitably changed jobs I would get a gigantic paycheck going out the door.

Once married and with a very young child, all my PTO would go toward taking of a sick kid, or taking kid to the doctor, or dentist, etc, etc, etc... With maybe a long weekend here or there.

Now with the LO older(and healthier), that PTO balance is accumulating again. I'm planning on a big, long vacation this summer. Long weekends are nice, but with WFH, escaping the "stress" of the office is not exactly a big deal. Might as well save up my time for things I really want to do.

Young children certainly require a lot of time off unless there is a SAHP to take care of the kid's needs that daycare can't provide. I imagine children are also a factor in how long you need on vacation to actually relax - organizing for the children's needs while traveling can be quite a chore.

[Rural]

Don't get any, so that's easy.

[JoJo]

A single day here or there is a waste to me.  I get 6 weeks of PTO so that's sick & vacation but haven't been sick in 4 years so, vacation!

I always take my vacations around work holidays to stretch them out

- took 14 days of PTO in May -June, spent 23 days in Ukraine, Isreal, and Jordan
- took 4 days of PTO in September, spent 9 days on Vancouver Island
- took 8 days of PTO in November, spent 14 days in Cuba, 1 in Mexico
- still have 3 days to take off Christmas week.
It was a good year!

Next year they're adding a flex time so once a month we can work 9 or 10 hour days and then get 1 day off after we accumulate enough hours.  So, I'll maybe do that a few times and get in some hikes.

[Nudelkopf]

You can't talk about vacations & not mention teachers. Down Under we're on summer holidays now - 6 full weeks, woo. Plus another 6 full weeks during the year. Sometimes it does suck that we can't have time off whenever we'd like (e.g. for friends' wedding, birthdays, etc).

As another teacher said to me this year, 'Being a teacher  is just a pathway to 12 weeks paid holiday a year'.

[Lucky Recardito]

All at once, to the extent possible! I've been fortunate to have generous leave policies at recent jobs (for the US, anyway) and have done a number of ~4-week trips in the past decade.

I find that it takes me almost a week to fully unplug and stop thinking about work... and then I start thinking about it again a week before I return. So on a 2-week trip, I never stop thinking about work... I have a good time, but I don't return to work recharged, per se. 4 weeks and I actually get to be relaxed for two of them, and I find that I DO return recharged (and it lasts a long time before I start to burn out again).

Also... when I take 1 week or less off, I just create more work for myself before and after the time away. The nature of my job includes solving a lot of problems for other people, and if I'm out for a week or less, everyone holds onto their problems for me, creating a juggernaut when I get back. If I'm out for longer, they solve their problems themselves, and I don't come back to a big pile. (This also proves a good resetting point for, "hey, everyone managed to deal with X without me for a month... maybe I don't need to have X be my responsibility anymore...")

That said, I do recognize that 4 weeks at once is unusual (again, at least in the US) -- so I've not made an every-year habit of it. I'm kind of aiming for alternating years (with the in-between years featuring a couple of short trips).

[Samuel]

Currently get 3 weeks a year plus the company shuts down for a week between Christmas and New Year's. I'm single and childless.

I generally do a big trip that uses 8-10 days or two 5 day trips and then use the rest for three and four day weekends for smaller breaks from the routine. A short work week is a beautiful thing.

Over the last few years I've also been slowly lowering the bar on how bad I have to feel to call in sick. Especially since they changed the telecommuting policy to explicitly say you should not telecommute in place of calling in sick. Ok then. Guess that means I won't be working today.

A far cry from the per diem contract job I worked for 4 years while in "get out of debt and get some breathing room" mode. In 4 years I took 1 vacation day and 1 sick day. Hard to imagine now. 

[clarkfan1979]

I teach college with a winter break and a summer break, so I don't really ever take vacation. However, I am taking family leave for the last 6 weeks of next semester. Instead of just having 3 months off, I'm going to have 4.5 months off. I will let you know how it goes.

[mm1970]

I'd like to add that I've noticed my stress levels go way up every 3 months. Long ago, pre-kid days, six months with no time off and I'd be super tense.

Now, with two kids, it's three months.  It's mentally and physically noticeable.  Unfortunately, the school system does not cooperate.  The school holidays do not fall on an every-three-months schedule.  I REALLY need several days off in late September.

[Debts_of_Despair]

I mix it up.  I've taken 10 working days off for a trip.  I've had years I couldn't find any good travel deals and I just took a day or two here and there.  For the Christmas holiday this year I am taking off four days which gets me 10 days away from work.

I read some statistic recently that said taking a week long vacation has a significant affect on reducing heart disease.  I can't remember the exact terms.

[Daisy]

I have 6 weeks PTO and I take it all! We have a use it or lose it policy so I am always dumbfounded when my coworkers leave unused PTO on the table. Makes me want to go shake them up and say "what is wrong with you?!?!?". I usually control myself and just roll my eyes internally when they tell me of losing their unused PTO...some even think of themselves as good little worker bees for sacrificing for the company.

I occasionally take long trips of 3 weeks, but if that's not in thecards for the year I space out a few one week staycations with adding days on weekends to have more 3 day weekends.

[I'm a red panda]

I usually take a 2 week, a 1 week and sprinkle the other 5 days here and there.

I'm taking 3 day weeks all December because we missed our bug vacation after my husband was hit by a car biking to work: we planned to camp and he couldn't do that on a broken ankle.  Then I forgot to get another vacation scheduled, and all of our usual Dec haunts are off limits due to Zika right now.

Our vacation is use or lose, but but thankfully our boss encourages us to use them up.

[I'm a red panda]

You can't talk about vacations & not mention teachers. Down Under we're on summer holidays now - 6 full weeks, woo. Plus another 6 full weeks during the year. Sometimes it does suck that we can't have time off whenever we'd like (e.g. for friends' wedding, birthdays, etc).

As another teacher said to me this year, 'Being a teacher  is just a pathway to 12 weeks paid holiday a year'.

You get paid during the summer? When I taught our contract only paid us for the school year...no paid vacation over the summer.

[Rural]

You can't talk about vacations & not mention teachers. Down Under we're on summer holidays now - 6 full weeks, woo. Plus another 6 full weeks during the year. Sometimes it does suck that we can't have time off whenever we'd like (e.g. for friends' wedding, birthdays, etc).

As another teacher said to me this year, 'Being a teacher  is just a pathway to 12 weeks paid holiday a year'.

You get paid during the summer? When I taught our contract only paid us for the school year...no paid vacation over the summer.

This varies, I've learned, and it varies with colleges and universities, too. I don't get paid on my faculty contract during the summers, but I have a separate administrative contract that covers that time, hence the no vacation at all ( professor contracts don't have any paid time off because we aren't employed in the summers, though fortunately they do withhold extra healthcare premiums in spring to extend that coverage if we're coming back the next year). But my husband, teaching K12 in the same state, had his nine- month contract paychecks split over 12 months - basically a one-year, interest-free loan of 1/4 of his salary to the school system every year.

[gliderpilot567]

Active duty Military leave is 30 days a year which sounds great, but is complicated in practice because it's tricky to combine with weekends, holidays and "passes." This is mainly because active duty are considered to be on duty 24/7, and any scheduled weekends or holidays are issued as passes which do not combine additively with leave.

For one, I have to testify that I begin and end any leave in the "local duty area" which means the place I live and commute to work on a daily basis. So if I have a weekend, and I want to take Monday off to go somewhere for a three day weekend, then I have to burn all three days as leave (if I'm just taking a blow and staying at home, then I only need to take Monday off, though anytime you request one day off adjacent to a weekend it tends to raise eyebrows). It works a little more favorably if I take Friday off on the front of the weekend, because if you return from leave on a non-duty day (like Sunday or other day that you don't have scheduled work) then you don't have to burn that as a leave day. So I take lots of weekends where I blast out of work on Thursday afternoon then charge Friday and Saturday as leave, though not Sunday. As long as you work 51% of your day on a particular day, then you don't have to burn that day.

Big holidays (like Thanksgiving) are especially shitty if you need to travel, because they are already granted as "96 hour passes" which do not require leave to be taken. However, if you want to add even one extra day (say Wednesday before Thanksgiving, to beat the travel rush a little bit) then you have to burn the entire period as leave. So you can get 4 days off for the price of 0, or 5 days off for the price of 4 (the return Sunday is free). So in general, it pays to take the passes and holidays as-is, instead of combining them with leave; and taking leave elsewhere during times when there are not a lot of federal holidays (like March, April, or August).

It also pays to work a half-day on Monday, then blast away, return late Saturday evening and only burn four days.

Also, if you accrue more than 60 days of leave saved up, then you lose the excess every year on Oct 1. Many squadrons are conspicuously empty in late September as people use up their use/lose leave. The only exception is if you are deployed at the time and cannot physically take the leave. Though sometimes you have to file paperwork to get it reinstated.

Any leave earned while deployed to a tax free location is itself "tax free". So when you later take this leave stateside, you don't pay tax on your base pay for that duration. It's weird to understand, but generally comes out correct on the W2.

So to end a long ass post.... I take lots of short leaves throughout the year, and 1 or 2 big 10-day or 17-day trips.

The rules get even more complicated if I try to combine leave with official travel (I travel my ass off for work), though I have cracked most of the code on that one.

[deborah]

In Australia a non-teacher gets 20 days paid annual leave a year, and you can accumulate it (this is part of our standard working conditions). When I was young, I accumulated 3 months leave and had a long holiday. It was wonderful, I was involved in a leisure activity, and we represented Australia overseas, and there was no problem going because I had my leave.

Then I did a course one year, which was 2 separate full days each month (except December and January) for a year, so I took my leave in one day lots - HR really kicked up a stink about that, as a day at  time doesn't give you the break that annual leave is supposed to give you (in many companies taking less than a week at a time is frowned upon - HR probably resented the amount of work it caused them).

I got into the habit of having a "me" week each year. Taking a week off to plan for the next year, do things that were getting me down, but I just didn't seem to have the time to do... The first time I did this was so good - and it set me up for the year ahead.

Then, when I was about to retire not really thinking of retirement I took a year off to do a course I wanted to do. I did that with leave, because we can now take leave at half pay (so almost 2 months) and I had long service leave (you get 3 months after you have worked somewhere for 10 years, and you can take that at half pay - so six months) and I got extra long service leave while I was away (2 weeks - so at half pay an extra month) and extra annual leave while I was away (another almost 2 months) and I had 2 weeks that had accumulated (so another month at half pay). I was part time at the course, living off what I planned to live off in retirement, and able to do all the things I had put off for years. I didn't miss work at all (and I thought I loved my work), so I retired!

[BlueMR2]

I onesie-twosie my days as I usually burn up pretty much all of them for doctor appointments, house repairs, and car repairs.  Despite having 20 full days of vacation, I rarely actually have enough to take an actual vacation...

[2Birds1Stone]

1 time per year we take a 9 day international trip, using 4-5 vacation days.
4-5 times per year we take a Friday or Monday off and go away for an extended weekend.
3 times per year we tack on an extra day off to an already longer holiday weekend.

That burns ~12 days a year. The remaining 5 days are taken on a whim, "mental health days" as we like to call them.

[CheapScholar]

Now that you have a child, you will learn you need to burn some days to take care of him/her.  My son is in second grade now, and there are probably at least 10 days throughout the course of the year where he's not in school or his summer academy and there are not many other good options.  For example, my son's winter break from school runs til Jan 6th in a few weeks.  My wife and I are off til Jan 2nd, so we each are burning 2 days that week to watch him.  We could send him to the school Kids Club for that week but it costs like $200 and there's sick kids everywhere and my son hates going.

My wife and I each get 15 days off per year.  We try to do a cruise every other year.  Those can actually be quite affordable if you know how to shop for them.  Otherwise, we do short trips over a few days. 

[Davids]

The company I work for is use it or lose it so I use it. No payout if not used.