How Many Vacation Days Did You Use This Year?
How many vacation days did you use this year, readers — and what did you DO with your vacation? As this year comes to a close, it's always a great idea to review your vacation days to make sure you're using them properly (especially if they're use-or-lose!), and we'd love to hear how many of you are already planning for vacations next year! When we've asked in the past about vacation time, 40% of you had used less than 50% of your time for the year (whoa!).
I've never had the luxury of working a job where vacation days rolled over, so I've always tried to make the most of vacation time by taking a lot of long weekend vacations and staycations. For the past few years with the kids, I've told myself to just buy airline tickets as soon as we have the school calendar, and deal with hotels and research as the trip gets closer — to force us to actually go places — but I'm still struggling to master the vacation that is planned really early. We're looking at some international travel this summer, as well as a trip to “Harry Potterland” (Universal Studios) that my 7-year-old may or may not accept as a viable Christmas present, but we've yet to pull the trigger on anything.
For those of you who are great at vacation planning (or finding fabulous vacation packages), I'd love to hear from you: How many months ahead are you planning? If you get, say 20 days of vacation for 2019, how many do you vacation days do you “use” ahead of time? For those of you with partners, if you get more vacation (or less) than your partner, how do you deal?
Since the stock photo features a bag — and it is the season for gift-giving — anyone have any favorite travel gear to shout out? I've heard great things about Away luggage but I haven't tried it yet.
I get 15 vacation days and 6 days personal time. It’s use it or lose it in both buckets. I use it all, always. I am legal adjacent at a publicly traded 70k company that manufactures stuff.
I used 6 days for Europe, 5 for a trip to Upstate NY, 5 for Asheville, and used what I had left of personal time after various appts to leave early on several days from now until 12/31.
*70k employee
As I always say, “I use my whole paycheck too”. I make a point to use all of them. Every last day. Mostly on actual vacation, one or two sick days, and a few staycation half days around the holidays.
I’m totally lucky to get 30 days of PTO. Granted, that’s sick and vacation in one bucket, but so far I haven’t had to use very many of them on sick time. Knock on wood.
I will have used 29.5 of them by the end of the year. We used to get HEAVY pressure to use up our days, but now they don’t seem to care as much. We can’t roll them over, but if we don’t use them we get paid for them. Which is nice, but I personally would much rather have the time. I can always make more money, but I’m not getting any more time!
I’m a fed gov attorney, and started a supervisory position this year. I took 2 weeks in the summer for a beach vacation, a handful of days in early fall for a quick race-vacation, 4 days for a late fall staycation, and will be taking the week of Christmas off. I consider this a light vacation year (last year I took double), and I plan on building in more vacation time next year. We accrue annual leave hours each pay period, and there is a cap on roll-over, but I’ve never hit it.
US Government lawyer. 20 days vacation, plus federal holidays. Took a week-long trip in May, most of a week in July and at Christmas, and an assortment of long weekends and half days. We can carry over vacation, and my first year I didn’t use much, so I always keep an extra week on the books for emergencies. Otherwise, I take what I accrue – I like my job, but I don’t love it enough to skip my time off. That doesn’t count sick leave – 13 days per year. Since it rolls over with no cap, I have about 4 months worth of sick days saved up at this point.
Consultant….
Took 1 week over the 4th of July, 2 weeks to go to South Africa, taking a week to go to Belize soon, and then the week between Christmas and New year as a staycation. Plus 4-5 random days off.
Used 22 of my 25 my vacation/personal days. Most of the vacation overlapped with firm holidays, so it felt like I used them all. Luckily, in California, so unused days will roll over.
heck YEAH! i just transitioned from biglaw to a nonprofit position, and i have used EVERY VACAY OR SICK DAY this year. to be fair, i’d booked a trip to o’ahu for my birthday before i left my $106K salary job, but i regret nothing. i’ll happily work in between christmas and new year’s if it means i don’t waste a single hour of my vacation time.
patent attorney assistant here – out of 20 i took 5 days off after we moved in to new flat to paint the walls and do some cleaning and stuff around the flat bc I am handier than my fiance. and 2 days when I was really sick.
boss does actively discourage taking days off or reproach ppl who take days off after being back in office (happened to me last year, I took a week off to visit my uncle in different country and was told that one visits family members for two days mostly, not for a week!) (also, she got angry with me when I said to her that I picked the week for my summer vacation year before that bc we were going with a pair of friends and all 4 of us agreed on a date. apparently, I should have let her decide, not the work schedules of other ppl.) . welp, stupid me. my boss has some disgusting attitude when it comes to vacations (she is old – 75 – and does not go anywhere, thus envy is strong with her) and I am really bad at not taking her approach personally
What is with crotchety old attorney bosses who actually reproach people for not skipping their PTO? My last boss (early 70’s male attorney) also passive aggressively shaded anyone who took an actual vacation, either before or after it happened. He also shaded people for sick days and basically got angry that they dared to get sick and either WFH or not work. We, the law abiding millennial employees tried to warn him that shade like that was not only mean but borderline inappropriate, but he continued shading.
We have 10 days rollover and tenure-based PTO. I have 25 days per year. This year I had 25 + 10 days from past year. Recently I realized that I used only 15, so I’m taking off Christmas week and every Friday in December.
I had 2 weeks family vacation in Spain.
Reading all the time people have is making me even more bitter about my 10 days of leave, which is accrued after the first year of work. You can take unlimited amount of unpaid days off. No clue on the sick leave other than the minimum 3 required in CA. Up to a week for religious holidays which i don’t really celebrate but might start doing so.
I had zero days because I started this job in the summer but had a delayed honeymoon planned which i took off two weeks for.
We get a total of 7 days off in the year other than the vacation time. (Labor day, memorial day, fourth of july, thanksgiving + day after, Christmas day, new years day)
I’m in an administrator position in (private) higher education, and I get 10 days of vacation time and 10 days of sick leave each year. Our leave year begins on June 1, and while sick days roll over vacation days do not. So far I’ve taken 4 days around the 4th of July to get a whole week off and one day for my birthday. Last year I wound up with five vacation days I had to use in May after the students left, and it looks like this year is going to be the same. Luckily I have some fun work-related travel planned for the spring semester, and won’t have to use leave for any of that.
My benefits when working for a public institution were much better (21 days of vacation time, can roll over up to 300 hours/year, medical benefits for half the price I pay now, etc). I’ll likely try to get back into a state institution after the spring semester for that reason.
Federal employee getting 4 hours a pay period. I took less than a week because I’ve been hoarding leave like a madwoman to cover maternity leave. It was hell, honestly, and I am totally that jerk who comes to work sick, but I managed to scrape 8 weeks and I’m really glad because I ended up needing a c-section.
Tech support at a government-adjacent non-profit. I got 128 hours of vacation this year with 12 hours rolled over from last year and 16 hours picked up as holiday credit. I used 132.5 hours and have 23.5 to roll over. The calculus can work a little differently because I work 4x10s and my normal hours include weekends. So, I went to Disneyland with a friend and only had to take one day of vacation because we left super late on a day I worked and then stayed over my usual days off. I also took 3 days for a semi-staycation (we spent a couple of nights at a lakeside cabin we’ve Airbnb’d before). The big trip was 12 days in Europe with some friends. That trip was planned over a year in advance, though it was mainly just pinning down dates and a rough itinerary before about the 6 month mark.
For next year, we’re looking at going to Dublin for WorldCon. That’s in August, and I’ve already started scoping out hotels. I’ll pick up 24 hours of holiday credit (and I think I get another 8 hours on my annual total starting next year), so I’m hoping to have a full 40 hours to roll over to 2020, so we can do WorldCon again when it’s in New Zealand. I wanna get my money’s worth out of that transpacific ticket, dammit, so we’re planning on hitting Australia and Singapore as well, and maybe somewhere in Japan if time/budget allows.
I should note that I’ve also managed to travel without taking vacation time by working remotely. This has generally worked pretty well–although my request to do so from Canada was denied, so I’ll have to take a vacation day in January to join my husband on a business trip.
I only took 2 sick days this year, though (plus a few days of FMLA when my husband had surgery). Just didn’t need it, not even for mental health days. That one’s less of an entitlement and more “this is how much you can take before you start getting in trouble,” so I try not to use it unless necessary.