Vacation Days/PTO

[RedAngie]

If your job gives you paid time off, do you use all of it?

A report on local news this morning says 75% of people leave Vacation Days unused, an average of 5 days.

My PTO is still separated into holiday, vacation, sick, and personal days.

I take every millisecond of vacation, personal, and holiday time off. I get 10 sick days, but rarely use them all. Usually I take 7 or 8 sick days, mostly for “Mental Health.”

Some reasons given for not taking all eligible vacation days are:
1. Too much work to make up upon return.
2. Afraid of appearing as a slacker that would hinder promotion opportunities.
3. Company culture frowns upon or discourages employees using their full allotment.
4. Those who can roll over PTO are saving it for later.

 

[mjkacmom]

My husband has been with his company 30 years, used to get unlimited sick days and 6 weeks vacation. He never used them all, and vacation days were t rolled over or paid out. He just had too much work. Now his company gives unlimited vacation days to all, studies have shown even fewer will be taken.

 

[Christine]

I take all of my vacation days. It's a lot, and it's difficult to balance with work, but I manage!

As for sick leave, I only use it when it's "legally" allowed, but we are allowed to roll it over from year to year and if I never use it, I can put it toward my time in the position for retirement.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Mine is all in one bank. Before our state started providing (I think it’s 40 hrs/yr of) FMLA time, I used a lot of my time when I was caring for my mother when she was ill, so I am trying to build it back up again (so I have it myself for a rainy day). I used to take a lot more vacation time than I do now, but I have a pretty good schedule so I don’t really need to use as much. I can also take it with me cash it in if I leave my job, so it doesn’t hurt to save it. I am not affected by your #s 1, 2 or 3.

Edited for clarity

 

[OhDannyBoy]

I spent the better part of 12 years rarely taking more than an extended weekend a few times a year.

My company allows me to roll vacation time over, and I get 3 weeks a year vacation so I have accumulated 14 weeks as of right now. I'm using 2 of those starting next Monday. What's nice is I am allowed to cash in any of those weeks without having to actually take the time off. If I wanted to cash in 3 weeks for some extra spending money, I can.

Before I had kids I never took any real time off. I just didn't really need it. A handful of 3 or 4 day weekends was fine. A lot of weekend cruises or short stays in the Caribbean did us well. (The benefits of living 20 minutes from Port Everglades) Now, I NEED my vacation time. I make sure to take at least a few weeks a year.

 

[Darcy03231]

I take all of my vacation/personal/floating days (plus I usually take another 3-5 days a year without pay). Sick time rolls over and accrues and I'm rarely sick so don't take many of those days.

 

[mrodgers]

I would be close to point #4.

We don't roll them over. We get paid out in January for unused vacation or sick time. 33 years working I've "called off sick" twice, because each of my girls ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.

I get 5 weeks vacation. I take a week in the summer and a day here or there. I don't currently own a house and have 5 months until I can think of starting to regularly save so I get paid out at least 3 weeks of vacation time in January which goes into the house savings fund. Hopefully the market crashes and I can buy a discounted home as after this past 2 years, I have no hope of buying one.

 

[ronandannette]

Ours is vacation days based on tenure (I’m up to 5 weeks now), 7 sick days and 2 volunteer days per year. The last two don’t roll over. Sick days are only to be used for personal illness and the volunteer days must be verified. I’ve always taken all of mine over the years until Covid rendered us grounded but I’ve got quite a few banked days now. I never call in sick unless I’m actually unwell - malingering is greatly frowned on and a doctor’s note can be required if HR thinks it’s warranted.
ETA: Lots of people at my work are in the weeds with their sick days due to Covid isolation mandates. We have to use our sick days and then move on to vacation days or take the time unpaid. Our sick days renew on January 1 and luckily for everyone, current quarantine requirements are only 5 days. It was 14 days at the start of Covid and 10 days for most of 2021.

 

[soccerdad72]

I've been rolling over vacation days for quite awhile now - I get 20 days a year of regular vacation and normally don't use more than 10-12 days on average. We also get separate sick time, holidays, winter break (e.g. the days between Christmas and New Years off separately) and personal days.

This year, they even added 5 'wellness days' for everyone to use between January and June (our fiscal year end is June 30).

I'm now at a point where I've maxed out my rollover amount, so I have to use 2 personal days, 4 days of wellness leave and 4 days of vacation by June 30th or I lose some of that. The past 2 years have definitely added to the amount of rollover days - we barely have gone anywhere as of late.

Once our younger son heads off to college (he's a HS Junior), we plan on doing a lot more spontaneous travelling. My hope is to use down enough of my vacation time in the next 5 years so I'm right at the amount (30 days) of vacation I can cash out at retirement.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

When I was at the insurance company I had PTO store up but didn't get to use it often because of how they did it (with PTO bids and all). You could roll over up to 40 hours (except in CA where you could roll over all of it).

My husband has more than 10 weeks of vacation stored up at this point. He gets 6 weeks per year and can bank twice the yearly amount however he's about to start a new job where he will only get 4 weeks and then after 5 years will get his 5th and final week. He negotiated to get the 4 weeks based on his tenure with his present company. He doesn't use his too often mostly because he can take a little time here and there and just make it up (same with this new company). This new company sounds like they'll be a little bit more "hey probably should use at least some time" though. The new company also has where it's common to work remote a day to 3 days per week which enables less time to be used if it was just something needed close to home. Vast majority of the vacation was used for actual vacation but if we don't go on enough of that in a year my husband will take a day or half a day here and there.

 

[hhisc16]

For this year my public school district has:
1. Sick Days (8 per year)
2. Personal Days (4 per year)
3. COVID/Caregiver Days (10 per year)

We can bank up to 12 sick days a year.
Crazy rules make it so that we cannot take a personal day on a monday or friday and before or after a holiday.

 

[Moliphino]

I used to get separate vacation and personal time, but in 2021 they combined it all into one bank. So now I get 4 weeks of generic PTO.
When it was separate I always used all of the vacation time, but sometimes didn't use up all 5 days of personal time. Last year I had a couple days unused because I kept them "just in case", but nothing came up and then it was Christmas break. Oops. I want to use all of my days because they don't roll over.

 

[NMBCFangirl]

Reasons 1 and 4 apply to me. I WAS storing up PTO to have time to handle estate business but then because of the, ahem, thing going on in the world we handled that all remotely. Also, nobody covers for me when I am out, so my work just piles up. It makes me avoid taking time.

We can roll over a max of 400 PTO hours each January 1st. I had to "cash out" 40 hours to avoid it just disappearing. I currently have 390 hours banked. Sigh.

 

[spiders]

I take all of vacation days. Sick over is unlimited rollover. Vacation is a max of 6 weeks rollover. Now that I hit my max, I take it all. I used to try to save up some if I didn’t have anything planned for a particular day. Now it’s a real easy decision because even a rainy day on the couch doing nothing beats going in for free.

 

[AndreaDM]

I take every last minute allotted to me, in fact I still had 2 hours at the end of Dec. so made sure to leave early one day to use them up. They used to let us roll over up to one week, but that has stopped, we have to use it or lose it. Their reasoning is we need to take it to have a work/life balance.

My SO also had X amount of vacation time but rarely used it all, and when he did take vacation he was made to feel guilty. This year his company moved to unlimited time off, I KNOW it's to make people hesitant to use even any. I told him he better take at least what he was allotted in previous years.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

I get 4 weeks per year, which I can roll over until I have a maximum balance of 8 weeks. But we also get 8 weeks of paid parental leave when you have a baby, which you can take any time before each child's first birthday. We had a baby in 2014, 2017, and 2020, so it's been a very long time since I've taken any traditional vacation time at all. It's all been parental leave. I'm now starting to chip away at my balance, using about 5 weeks of vacation time (while accruing 4), whittling down my balance by about one net week per year.

 

[Colleen27]

When I had it, I absolutely used it all. I've been self-employed for more years than I've been traditionally employed, which has its own perks but has made paid time off feel like the height of luxury. I'm back to freelancing now so I tend to squeeze in some work time even when we're traveling.

My husband almost never takes his. I half-joke that he was trained not to by several jobs that offered paid vacation but frowned on employees actually using it, but there is more than a little serious truth to that. He's worked for a few places where it was strictly an on-paper benefit, with so many blackout periods that only a handful of employees with the most seniority could get vacations approved, and a couple where it was an informal bonus (no one used their time, but at least it was cashed out rather than lost at the end of the year). Various combinations of 1, 2 and 3 have pretty much always applied, and now he's got a complex about taking his time - the company he's with now is very supportive of work/life balance, but he's internalized the idea that if he uses his vacation time and the place doesn't fall apart in his absence, he's revealing that they don't really need him and therefore undermining his job security. So it is an uphill battle to get him to take time off. He cashed out 40 hours last month and still has 90-odd hours available.

 

[neverlandsky]

.

 

[SC Minnie]

I get 5 weeks vacation plus 3 floaters. We also get personal days that we don't have to use our vacation days. I left 6 days on the table at the end of 2021. I was out a lot in August when my Dad was in the hospital and after he passed so I didn't ask to carry those over. We can carry over up to a week but it must be used within Q1 and its up the your manager's discretion- did you not use your vacation due to work load or just because. The issue with carrying over is that mean 6+ weeks. There is no way I can take off a week every other month and still keep up with my job.

 

[bennifer]

When I worked, I always used every second. It wasn't always for vacations, tho. ODS had a seizure disorder, and I needed a lot of half days for dr appts and testing an hour away (single mom - XH would not help out with these appts). Starting this year, DH has 5 weeks of vacation and I'm very curious if I can get him to take all 5! Usually, they have 2 weeks of shutdown a year, Christmas week and 4th of July week, and he has to use 3-4 days of vacation for each of those.