The company I work for has a cap, but I’m paid the value of each hour earned over the cap. Needless to say I don’t make any effort to use my leave.
I’m a saver. I’ve got about 500 hours accrued at the moment and took a week off a while ago.
I try to save, but I have 2 small children. Between their vacations, sick days, etc, I have trouble saving up more than a week at a time.
I really do want to get a good amount saved, though. We can cash out up to 2 weeks, twice a year, and I’d love the extra cash in hand.
We have one big pot that is available at the beginning of the year, and must be made to last the whole year, then on December 31st all the unused time goes “poof”. I really wish we had a floating balance (previous balance + amount accrued this pay period - amount used this pay period), it would allow for more flexibility - now, if I use all my vacation time in July, for example, there’s nothing more until January in case of emergencies or whatever.
Anyway: We sometimes will take a week or two during the year but most years I’m looking at having a lot of time left over in December, then I blow most of it by basically not working the last 2-3 weeks of the year.
And the company complains that nobody bills much time in December. Morons.
I count myself as a saver because of the need to have time for emergencies, so I stockpile most of it until that use-or-lose time period.
Same here, although we get six weeks. We can roll over up to three days with manager approval, but it’s really not worth the bother as you’ll just have to use them in the next year, so why not take them when they’re actually due to you?
All I get is 4 weeks rec leave a year, 2 weeks long service leave, 24 flex days and as much sick leave as I have available and need. I have over a year of accumulated leave I could take from Monday yet I don’t save leave at all.
Our flexible working hours and flex days make it easy to not use your leave. And all our leave accumulates forever unless you exceed the rec leave limit of 8 weeks without having leave booked.
How does anyone arrange a long holiday if you can’t rollover leave? One of the guys at work is going to Ireland for 2 months with his Irish girlfriend next week. How can you do that if you can’t accumulate leave? Surely not leave without pay!
2 months? I’m not sure I’d have a job to come back to, if I asked for 2 months off to go on vacation. 4 weeks at one time was the longest I’ve ever taken, and that was to travel to Africa, with my 70 yr old parents. I had to plan over a year ahead of time, and get all kinds of people’s blessing inorder to do it. And I’m lucky enough to work for a company that allows me to accrue upto 1 years worth of vacation in the bank.
Mostly save. I was up to about 5 weeks accumulated when I took 3 weeks to visit our daughter in Germany. Still had a lot. One nice thing - when the company got bought they bought all our leave, and I got a pile of money. I’m saving now for the next European visit. I do take some for holidays and Christmas shopping etc.
My old company had between Christmas and New Year off as a vacation. The new one doesn’t, but there are so few people around coming in isn’t very stressful.
We’re capped at 400 hours and I just sold 160 to keep from losing hours this year. Looking at my report I’ve got 174 in the bank.
I guess that makes me a saver.
Saver. I had 184 hours (23 days) in the bank going into 2011 and just used 14 for the birth of my child. That leaves me with 9 days, but I just hit my anniversary in February, which gave me another 20 days, so I’m up to 29. Our cap is 30 days.
I mostly save…I have about 280 hours right now…but my job keeps me pretty busy. We don’t really have comp time, but on the rare occasion that I get to leave early, I have typically put in a 60+ hour week anyway, so don’t have to deduct from my vacation hours. But, I will get paid for them if I ever leave this job…so no worries, right?!
We don’t, typically. I’d be hard-pressed to take even 2 consecutive weeks off, and because of no rollover, it would leave me nothing for the rest of the year.
That’s how we’d have to do it. It’s called a leave of absence. I don’t know anyone in my company personally that’s ever done it. Frankly, I can see why we have use-it-or-lose-it; with most people having three to four weeks of vacation every year, it wouldn’t take all that long to take months at a time off.
I don’t see a category for me - I’m of the ‘save until you’ve got a decent cushion, then spend when you get the chance’ school.
I get 4 weeks/yr, and we get to carry over up to 6 weeks. I was bumping up against the 240-hour use-or-lose limit when the adoption process for the Firebug got seriously underway; then 3 trips to Russia and a fair amount of FMLA after we brought him home two years ago knocked that way down.
I’ve finally got the reserves back up to about 4 weeks; the question now is when my wife’s and my work schedules will allow for a vacation.
I’ve known one person over three jobs who arranged a leave of absence. He did it to hike the Pacific Crest Trail one summer; he planned that well over a year in advance and was not sure at all that he’d be able to both keep his job and finish the hike.
Me, I get to roll one week but other than that it’s also use it or lose it. We used to have the option of getting a 2nd week paid out, but that went away when the auto industry went in the toilet a couple years ago.
I don’t take a lot of leave, and so I am maxed out. If I don’t use anything I earn during that pay period, it goes away.
I have some medical issues, and have a variety of doctor’s appointments and test that I have to have done from time to time, so I use annual leave instead of sick leave. The sick leave has no accumulation limits. This keeps me from losing much of value.
This is why I feel that “use it or lose it” (i.e. you have x days in a year, and you can’t carry them over) is in fact quite a civilised policy, rather than the miserly one that it can appear to be. I see lots of people accumulating vast reserves of vacation that they will never use. Once you get up above about four weeks, it actually becomes practically difficult to get rid of all the vacation. I suppose you might get paid for the spare days when you leave, except no doubt there are all sorts of caveats about whether you leave voluntarily, limits to how much you can sell, etc. With use-it-or-lose-it, people tend to actually take the vacation they’ve rightfully earned.
I use it all as desired, which is a lot. Even though I work for the state, I don’t trust that what is ‘saved’ will actually be there, or be paid out, later on. Crap occurs; I don’t trust the future regarding things like that.
None of the options match me. I tend to use exactly as much as I earn, but in a combination of long weekends and whole weeks off. I have about 2 weeks saved up now from earning 6 hours off per bi-week. I try to take 2 or 3 strategically timed one-week vacations per year (strategically timed meaning short four day weeks due to minor holidays that I get off like Columbus Day) and a long weekend every month or two. It’s a real pain to take off more than about a week at a time from my job, because there is no one to do the work I’m not doing when I am not there, but I do hope to start doing a few 2 week trips in the coming years so I can venture further abroad than a single week makes practical.
PTO where I work includes both vacation and sick days. I can carry over 120 hours at the end of the year, so I try to work it out so that I can carry over the maximum without losing any. I would hoard more if I could.