“Coasting” will diminish the value of your CTO by 25%, while using it as intended retains the value. With this in mind, I would use all the CTO you can before retiring - consider the time-off as “practice”.
The only reason I could see coasting and then cashing-in the CTO at 75% of the value is if you want/need the cash when you retire, rather then taking time-off prior to that point.
This is really the dilemma. If I use it all up, I’ll get “full value” for it and end up with no windfall upon retirement (and thus, a net loss, if I am thinking clearly).
If I use it sparingly, I’ll only get 75% of its value, but a nice chunk of change when the day arrives (and a net gain).
(by “net gain”, I mean that, overall, I will earn more when all is said and done)
As far as “what do you want to do?” - who the hell knows?
As someone who retired recently, I would suggest that you don’t make your mind up now.
You might not get short-timers attitude which would cause you to burn a lot of your time off just because and then you will get a nice chunk of change when you do retire.
If like so many others, you do get short-timers attitude, you will be happy to have it to burn.
I’d probably cash in the unused time - 75% is more than nothing, and unless you need the time off to do things before retirement, what’s the point? When you’re working, you get 100% for the hours you put in anyway and if you don’t absolutely hate your job, well, why not?
Yeah, that’s kinda what I did. The rules were a bit different, but the end result was similar - I sold back a chunk of hours that I hadn’t used and I tucked it into savings.
I’d take as much time off as I wanted to before retirement - I wouldn’t take days off just to take them off, but I also wouldn’t pass up taking actual vacations for the next 14 months just to have the largest possible windfall.
I am in a slightly different situation - I will get a lump sum payout for up to 225 hours of leave (at 100%) and am now in the position of trying not to have more than that when I retire later this month (leading to random days off for no particular reason). But I am only in that position because of Covid , which made it pointless to take a vacation for a year or so.
I’d probably save it and cash it in. But I’d probably reduce my output while working 25% to make up for the hit!
I’ve got a similar situation WRT sick leave. We amass unlimited sick leave at 4 hrs per pay period. But we receive no short or longterm disability. I’ve been fortunate, and have never needed to take huge chunks of sick leave. After 36+ years, I’ve got thousands of hours. I forget how much of that we get back on retirement - but it is a fraction far smaller than 75%. I’ve seen many folk burn through their sick leave for non-health reasons, only to get screwed when they eventually NEEDED it. I’ll probably retire in 5-6 years. I imagine I may be feeling sick a little more often in upcoming years…
I got 100% of my pay for unused hours, but before I retired I was close to maxing out on my hours, so I took long weekends every other week or so. If I took a lot of time off I would have fallen behind and that would make my life miserable when I went back.
If you have some sort of vacation or project to do, take extra time of course, but pretty soon you’ll have plenty of free time, so the money is nice.
I would probably coast. My line of thinking goes like this:
Whether you work every day or whether you take a great deal of time off has no real effect on each paycheck–you get the same or nearly the same amount of money (depending on how much opportunity there is for overtime.)
Taking 1 day off per pay period allows you to get some extra rest and/or makes it easier to get other stuff done. In addition, the unused portion of the CTO under this plan works out to 6 hours per month, which will easily max out your CTO before retirement. (Indeed, you may want to take 2 days off per pay period every other month or so. You need to average only 4.29 hours per month to max out your CTO.)
Maxing out your CTO has the practical effect of pre-funding the first month or two of your retirement. 75% of 360 is 270, which works out to 6.75 work weeks. This slightly delays the need to use retirement money. Admittedly, this is not necessarily a big advantage, but in the event that you live a long time after retirement, you may conceivably find yourself in a position where every little bit counts.