In a month or two I will be maxed out on my accrued vacation/sick time and I’ll have some pleasant decisions to make.
To break it down to nuts and bolts, I will be able to take an extra paid day off of work every two weeks with no decrease of my (nearly) maxed-out bank.
Another option is to take a full week off every 8 weeks, again with no net loss of accrued time.
Or, of course, I could mix and match. Take a day off here and there, take a week off here and there. I would always want to maintain my maxed-out bank, though, so if I take a week off, no more bonus days for the next 6 weeks.
Hybrid approach, as you mentioned. Take a day off once every 2 weeks for most of the year, but also take 2 whole weeks within the year.
I find that I enjoy single days off more than long stretches, but there’s also things you can’t do on 3 day weekends (major projects, traveling, etc.).
Just speaking for myself, a full week off when I have no specific plans for that time gets a little boring to me. If you have plans for that much time off in a single block, great! I hope it’s everything you want it to be. If all you’re going to do is hold down one end of the couch while binge watching cat videos, every other Friday sounds good to me.
Do you like to travel? Is your work flexible enough that you can take longer stretches of time off?
Find a cool country you’ve never been to and go for three or four weeks.
I mean, that’s what I’d do. I never seem to have the problem of too much paid time off accruing, though, so I’m guessing you have different interests and priorities.
Don’t do the four-day work week. It’s really addicting and you’ll never want to work five days in a row again. Especially don’t take off Fridays! That will just make your weekend start that much earlier and reduce your stress level every week.
I’m saying that because I teach college classes, none of which have been scheduled for a Friday in the last ten years. I think I’d resign if I ever got a Friday class.
As I approached retirement with lots of vacation I started taking a day a week off. I agree about not taking Fridays, which is when lots of people took off. I took Mondays instead. I hated Sunday nights, having to look forward to going in, and this made them good again. Plus four days is quite tolerable.
Too much stuff accumulated when I took a full week off, but one day’s backlog was tolerable. Certainly do it for a real vacation, but not just to do it. The only exception was taking a cruise and being in the middle of the ocean way out of contact, but that was a while ago when you couldn’t get wifi in every port.
Now I take 5 days a week off and it is really great.
I guess I should have said this in my OP: I currently work 4 days a week (10 hour shifts). The extra day off would give me a 3-day work week every other week. I can pretty much select which days I am off.
I agree that taking a full week off is not the way to go absent a specific vacation plan. I usually do 2 vacations a year but I’m planning just one this year.
Also worth noting, I am 4 years from retirement. I’m thinking I’d like to ride out this alternating 3-day/4-day work week until I retire (with a full-week vacation or 2 plugged in each year).
It is interesting to hear others’ viewpoints on this.
mmm
I don’t reallly like long weekends. I never feel relaxed enough and ready to go back to work so I prefer taking weeks off at a minimum and two weeks or more is great. I always have stuff I want to do on a week off even if its backpack into the mountains and go fishing. I get 4 weeks per year so it works out to the last two weeks of the year, a week to go hunting in the fall and a week to play on the water in the summer. I wouldn’t have any trouble taking two more weeks in the spring and early summer.
In your case something I’ve seen with people nearing retirement is they’ve lost their hobbies after work for so llollonllollong and raising kids so they don’t know what they will do with the free time and are kind of scared of it. You could use these week over the next couple of years to pick up a retirement hobby or three and find something that entertains you besides work for at least a week at a time.
Congratulations on maxing out your PTO. I’d spread most of it out, but take at least one 2 or 3 week vacation per year.
If the company has a buy-back program, I’d consider selling a few weeks to pay for a first class airline ticket or something else completely frivolous.
You already work 4 10’s and have 4 years to go. One key question is how much do you have to make up “missed” work, and do the higher ups care if you take vacation?
If you’re in a job where the workload is the workload, in other words no matter what it takes about a 60 hour week to get your shit done. Taking an extra day off here or there is generally more manageable than a week off. Although, I don’t know how many times I got up at 6:00 to put in a couple of hours, then drive with the family for a “3 day” weekend and carving out more than a few hours on the weekend to manage the workload, net net I took a day off but worked at least 8 hours for that “off” day. Again, depends on your work environment.
There is an option that is offered once a year to “sell” PTO. You only get 75% pay for what you sell, and that is taxed, of course. I sold 80 hours a few years ago; I’d rather have the time off.
There really is no making up of missed work. There is not much that is mine alone; the work is shared by a group (and never goes away). The amount of work won’t change whether I am there or not.
As for my boss, he’s pretty awesome and would fully support me using my time to my advantage.
A co-worker or two might raise an eyebrow, but that would be an eyebrow of jealousy. Nobody has nearly as much PTO as I do - some use it as they earn it and literally have zero.
mmm
Ours is use it or lose it on a calendar year basis, which means a lot of people end up saving theirs (just in case), and using it the penultimate week of December (the last week is paid holiday). I’ve gotten caught in this trap before, and without having a vacation plan, things can be a drag.
So, use it when you know that you have something useful, fun, or relaxing to do, unless you want to end up feeling non-productive sitting on the couch!
One year in the past I’ve tried taking every Friday from October to December off, but that didn’t work for me, because there was still too much incentive to call into important meetings, or make a quick fix to a PowerPoint for my chief, etc., before I had direct reports to leave it to. (Alas, I’m back into a position without direct reports.)
Personally, I love three or four day weekends when I can go someplace semi-local for a couple of nights. We’re blessed in Michigan with four seasons, so we can go anywhere and do something fun all year. A couple of nights in Grand Rapids if you like the beer scene, any of our ski resorts if you like the environment (or simply like to ski). Traverse City is great this time of year because it’s nearly empty. Any of the Lake Michigan towns. These are all awesome, short-time getaways.
I think on another thread you mentioned not using your router table… maybe a three day weekend to get back into wood working a bit?
Yeah, that’s the approach I’d take. A shorter workweek is sooo much more tolerable. As a fed employee - I just entered the doldrums, where we have to wait until the end of May to get another Monday off!
My wife and I do best with 4-5 day vacations. Any more, and we start to get antsy. And If I’m just hanging around the house, I kinda feel antsy after a few days.
Of course, everyone does it differently. The guy in the office next to me is off right now for the entire month.
You are lucky that you do not have to make up work when you return. Really takes a lot of the enjoyment out of taking leave when you have to bust your ass to prepare to take it, and then your desk is a mess when you return. And trying to stay on top of things while out of the office defeats the purpose IMO.
Sounds like you are in a good spot. Congrats! Enjoy it!
Being two decades younger than you, taking a week off works best for me.
Since you’re approaching retirement you may want to try easing into that lifestyle a week or two at a time – Have you figured out what you will do when you have no daily obligations? Now is the perfect time to find out.
I haven’t put it in a spreadsheet or anything, but it sounds like you need to burn about 260 hours per year.
If I were you, I’d take a full week off per quarter, and a three day weekend every two weeks, roughly.
The winter and summer full weeks are for vacations. The spring and fall are for projects around the house.
The extra day of the three day weekends are to Have Some Goddamned Time To Myself For Once.
I’m currently in the situation China Guy describes. The money’s great but the unstated expectations are a real drag. There are weeks where I have 60 hours of fire drills, and other other weeks where I have 20 hours of fire drills and 40 hours of backlog work that I had to de-prioritize due to the fire drills. Cutting out a couple of hours early on a “slow” day really isn’t an option. We theoretically have unlimited PTO, but I’ve never taken a full week off that wasn’t interrupted by work in some way.
For the record, we max out at 360 hours; once you hit 360 you stop accruing. However, the bank rolls over from calendar year to calendar year.
I accrue 10.3 hours per 2 weeks. This is why, if I take an extra day off every 2 weeks I’m even Steven. I currently have 317 hours.
Another fun thought: I can work 4 days/3 days alternating weeks until I have approximately 16 months until retirement. At that point I can start working 3 days a week every week, burning 10 hours a paycheck from the bank. After 16 months of this, the bank is near zero and it’s time to retire.
Og willing and the creek don’t rise, of course.
mmm
