Do you take vacation days?

[Fern]

Well God yes! I use sick time as needed, and yes, i have used sick time in the past for a mental health day.

Some of my so-called vacation time is spent at home, just catching up on home maintenance stuff. It's still great to get a break from the mind-numbing routine of work.

Right now i get 1 day shy of 4 weeks, if you include our summer Fridays and personal days.

[fairy74]

Court holidays only. But since I work contract and don't get paid for vacation/sick days I try to avoid it. Currently, I'm on partial bedrest with my pregnancy so I have two days a week I cannot go into work, but laying on your left side all day is really no vacation!

[MonkeyMama]

Always!

You know my first job out of college we could take our overtime as vacation holiday or cash. Actually, maybe we had to take it as vacation originally. I remember one year I took a good 2 months off. But most of the rest of the year I was working 60-80 hours. Really, overall, wouldn't recommend it.

But my current job I get 3 weeks of vacation and I squeeze it for all it's worth. I think I was in negative vacation for a while. I now have the kind of vacations where no one calls me and I don't have to check in and follow up on work. We get plenty of personal time to care of personal things too, so vacations are vacations. I actually plan to take 2 weeks spread throughout the year and use my 3rd week just for more flexibility and personal time in the summer. All very appreciated and well needed. Since I have been off on months for maternity leave, I think they will survive if I take a few days off. Nice to work a job where other people can cover for you I guess, as we all kind of share the workload. Plus it is slow in the summer, probably would be forced to go on vacation regardless.

[Elgin526]

I take all of my vacation days (18 of them) and both my personal days (2 of them) each year. We can't bank them so it's use-it-or-lose-it. My company wants us to take time off, they feel a happy employee is a productive employee. I don't nessesarily travel when I take time off, in fact my last one week vacation I stayed at home the whole time! We usually take one trip a year and the rest I use to take long weekends and stay at home or take a day trip someplace.

I don't take my sick time unless I'm really too sick to work. As a result, in 8 years I've banked 65 days of sick leave, which is the max allowed. Soon they'll start paying me for my unused days over the 65 limit. Since they will be paying me not to call in, and I'll soon be working from home, I doubt I'll take any sick time at all, unless I'm litteraly too sick to get out of bed. I can use my banked sick time to take paid maternity, too, which is another bennifit of not calling in for "mental health days".

[Coleroo]

Originally Posted by terry1156

I keep seeing this commercial on TV that says the 26% of people never take their vacation days. Do you take your full allotment of vacation days? How about sick days? And when you do take them, what do you do? Do you really take a vacation or do you use them for other things?

Whew... not me. I DEFINATELY take them.

Our company has one of the best PTO (vacation / sick) plan banks for "paid time off" that I've ever heard of.

We earn a pro-rated amount of PTO for every hour worked. After being here for 12 months, the amount doubles. I've been here 3 years and currently earn close to 8 hours off every paycheck (im paid bi-weekly). So with 26 paychecks a year, thats right around 5 work weeks of paid vacation per year. It can be used in as little as 15 minute increments or up to your entire amount. As a member of staff, for me to use it I have to have prior written permission from my center manager (which is really easy to get) but our operators only have to give 90 minute notice to not come in, be late, or leave early.

Our banks continuously roll over year to year and the PTO never expires. We do have yearly limits that our banks can hold at any one time (like, 250 or something like that) and staff members have to have less than 80 hours in their bank at the start of every fiscal year, but thats easy to do since its so tempting to use. lol

My poor husband only got one week (!) after being there for a year...and since he is on a 3 man crew, he had to use his week last month when the 2 other men took off for their week. After being there 5 years he will get 2 weeks per year.... Gosh.

[Ima saver]

Well my husband has always been self employed, so he never gets a paid vacation. We use to take a vacation every year, but now we don't go much because we won't leave our dog. We only stay at motels that take dogs.

[BCHGRL]

I don't take vacation too often. Where is there to go when you live in paradise? I have no desire to go to a tropical location (cruise, bahamas, etc) when there is a beach five minutes from my house. I do enjoy traveling and exploring cities but with my husband being a firefighter, his schedule is not conducive to it. I try to enjoy cities when I travel there for work. For example, I've been to Orlando many times with work and stayed a day or two extra to do the tourist thing. If it is within driving distance, my mom comes with me. She hangs out by the pool all day and when I get off work we go and see the sights. Occasionally I'll take a sick day or just take a day in conjunction with the weekend.

If my husband and I do take vacation and travel, it is to his hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana. God knows I love him because there is nothing that interests me whatsoever about that place. I enjoy seeing his family but that's about it.

[nanamom]

i work 24/7 or you could say I am on vacation 24/7. Thank goodness my DH says it is the former. He does take the vacation days his company gives, as well as all personal days he is entitled to in his contract. We travel 3000 miles to see family twice a year and it isn't enough. We occasionally steal a bit of time for the 3 of us but that is rare and usually because we have to do X somewhere for church or school or he will do 4 10 hour days so we can get a bit of time together. But most of our vacation is devoted to GA and NC where those we love live.

[Ini_g]

Wow. Vacations are very important, I love money... but I love more my life!

[rob62521]

I don't get vacation per se as a teacher, but we do get one personal day a year which if you don't use, acrues to two. I was just thinking the last time I used a personal day was over 10 years ago for dh's 50th birthday so I could set up for the party. The problem with taking time off as a teacher is you have to have substitute plans in place before you can leave and then like someone said, make up for the work. Usually that means grading two days' worth of papers in one evening instead of just one set, plus dealing with whatever problems weren't resolved the day with the substitute, depending on the quality of the sub.

Yes, I know many of you are saying, well, you are a teacher and you have the summer off. Well, yes, technically, but my state requires in order to keep our teaching certificates that we do lots of professional development. For many of us, doing the pd during the year is too difficult, so we spend a big chunk of the summer taking classes to keep updated.

[rduell]

DH definitely takes all of his days each year and is usually running short at the end of the year. He usually spends the vacation days working on house projects.

I take all of my days throughout the year; a day here and a day there. My sick days (12 a year) can accumulte to 60 so those I try to not use so that I have them if neeed later on.

[Frugalicious]

Me and my Dh both get 3 weeks each of sick and vacation days.
We also get other holiday 12 I think during the year.

I love to take time off, but we also can sell back all our time too.
I did that last year to pay off credit card debt.

[aurielle]

Right now I get 3 weeks paid vacation/year, 3 personal days/year and one sick day/month. They are accrued except for the personal days, you get 3 in January and have to use them or lose them by the end of the year. I use about 2 weeks/year and a day here and there of vacation, and burn up the 3 personal days. I take a week's vacation at a time twice a year and I usually stay at home and catch up on house stuff. DH only gets one week/year combined vacation/sick so we really don't get to travel much. I keep telling him he needs to get a job with better time off bennies.

We can accrue unlimited sick days and for me right now 320 vacation hours.

I take time off when I'm sick. My job demands alot of concentration and good judgement, which isn't there when I'm not feeling well. It's better to take the time off than make bad errors.

[Diolla]

I taje vacation when I need to for special occasions and stuff, I take sick leave for doctors appts for me and DS but for the past 2 years I have been trying to limit it and build up 6 months of combined sick/vacation leave since my long term disability doesn't kick in until after 6 months. Only 3 months of vacation time and 6 months of sick leave can roll over to the next year so I will have to take it eventually. I only have about 6 weeks saved so far so it will be awhile.

This year we are taking a vacation the week before Memorial Day. I will have to use 4 days vacation and my personal leave day but I will get 10 days of Vacation for those 5 days and I want to take a real vacation for a change (Disney World YEAH!!)

We only get 1.25 days per month (at 5 years) going up to 1.5 at 10 years so it doesn;t accrue all that fast.

[carsensejoe]

i live for days off