Vacation Time...How much do you have?

Bonuses are based on profit margins for the year which is completely out of my control. Some years they are very good some years they are not. Salary is average for what I do but could be better.

MurrayM said:

Egad. Incentive bonuses? Is the salary high enough to make up for it? (Don't have to answer if you don't want to...just curious)

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I’m 55 and had 4 weeks at my last job. Im starting a new one January 1 and will be back to 3 weeks off. I got down to the boat in Florida 7-8 times a year, often just for long weekends.

Very true.
Christmas Eve and New Years Eve are not holidays for us. If you take off you are expected to take a vacation day

BTW BandB I like the way you think. Are you hiring?

BandB said:

Unfortunately quite typical of many US employers. Less holidays than you're use to as well.

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Simi 60 said:

4 weeks a year is standard in Australia.(we also get paid sick days , compassionate leave and free healthcare)
When we were working we used to get our 4 week compulsory holiday...

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Not sure if it still applies but holiday pay here used include a bonus 15% loading. It was/is to compensate for overtime pay foregone, and applied whether or not you ever worked overtime.

I retired Travis Magee style when I was 52. I cruised until I needed more money, worked some more, then retired again, and cruised some more, and then worked again. Now, I am 60 and about to pull the trigger on my third retirement to go cruising again!

We went for about a year the last two times. It will probably be considerably longer this time!

BandB said:

An interesting question. We have another thread on Millennials. We've talked about time and money being essential to boating. Well, Millennials in the US typically only have two weeks vacation a year. In other countries they have far more. I feel two weeks isn't adequate and that more is merited.



One other problem is starting over with new employers so you build up at one employer but lose it when you change jobs.



Some vacation numbers.



24% of private industry workers in the US receive no paid vacation.



Average number of days based on years service with employer:



1-5 years 10 days

5-10 years 14 days

10-20 years 17 days

20+years 19 days.



Would love to hear from other countries plus what you all think is reasonable.

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I got 6 weeks after 30 years. But...

I could not take any time off from June-September, except for a couple of times. And, I only took three vacations of a 4 weeks or more. So now I’m retired.

I'm 46 I got 4 weeks after 10 years, around 10 paid holidays, 24 hours of paid personal time . I have had this for the last 8 years . I also work every other weekend .

the problem is my wife has been at her job for 20 years and only get 2 weeks off a year.she has to take it a week at a time. and it can't be consecutive. so we take the boat out on most 3 day weekends .
the boat is a little over 3 hours away . and I burned about a week this year on hurricane prep and after hurricane cleanup but I still have a boat.

63 years old, same company for 33 years. I accrue vacation at the rate of 8 weeks per year and can carry it over but max out at 360 hours/9 weeks. 6 paid holidays and 4 "Use them or lose them" personal days which renew on Jan 1 every year. In theory I could take the last 4 work days of 2018 and the first 4 days of 2019 as my "personal days" and string them into another 2 week vacation. Also accrue sick days at a rate of 10 per year.

I guess that, compared to some, it is pretty good but I have paid for it by working 33 years in a business that is 24/7 with calls/issues that can and do come at any time vacation or not. Being the top person in the south, there isn't anyone to handle what I do when I am off. I don't call it vacation. I call it "work deferral" as the majority of my work will be waiting for me when I come back. This is why I try to handle the 75-100 daily emails while I am off which drives my wife crazy.

Someone mentioned paying someone a higher salary if they don't take healthcare vs. lower pay to someone who does. Fraught with danger and not a good thing to do as it will end up in court soon or later.

When I was working I never took vacation although technically I had 22 days a year and could have taken from mid-May to the beginning of September off every year. During the summer months my job was to do research of my choosing at my pace, so I could easily have taken left for the summer and simply thought about things. However, during my career my work was my life. On top of that my wife could never find time to get away from her job. So we worked and used the boat on weekends. Fortunately we retired before cell phones became wide spread. He e-mails were bad enough since they piled up whenever we were away from the computer and made for a stressful Sunday evening after a weekend on the boat (more for my wife than for me). After retirement I was bored in the winter (no boating in Maine in the winter), so I started a small business to keep myself busy. Over time it gradually took more and more time until I finally decided to end it. It took 10 months to finish my backlog of work, but I have been free of it for two years now.

Sometimes I think I work harder at retirement than I did running a successful business. This cruising thing 7-9 months a year is hard work!

BandB said:

Some vacation numbers.

Average number of days based on years service with employer:

1-5 years 10 days
5-10 years 14 days
10-20 years 17 days
20+years 19 days.

Would love to hear from other countries plus what you all think is reasonable.

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I would say from my experience as a mechanical engineer in Ct that what you listed is pretty close.
5-10 years is more typically 15 days
10-20 would be 20 days
20+ would be 25 days

However it is also typical that some corporations start changing policy to make the service time LONGER ie. you now need 8 years to get 15 days, etc.

I have seen that a couple of times and when that happens good people who are affected leave the company.


I also will say that for most of my career as an engineer a typical work day was 10 hours. Sometimes more.

Just friday my company announced 5 more vacation days added to existing. The numbers in the last post was our existing accrual. I guess the low unemployment numbers made that change attractive for management.

diver dave said:

Just friday my company announced 5 more vacation days added to existing. The numbers in the last post was our existing accrual. I guess the low unemployment numbers made that change attractive for management.

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I think employers have often overestimated the cost of vacation time. When planned well and coordinated with others it's not as much as they thought and it's at least partially offset by energetic happy employees.

I was guilty of shortsightedness as an employee. I thought I just couldn't get it all done in 40 hours and while taking vacation. However, when I got married, I stopped working weekends and late into the night and I started taking every day of vacation and every holiday. I was shocked to find out how much more productive I was and that I still got all the work done and in many cases more and better. There's some human nature. If I can work exceptionally hard and leave at 5:00, then I do so. However, if I know I'm going to be there late anyway, I tend to let up and stay even later. Same on weekends. If you know you can work with great energy on Friday and not work Saturday, you do so. But if one is going to work on Saturday, then Friday afternoon often is very unproductive as it's like it's not going to make a difference. So what, they work 6 hours instead of 4 on Saturday. I had no personal life before marriage but after there was always the incentive to get home to be with my wife. Amazing what that does for productivity.

diver dave said:

Just friday my company announced 5 more vacation days added to existing. The numbers in the last post was our existing accrual. I guess the low unemployment numbers made that change attractive for management.

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Bingo. Low unemployment coupled with millennial attitudes towards work/life balance have brought about a big increase in our hourly employee benefits. Health, college, legal assistance, etc. are all taking a huge leap forward in 2019 and accompanied by a lot of hoop-la about "Look how much we care about our employees". Um, ok, we are not trying to help anyone but shareholders. Definitely not the result of some new, benevolent, way of thinking. As soon as unemployment goes back up we will curtail them.

BandB said:

Wifey B: Well vote in the poll.

I'm sorry, but that's just so wrong to have worked hard all your life and at 63 you only get 2 weeks vacation a year.

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What is significant is how long this gentleman worked for this company, not his nominal age.

In my work context, having everybody eligable for at least 3 weeks holidays means we have an adequate supply of trained temporary workers who get enough work to stick around. They come in real handy when someone gets sick or injured, and slide seamlessly into jobs when people move or retire.

I also get 6 personal days a year, for things like taking care of a sick child when my wife is out of town, or taking my elderly father to an appointment when he was alive. I used one this week for day surgery, so I didn’t lose a days pay while being in the hospital.

The day surgery was ‘free’ as well, but I do pay about $22.00 a month into a Provincial government medical plan for our family.

Less stress = happier Life.

MurrayM said:

Less stress = happier Life.

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= better employee too.

Retired ! That working just gets in the way of fun...2.5 hour drive to the boat. We go for 3-4 days during the week most weeks in the summer. Less jetskis, almost nobody around compared to the weekends. Get to pick the weather.
Plus when we worked we always had to decide whether to go to the boat, or do the activities running on the weekend.

As a supervisor, no one covered me for the time on vacation. Supervising between 4 to 12 auditors, time needed to review their work piled up quickly. The benefits of vacation mostly evaporated dealing with the backlog.

Still having work related nightmares. 60. Full time retired for 5 years now. Snowbirding it with 2 dirt homes. 6 months in NJ then 6 months in FL part-time cruising with the Monk docked 5 minutes away.

“Our plans cover many hundreds of workers making $15-20/hour ($30k-40k per year“

Seems like an opportunity to put your tax savings to work for those that do for you?

I'm 41 and medically retired. I do work light jobs as they come up.

High Wire said:

Still having work related nightmares. 60. Full time retired for 5 years now. Snowbirding it with 2 dirt homes. 6 months in NJ then 6 months in FL part-time cruising with the Monk docked 5 minutes away.

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Still, 16 years after retirement, the majority of my dreams concern me un-retiring and facing the resulting frustrations!

Vac time, how much do you have

Both retired but have a small business raising koi carp and peafowl ( koitogo.com) so keep pretty busy but can get away 3 or 4 days at a time for short cruising, boat at bottom of garden.

This is an interesting thread - for me down here anyway- 4 weeks annual leave is the norm in Aus, irrespective of time with the company ( I think it is an industrial law?) and for long service, after 10 years - 2 months. Both annual and long service leave is taken at normal rates of pay. I guess we are the lucky country although I think many European countries are similar.

Personally, its irrelevant. I retired from full time work 4 years ago and now work occasionally to allow me to indulge my hobbies - boat and old cars.

I work full time, of retirement age, own a trawler an hours drive away- getting boat and finances in order for official retirement in a couple of years or so—we go to it almost every weekend and spend night at the marina- love our current private marina with all the social connections—also try to take as many mini trips as possible on the hook or at a marina— will be taking multiple week long trips during the year— since I have been at my company over 30 years I get 29 days of vacation and 10 paid holidays- so lots of time off to enjoy — I like having the trawler an hour away in a different city, it is basically our second home- plan on keeping our current land based home even in retirement- to mix it up[emoji41]

62 and I get 4 weeks. I am real close (well 3 years) away from retiring and looping!!

I currently own a north river 27 for fishing in a local lake and to take out on the SF bay on occasion. Planning on selling this boat to purchase a trawler after retirement.

24 years with my company and I get 30 days( 6 weeks) per year.

We live aboard, and did so for 5 years before I retired. My commute was less than 5 minutes .That allowed us to be underway by 5:00 every Friday and we could be underway all or part of nearly 200 days a year. I'm now mostly retired but work about 1 or 2 days a week from the boat. Cristina works full time from the boat so we now cruise full time. If I keep the throttle below 2200 she can make $$ faster than I spend them.

Brisyboy said:

This is an interesting thread - for me down here anyway- 4 weeks annual leave is the norm in Aus, irrespective of time with the company ( I think it is an industrial law?) and for long service, after 10 years - 2 months. Both annual and long service leave is taken at normal rates of pay. I guess we are the lucky country although I think many European countries are similar.

Personally, its irrelevant. I retired from full time work 4 years ago and now work occasionally to allow me to indulge my hobbies - boat and old cars.

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Just for information, here are the minimums by law by country for some of the countries represented here.

Listed are paid vacation plus paid holidays and total based on 5 day weeks so divide by 5 to get weeks.

Australia 20+10=30
France 25+11=36
Germany 20+9=29
Italy 20+12=32
New Zealand 20+11=31
UK 20+8=28
US 0+0=0

Canada varies by province and can be 10 to 20 + 6 to 10 so total 16 to 30

Obviously the loser is the US
The winner is Iran at 26+27=53