How to Get the Most Vacation Days with Your PTO
Here’s a photo of me in Hong Kong awhile back. I don’t actually get PTO since I work for myself. I can work from anywhere though, so I guess that’s kinda a plus…
Did you know that the United States is the second worst country in the world for paid vacation days? Yes really. the average American gets only 10 paid vacation days a year. The only country worse than us is Micronesia…which I too just had to google. Believe it or not, Iran has the most paid time off with 53 days a year. In fact, medieval European peasants had WAY leisure time off than you. It’s estimated they only worked about 150 days a year.
We’re lied to our entire lives by US propaganda telling us that we live in the best country in the world, yet we’re the only developed nation that doesn’t have universal healthcare. And while most other nations have free or nearly free university, we make our young adults go into a lifetime of debt so they can get an education. There are so many things that are broken in this country, including the amount of paid time off we get.
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Luckily though there are some fucking genius people out there breaking down exactly how to get the most out of the meager vacation days you do get. The key is to schedule your PTO days around federal holidays and long weekends.
As Natalie B. Compton points out in the Washington Post, these are the best ways to use your PTO in 2024:
- Jan. 2-5 = four vacation days becomes 9 days off.
- Jan. 16-19 = four vacation days becomes 9 days off.
- Feb. 20-23 = four vacation days becomes 9 days off.
- May 28-31 = four vacation days becomes 9 days off.
- June 20-21 = two vacation days becomes 5 days off.
- July 1-3 and 5 = four vacation days becomes 9 days off.
- Sept. 3-6 =four vacation days becomes 9 days off.
- Nov. 12-15 = four vacation days becomes 9 days off.
- Nov. 25-27 and 29 = four vacation days becomes 9 days off.
- Dec. 23-24, 26-27, 30-31 = six vacation days becomes 12 days off.
Obviously this won’t work fore everyone; I’ve actually never gotten a paid day off in my life since I’ve only worked for myself and for bars and restaurants. And people in the hospitality and health care industries are often required to work when everyone else has the day off.
But hopefully you can use some of the above math to get some extra days off this year. You deserve it, and don’t let you boss tell you you don’t.
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