PTO Hacks: The Strategy Behind Boosting Your Vacation Time
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Here's your Money Briefing for Wednesday, January 10th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal.
How many paid vacation days does the average U.S. worker get and why does it matter?
The average American worker who's been with a company for five years gets 15 paid vacation days in a year. But with some careful planning, those 15 days can feel a lot longer.
We have a lot of federal holidays to play with. If you do it just right, if you don't have to share any of those days with other colleagues, you could have up to 50 days of extended break time, plotting your vacation days just right.
Vanessa Furmans from the WSJ's Careers and Workplace team will join us after the break.
The new year means a new set of PTO or vacation days to take from work. Vanessa Furman is deputy bureau chief of WSJ's careers and workplace team, and she joins me to discuss the importance of having a strategy behind choosing your time off. So, Vanessa, we've been back at work for barely two weeks. Why is it important that we talk about vacation days already?
Why should you start planning your PTO at the beginning of the year?
It just really pays to have a strategy. We only get so many vacation days a year, some of us more than others, of course. It's very easy to let those days fritter away, or you could take them and feel like you never really got away at all. And then you have colleagues who you might have to share vacation days with. So it pays to get there early and start planning.
What's the average number of days people typically get?
Compared to other countries, or at least European countries, it's not that much. For people who've had a bit of tenure at a company, say five years, it's about 15 days, which is not bad, but it certainly isn't a month. But with those even 15 days, you can plan a couple of really good breaks and also a few long weekends and the occasional personal days.
So let's talk about ways to capitalize on your paid time off or as some people in social media videos say, hack your PTO. First, nothing beats a week-long vacation from work, right?
No. I've come to learn in reporting this story, and I thought I knew this already, but I realized I didn't. At least a week-long vacation is really essential. In fact, if you can, it's really essential you do that at least two times a year. And by that, I mean five days bracketed by two weekends so that you really have a nine-day stretch.
What does research say about the health benefits of taking week‑long vacations?
And there's a lot of science that backs up why you should take a little longer vacation. In terms of health benefits, we really don't see the peak health benefits of taking time off until around the eighth day. And in fact, a study that was published just this last year by researchers at the University of South Australia in Adelaide that showed that that if you take at least a week-long vacation, say one to two weeks, then the after effects, the positive benefits, tend to last longer than if you took a vacation either for a shorter period amount of time or a longer amount of time.
I don't know anybody who can take two weeks off from work. They're pretty lucky.
Yeah, well, I think it's a good goal to shoot for.
So if somebody doesn't take a week-long vacation, one option could be maybe a long weekend. But there's a conundrum there, which is, do you take the Friday off or do you take the Monday off?
Yeah, that was another thing I thought was interesting. In talking to some of the people I did for this story, and I would say they were people, not necessarily all scientists, but people who have thought about how to strategize this, there's a really good case to be made for taking Mondays off. A lot of us think, let's start the weekend early, take the Friday off. You get to get going all that much sooner. But Fridays, after doing this reporting, are kind of overrated.
Should you take a Friday or a Monday for a long weekend to maximize rest?
First of all, there's the delayed gratification of taking the Monday off. So come Sunday night, you've still got another day off. Second of all, the cadence of the work week works in favor of taking the Monday off. If you take the Friday off, a lot of times you tend to then try to pack in the whole week's worth of work Monday through Thursday, which leads to a bit more stress leading up to the vacation.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–0:11
2
How many paid vacation days does the average U.S. worker get and why does it matter?
0:11–1:21
3
Why should you start planning your PTO at the beginning of the year?
1:21–2:41
4
What does research say about the health benefits of taking week‑long vacations?
2:41–4:01
5
Should you take a Friday or a Monday for a long weekend to maximize rest?
4:01–5:41
6
Can taking more vacation days actually help your career progression?
5:41–6:53
7
How can you combine federal holidays with PTO to create extended breaks?
6:53–8:09
8
What common mistakes do people make when mapping out PTO and how can you avoid them?
8:09–8:16
Speakers
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