How will you use up vacation days this year?

[shaynaatl]

I assume many of you have cancelled vacation plans for this year. If you don't expect to reschedule them, how do you think you will be using up your 2020 vacation days? Just a bunch of staycations? 

[keweenawlove]

I have to take one day a week off indefinitely so I've been doing a morning run in places in the city I normally don't take the time to drive to once or twice a week.

When we feel okay doing it, we'll most likely use most of our time visiting our parents who live 5 and 6 hour drives away in northern MI. We can make it there on one tank of gas so I'm assuming we'll be able to make that happen at some point in the summer. There's a lot of isolated areas up there we love to explore.

SIL is currently planning to get married in Montana in August. They're going to make the final call by June first so that will be a discussion if we have to figure that out.

[k3am]

We get the opportunity to sell back up to 5 vacation days each year in December. This year, they're also giving us the opportunity to sell back an additional 5 days in July, which I'll be doing.

I plan on selling back at both opportunities and taking a two separate weeks to do.. something. Anything that isn't working. Assuming I can.

[Mrs.flang]

I get 4 weeks vaca plus I have one week of carry over from last year (max carry over of 1 week per year). We're being forced to take 2 days before 5/31 and an additional 2 weeks before 9/7, so that will eat up a bunch. I'll save one week if I can to carry over to next year.

I had hoped we'd be able to do a local-ish beach vacation (2-5 hour drive depending on where). If that doesn't work, we have floated the idea of renting an RV and figuring out some kind of scenic camping route which could hopefully be done with minimal contact. If daycare reopens, I'm definitely taking a few days to recover at home ALONE.

[acr]

Not feeling the pull of the computer to work is vacation enough for me right now.

[sadlebred]

I'm going to take quite a few Fridays or random Wednesdays off starting in August.

[trissie18]

We are taking a week off in July to replace the roof on my parents house. We are also renovating the house my parents bought for my brothers' to rent so we will probably take long weekends to get more time in on that instead of the every other weekends between October and April we have been doing for the last five years. We are so close that it will be nice to finish it this summer and get our weekends back.

[RockNVoll]

I've been trying to figure this out but haven't had any great ideas. My company is allowing us to carry over 15 days into 2021 (vs. the usual five) but I still have to use up 10 days this year plus a couple of personal days. If it ever finally warms up here I think any trails, beaches, etc. are going to be overrun so I can't see any good options. Seems a waste to use them just sitting in the backyard.

[hocus2]

So the plan now is I will take the first week of school off as I expect it to be nuts. Then I plan to take the last week of the year off and a few other days here and there.

[goldengirlz]

We have unlimited vacation time so it’s a bit different. I have a few things I may still want to take off for, including a wedding in August and the Jewish holidays in September. (I have no idea if I’ll be traveling for either, but I’m still banking the days, just in case.)

I will say I also took off a random day recently and it was awesome. I left DD home with DH and just ... left the house. By myself. I drove to a park and put my headphones in, and there was no one bothering me or complaining of boredom. And then I walked for some time, stopping for a matcha and to buy some specialty foods at this cute little gourmet shop.

It was just a really nice way to spend a few hours. I was skeptical about whether it would be “worth it,” but as someone who NEEDS alone-time and gets very little of it these days, I would totally do that again.

[steamboat185]

We might rent a house an hour or two from our house later in the summer. We’d bring food and leave at any sign of sickness, but who knows. I’ve been taking 1/2 a day off a week to help DD with school and go for a hike with the kids midweek to avoid the weekend crowds.

[ohgillian]

Mine'll just roll to next year.

[Deleted]

We can carry over 100 hours, and right now I have 150. I'm sure by mid-December (roll-over deadline) I can use a week even if it's just a day here or there.

[gt7301b]

I've been taking off Fridays when my husband has a ton of work to do and it has been fabulous. I will continue just taking off random days for the foreseeable future. We can use sick leave for dependent care right now, so I will just carry my vacation days over.

[agnes]

No plans at the moment. We had to cancel a couple trips.

Long story short, the way our hours are banked changed this year, so I'm trying to build up my vacation time and then I will be cashing out some of my old non-discretional annual leave.

[melmel48]

We have to earn ours at less than a day a month. I am furloughed through June 29th and our fiscal year starts July 1st. So, I think I can roll over what I had; I don't even know how much I had in my bank. Maybe 1 day? If I go away for a long weekend in August I will need one day. I will need 3 days in September if the Boston Marathon actually happens, so those will go unpaid as I won't have enough earned in time.

[aprilsails]

@@@

I’m on maternity leave until September 14th upon which I will have 6 weeks of accrued vacation to use up before the new year.

My plans will depend on what is happening with schools. I may take an extra week at the start before I return, and then either take off one day per week or save them in case something happens with the schools and pay them out come Jan. 1st.

We are hopeful we can use DH’s vacation time to go to the cottage for a couple of weeks this summer with my parents. If not, he will start booking off one day a week as well.

[ssmjlm]

We have a beach house in an area that is now open. So I plan to still take my week of July 4th and probably some long weekends here and there esp if there's no camp. (ETA: we're still planning to social distance even there and face masks are required in stores, so mostly it's just for a change of scenery and we have a pool.)

With telework in the foreseeable future, I'm expecting us to probably end up there a majority of the summer.

I have over 120 hours of use or lose and management has said upfront that you need to take your leave, even if it's to just not sit in front of the computer. Restoring leave is a PITA and rarely gets approved.

I usually take a few days around Thanksgiving and then a week around the holidays.

[wildrice]

My vacation rolls over and I've only been at my employer for about 15 months, so I am not yet at a point where I have to use it or lose it (you can't roll over more than 400 hours- I think I have around 115 saved up so will have closer to 200 by the end of the year if I don't use any).

If I had to use vacation I think I'd do 1 day per week for however many weeks it took. Work has been busy and I could easily find things to do around the house (or TV to watch!) for 1 extra day. Hopefully later in the year things will relax a little where maybe I'd do a day hiking trip or drive to a beach or something.

[tripleshot]

I have 3.75 weeks available right now. I’ll probably take off the week of christmas like I normally do. And maybe a day around thanksgiving. Other than that, I’m not sure. I’m high risk so I won’t be going many places this year. I’ll probably just take a few Fridays off to get a long weekend. I can carryover everything for 1 year, but have to use the excess by the following year so I need to be careful not to lose any.

[brooke77]

I can roll over 40. I will still have about 4 weeks to use.

I will take a week in July and another in October. The rest will likely be scattered long weekends here and there. I had been saving them for two, two week international trips. Now I have been tentatively saving them to hear about upcoming layoffs expected in the fall. If laid off, I would get them paid out which would be more helpful than time off.

ETA - No actual plans for what we will DO with the time off.

[Cappy]

I need to revise my plan this week. I normally take Fridays off in the summer because the camp DD1 goes to is closed Fridays. I may still do Fridays off in the same fashion. I also had planned for a week off in July. My workload is very low in the summer (especially now) so I may go down to 3 days a week but I'd rather keep that week vacation and do a family camping trip (if safe).

[mbcdefg]

I guess I’ll just take random days off where I don’t look at my computer. My teacher H is wfh for the rest of the school year so once he’s done for the year we can take a ride and maybe go to a park or sit on a beach if we can find one that isn’t crowded.

@@@

I have a 3 year old. When we were sending her to daycare I’d take a lot of my vacation days as “me days” where I’d just lounge around the house, go shopping, get lunch, nap, whatever. While I’m happy to spend time with her, it also don’t feel like much of a break since I have to be “on” with her the whole day (aside from her nap time) so I haven’t really thought about taking any vacation days since I won’t get to relax much.

[janegold]

Mine's all going toward my mat leave, which would have been the case anyway. But if it weren't for that, I would use them to go to our cottage - which is within a 2 hour drive - later this summer, assuming that is feasible and safe. I am trying to take some half day breaks away from the laptop here and there too, but I've been calling that "personal time" - which is unlimited for us - rather than vacation.

[lolalolalola]

We will go to a vacation home in a nearby lake town for a couple weeks this summer and will do a few camping trips as well.

[oswin]

I rolled over I think 12 days from last year, so I have a lot this year. Because my kids are home for the indefinite future, I'm more or less planning to take off every Wednesday for the rest of the year, with a few exceptions.

[kershnic]

We went on vacation in March just before all this started. We were supposed to travel in July, but I’m now considering an air bnb on a lake with driving distance for later in summer. And we had planned to travel at Christmas... I haven’t gotten so far as wondering whether that can happen or not. So basically I’m still hoarding days like usual.

[Covergirl82]

I get 15 days per year (renews on my anniversary date of Feb. 3). I've used one day so far and have 12 more days planned. We have a weeklong WDW trip planned in August (unless we have to reschedule it again, most likely before my anniversary date) and then two long weekends this summer (4th of July being one) and a few days around the holidays. I'm keeping 2 days for last-minute plans or to roll over to next year.

DH has PTO and gets 8 hours per pay period. He doesn't have a lot in his bank right now due to having only been employed a year and he's taken some time off (maybe the equivalent of 12 or 13 days) since he started. They just mandated that employees each take 40 hours (5 days) of PTO between last week and the 4th of July to reduce the financial burden to the organization. (Employees can sell up to 80 hours of PTO each year during open enrollment, and it's paid out in late January.) It remains to be seen if they will allow PTO payouts this Fall.

[ribollita]

We are doing a few road trips (allowed legally at this point). We are embracing exploring our local area instead of our usual flight vacations.

[krystee]

I have taken two days off since the pandemic started—one to give the kids some focused attention because they had been neglected with my work and one to go to a local river walk and get an amazing takeout burger that I ate in a parking lot. Over the summer, I extended 4th of July weekend because it’s also my birthday week. I will spend one day with our kids in the pool and one day floating by myself in the pool with a fruity drink and a book.

At some point, we will go to my parents’ cabin in northern Wisconsin and take a few days for that.

And then I will probably turn Thanksgiving week and Christmas week into whole weeks off.