If you live in the United States you may be familiar with the low amount of PTO (paid time off) and company paid holidays American workers have. This was, and still is, a very difficult thing for me to understand and accept. If you’ve ever felt guilty for taking time off from work even for a day then I’ve got you covered in figuring out how to stretch your PTO and vacation days for 2024.
By maximizing your vacation days, we try to smartly use up our days around company paid vacation days to stretch them into four or even five days off without using a big chunk of our hard earned vacation time.
This is how we do it:
Lets say that your company offers you 9 paid vacation days per year:
| New Years day, January 1 | Memorial day (last Monday in May) |
| Independence day, July 4 | Labor day (first Monday in September) |
| Thanksgiving day (fourth Thursday in November) | Friday after Thanksgiving Day |
| Christmas Eve, December 24 | Christmas day, December 25 |
| New Years Eve, December 31 |
In the U.S. most companies have a policy that allows employees to accrue Paid Time Off. This is dependent from company to company but for this purpose lets assume your company policy outlines that and employee accrues 4.62 hours bi-weekly from your date of hire. The maximum amount of paid time off you can accrue is 15 days, or 120 hours if hired in the beginning of January.
Therefore, let’s work with the idea that it’s the new year so you automatically will accrue 15 days of PTO for the 2024 year. Now it’s time to get to the fun part, figuring out how to strategically use your PTO hours to get the most of time off based on company paid holidays and use as little as your hard earned hours but have week long vacations.
*Just note that this is just an idea. Vacation requests are dependent on an individual basis and the company you work for. Your request(s) may or may not be approved.*
To maximize your accrued PTO hours and create 4-5 day long weekends around company paid holidays, you can strategically plan your vacations. Here’s a suggested plan:
Company Paid Holiday: January 1
Request the following day(s) off: December 31 (New Year’s Eve) And January 2nd
Vacation: A 4-day weekend around New Years
PTO Used: 2 PTO days
Company Paid Holiday: Memorial Day (Last Monday of May)
Request the following day(s) off: The Friday before Memorial Day (last Friday of May)
Vacation: Another 4-day vacation from Friday to Monday
PTO Used: 1 PTO day
Company Paid Holiday: Independence Day, July 4th
*July 4th falls on a Thursday, a weekday in 2024
Request the following day(s) off: Wednesday July 3
Vacation: A mid week 5-day vacation from Wednesday to Sunday
PTO Used: 1 PTO day
Company Paid Holiday: Labor Day (First Monday of September)
*Labor Day is September 2nd in 2024
Request the following day(s) off: Friday August 30
Vacation: A 4-day vacation from Friday to Monday
PTO Used: 1 PTO day
Company Paid Holiday: Thanksgiving (4th Thursday in November)
*Thanksgiving Day falls on November 28th, 2024
Request the following day(s) off: Wednesday November 27th & Friday November 29th
Vacation: A mid week 5-day vacation
PTO Used: 2 PTO Days
Some companies will give employees a paid holiday the Friday after Thanksgiving. If this is the case for you, you can do the following:
Company Paid Holiday: Friday November 29th
Request the following day(s) off: None – assuming you did not take the Wednesday November 27th off
Vacation: A 4-day vacation from Thursday to Sunday
PTO Used: 1 PTO day
Company Paid Holiday: Tuesday December 24th, Christmas Eve
Request the following day(s) off: Monday, December 23 & Wednesday December 26th
Vacation: A 5 day vacation from Saturday to Wednesday
PTO Used: 2 PTO days
Another option you may have is if your company gives employees the day after Christmas, December 26th as a paid holiday, you can still consider the above plan and use one day less of your paid time off.
Company Paid Holiday: Tuesday December, 31, New Year’s Eve
Request the following day(s) off: Monday December 30
Vacation: A 6-day vacation from Saturday to Thursday
PTO Used: 1 PTO day
If your company does NOT offer you a company paid holiday on New Year’s Eve, December 31st, you can use the following plan:
Request the following day(s) off: Monday December 30th and Tuesday December 31st
Vacation: A 6-day vacation
PTO Used: 2 PTO days
Keep in mind that some companies may frown upon employees taking off around both Christmas and New Years so please be mindful and er on the suggestion to only work around one of these holidays to take vacation and consider that your other colleagues may have similar requests, however. Some companies also offer the week after Christmas off as well. If that’s the case, you’re one of the lucky ones and you’ll be able to save some of your Paid Time Off to roll over into the new year.
Overall, you’d be using around 10 – 13 PTO days around company paid holidays. You may receive some push back around some of these requests, so please be mindful of your current work situation, workload, management and other colleagues’ plans.
