Too late: Saving vacation days until December may not be the best strategy

Remember back in January, when your manager asked you to put in your vacation days for the entire year? Sure, you had no idea what you were doing at the time, much less six months into the future, so you figured you’d hold off on making plans. Too bad your coworkers didn’t. In fact, they planned ahead and scheduled trips throughout the summer, which is when you were planning on traveling. No big deal, you thought at the time, you’ll just take time off at the end of the year.

“I don’t understand the delayed time off,” says Richard Lowell, a workplace consultant in Providence, Rhode Island. “And don’t use your coworkers’ vacation time as an excuse. Just talk to your boss if there’s a conflict. Nine times out of 10, you’ll both figure something out.”

Instead, Lowell says it’s practically common practice for some employees to scramble to use their personal days at the end of the year. “Got to squeeze them in,” says Lowell. “It’s lack of planning, really, and lack of communicating with others in your workplace.”

Bonnie Merifold, a career coach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, says workers

stuck at home this year can avoid the

December rush in the future by putting some thought into using their days off wisely throughout the year. “Far too many of us think that we have to be on vacation in order to take a day off of work,” says Merifold. “In reality, we should be lining

up our days off throughout the year and we should be using them for a variety of reasons.”

Although Merifold acknowledges the usual day-off prompts, like doctor appointments and wait-at-home visits for the cable installer, she says it’s important to use your time off throughout the year to “renew and refresh,” a concept she hasn’t always endorsed.

“When I worked in HR, the term ‘me-time’ started to get more popular, as in ‘I’m taking tomorrow off for some me-time,’” Merifold says. “We’d have employees take personal days so they could do small favors for themselves, like manicures and spa days. It used to infuriate me but my boss was a big proponent of the concept. She would encourage people to be more selfish with their time. Pretty soon after, it became

obvious that the idea of the me-time day was important.”