people who travel often & for over a week, how do you get so much vacation time at work? or is your job flexible?

oh man I could never work 6 12s in a row!! But that flexibility is so nice!

Every three weeks I’ll work Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and then the next week Thursday, Friday, Saturday to get my 8 days off!
I can do it once but not multiple times in a row. I'd go nuts. That's why I'm burning PTO. So much so the CEO of my hospital asked me if I was planning on quitting. "Uhm, no. I'm just not able to do three 6 day stints over the course of 8 weeks while homeschooling my daughter."
The homeschool is why I needed time off. It's our first year so I needed the first week to get my child settled in. And this week is our first week of tests. My last round is a friend coming to WDW for vacation so I needed time to visit.
 
I work a 24/48 schedule(work 24 hours then off for 48 hours) with the option of working Saturdays for overtime or just taking Saturdays off. If I take a Saturday off, that gives me a five day weekend(Thursday thru Tuesday off.) I'm fortunate enough that my supervisors very seldom deny my requests for time off due to the amount of overtime I work. All in all....I accumulate 6 weeks of vacation guaranteed per year but I currently have 13 weeks built up due to the overtime I've worked. And yes, that carries over every year.
 
On the how do you afford it ?

Well, the first 10 years we were married, we didn't. If we went on vacation, it was because my parents rented a beach house for the whole family and we only had to contribute to groceries and drive down there. And for the next 15 years or so, we put money aside from our income tax refunds to pay for one decent trip a year. Orlando was an every 3 year thing, and we rotated whether it was Universal or Disney. By this point, my parents owned enough time share points that we could book a full week in a 2 BR condo at no cost to us - real deal changer, especially the years I didn't work.

Now, we've been married 31 years, I went back to work at the company I worked at before, in the same job, and got my same salary and benefits back. The boys are out of HS, one with a decent job and one with college scholarships. Dh and I can now do some extra travel on top of the big family vacation. It's the first time in my life that we are taking 2-3 trips a year, and it's amazing. But it's not the way it always was; we had to work up to it. And it takes a back seat to more important things, like funding our 401k plans, because we want to travel when we're retired.

One of my 35-ish colleagues comes to WDW twice a year, sometimes 3x a year. She and her hubby drive old cars, don't eat out much, and don't buy stuff all the time. They live very simply, and put 100% of their bonus money toward Disney. Period. Now their kids are getting older, and have more expensive things going on, so they are cutting Disney to one trip a year.

So realize that so much depends on where you are in your family's life cycle. What we can do now was unthinkable in the beginning of our marriage, even though at least one of us always had a good professional job. I'm now explaining this to our youngest, who is starting to realize that even at $14 an hour and 36 hours a week, he can pretty much only afford to keep himself afloat. He's just starting where we started, and it's an eye opener. Good for him, we still fund the big family vacation once a year, just like my parents did for us and my sibs.
 


My vacation days are not separate from sick time. Everything just goes in one big pot of PTO, and I rarely get sick, so most of my days are for trips.

I also work 4 days per week, including every other weekend. If I bunch up my work days at the front of the first week and the end of the second week, I can vacation midweek to midweek, with minimal to no PTO use.

That said, my husband does not value Disney (or other theme parks), so when I go, I go solo with my kids and I try to do it relatively cheaply because it's an "extra" trip, not part of our family vacation time. We could afford to go longer, and upgrade to nicer digs, and spend more on table service and parties, but I avoid those things out of consideration for my husband's views. On the flip side, he really does love to travel, so we have taken trips to lots of other great places (well, not this year, but 2020 can go kick rocks).
 
I'm a stay-at-home-mom.

DH is the CEO of a company. So he has the flexibility to not be physically in the offices as he desires although he is and has meetings all day every day (normal times, not now due to COVID!). However, our "vacations" are often he meeting us there at a later date, returning earlier, spending much time on calls, emails, meetings etc. So, it may look like he has a ton of time off but he actually never takes time off - every day is a working day regardless of time of day, holiday, whether it's a family celebration, etc.
 


American here, salaried, working in an IT job for a large retailer. Been at my company for almost 19 years. 4 weeks of vacation time + 6 company holidays (not floating...set days). At 20 years, I'll get another week of vacation for a total of 5 weeks, which is the max. Sick time is not part of that vacation bucket. I have not had any problems requesting time off, so yes, quite a bit of flexibility as far as using the time when I want to.
 
I'm trying to understand how people can go for 2 weeks and still have more time for more travel.

I'd love to ! I'm a stay at home mom now with freedom & time but not my own income (husband doesn't value Disney/ doesn't really care to travel)

And when I worked, I had terrible flexibility, 10 days vacation but 5 had to be taken at one time & I think unpaid time off was penalized or looked down upon.

So when I work again & can fund multiple Disney trips & travel, I'm going to have to find a job with better vacation time/ flexibility.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, are you saying you can't travel because it's not "your" money?
 
Been with the company for years and get 5 weeks vaca plus 12 pd holidays.
 
I work in the office for a non-profit. I started with 3 weeks vacation plus 4 personal days. I've been there 8 years and have 4 weeks and will be up to 5 weeks at my 10 year anniversary year.

Companies will good time off policies are out there, it's just finding them.
 
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, are you saying you can't travel because it's not "your" money?

I'm not OP, but I have a similar circumstance in that my DH does not value Disney, doesn't want to travel there, and has some philosophical objections to WDW as well. Unlike OP, I have my own income, but I try to keep my theme park trips modest out of sensitivity to his views. Because I have a job, I sometimes pick up a bit of overtime, so I can justify the trips as "extra" money and not part of our regular income, but the real issue is DH's feelings when I take the kids on vacations without him.
 
I get 4 weeks of vacation time, plus 13 paid holidays plus I can buy an additional 5 days of vacation. In ‘we I will get a 5th week of vacation.
 
I'm self-employed, but if I don't work, I don't get paid due to the nature of my work. So, I usually work a ton the month before a trip to make up for any time off I take. We used to take 2-3 trips a year, but COVID has obviously changed that.
 
My husband is Retired Coast Guard and we both have civilian jobs with the government. We both work longer days to have one day off a pay period. Couple this with our 30 days Annual leave and 10 Federal holidays, we get a lot of time off. We generally combine our regular day off with a holiday and have to use very little annual leave for long weekend trips. On top of all of that , we earn sick leave as well. The flexibility of our jobs and paid time off is the biggest benefit! My husband could make more in his field in the private sector, but these benefits make it well worth it to take lower pay .
 
I'm a teacher so I get:

2.5 months during summer (early June-mid August)
1 week Thanksgiving
3 weeks Christmas/New Years
1 week spring break
Federal holidays

plus 10 days sick leave per year (that can roll over), 5 of which can be used as discretionary time (if not used, turn into sick leave).

Given all the time I get off as part of the job, I would feel silly requesting to use my 5 discretionary days to use for vacation. Teachers work HARD, but we get a lot of time off, too.

We also travel from California so our trips tend to be 8-10 days so due to my schedule we go during the busier times.
 
I earn 36 paid vacation days a year which adds up to a little over seven weeks. I work In healthcare and fortunate to be a manager, so I can pretty much take the time when I need it. If I were to run out of vacation hours, which never happens, I’d have the option of taking personal unpaid time off.
 
I'm in the UK, at my company we get 25 days leave plus the 8 days bank holiday (national holidays). Generally here all employees have to follow a minimum amount of holiday time that must be given to employees.

Most people over here generally take 2 weeks at least off. My company is really flexible and I've been able to book 3 weeks off etc at times if I want to, so long as the other person who does a similar role isn't off over that time.

We also get given additional days when we hit, 10, 20, 30 and 40 years of service.
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!





Top