Paid Vacation

September 10, 2009

When you quit a salaried job, you get a check for the vacation days you have left. They calculate the daily rate using your pro-rated salary. Every vacation day you take now is one less day’s worth of pay that you’ll get when you quit. So there’s no such thing as “paid vacation”. It’s all unpaid: “unpaid” vacation is unpaid today, whereas “paid” vacation is unpaid later.

One exception is when you max out your vacation days. Then you may as well take them or they’re lost anyway.

I unfortunately discovered this ten years ago, and ever since then my vacations have cost a lot more because I count the reduced check that I’ll get when I eventually quit.