From the Travel Bag

Q: I only get two week off a year. Short of moving to England, how can I survive the year with only 2 weeks off?

2 Weeks a Year = Crappy Vacations?

I'm assuming you're jealous of England because of their standard 4 week off policy (and that doesn't even include banking and government holidays!) Who wouldn't be? But don't defect just quite yet. Grab a calendar or just print a free one from online and sit down and fill out every company day off. 4th of July? Columbus Day? (I've never gotten that one off, by the way). Include any days off they have for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's. Any holidays you're not sure about, just ask your HR department or boss if you work in a small company.

Now that you've got your calendar sorted, break old habits. If you're planning vacations on a Monday and coming back on a Friday or Saturday, stop. That's just a total waste of your vacation. Get creative. Book all your vacations over a 3 day weekend. That doesn't mean you can only travel over 3 days, but use that company time off as a 'free' day. So what you want to do is leave on a Thursday evening after work. If your boss is cool, ask if you can duck out at 4pm to take a slightly earlier flight (without getting your vacay time docked). Then, if your 'free' day is say the Monday on President's Day -- come back from your trip on Tuesday morning and go straight from the airport to work.

It will make for a long day, but it's totally worth it when you realize you had 4 days of fun in your vacation destination and only had to take 1 day off work. If you do this over every 3 day weekend, you can end up with at least 3 or 4 vacations under your belt with only about 4 days off of work. And that still leaves you with about 6 vacation days left from your job.

Soon the trouble will be figuring out where to go 5 times a year, not how to take the time off work.