2

I am in a fortunate position of having tonnes of holidays in my present job.

I am looking at another position with 5 fewer days, and less flexibility in when you take them.

I have been trying to compare the two holidays quantitatively using commute costs (easy), salary (easy), pensions (not sure how to address), as well as things like commute time.

When it comes to holiday, looking at your daily rate doesn't really make sense. You don't earn 5 days less pay if you have fewer holidays. So how do you compare the two jobs? Is it just another intangible like commute time?

Improve this question
4
  • 1
    Tonnes implies quite a few. Will you miss 5? Are the jobs so similar this is the tipping point for you? You don't mention your country, but in the US, pension, matching retirement contributions, and the type of medical insurance can all overshadow that 5 day difference.
    – JTP - Apologise to Monica ♦
    Jan 30, 2015 at 1:59
  • Even if you could compare the number of days off in a rigorous quantitative way, the flexibility in when you take the days is almost certainly going to be an "intangible" that you won't be able to put a hard number on. So if the flexibility issue is important, putting a dollar amount on the number of days may not help much in terms of actually making the decision.
    – BrenBarn
    Jan 30, 2015 at 3:21
  • Do you currently use all your vacation days? If not, you may not miss 5. If so, is it because your current company's culture encourages employees to use all of them? What is the new company's culture like? Maybe nobody at the new company uses any of their vacation days because there's some social pressure not to. So then it won't make a difference.
    – dg99
    Jan 30, 2015 at 20:27
  • 1
    I think the value of vacation depends on a lot of subjective factors. As for instance having to take a scheduled block of vacation (even if it's a big block) isn't worth nearly as much to me as being able to take off this afternoon if the skiing is great.
    – jamesqf
    Jan 30, 2015 at 21:17

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

A purely factual approach to placing a monetary value on the PTO would be to compute your daily rate and then figure an actual daily rate if you utilize your vacation days. This assumes you are salaried. For instance:

$52000 / yr and 260 workdays -> $52000/260 = $200 / workday
$52000 / yr and 255 workdays -> $52000/255 = $204 / workday
$4 * 260 = $1040 is one value to put on the vacation time.

Another much more subjective approach is to evaluate the utility value of the extra PTO. Do you generally utilize all of your PTO now? If so then losing 5 days PTO may have an adverse impact on the quality of your life.

Improve this answer
2
  • I historically would eternally end up with rollover holidays, but I recently became a father, so they may have an impact on daycare costs, as well as quality of life. Is there a way to strike a QoL factor to weight it?
    – gaijintendo
    Jan 30, 2015 at 13:10
  • I unfortunately cannot help you in that analysis. To me it seems to be a quite personal calculation as to your plans for the next couple of years.
    – Raze
    Jan 31, 2015 at 14:46

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .