We love to travel and prioritize it in our lives. So we often get questions about how we manage to get the time off of work to take all the trips we do, especially since my wife works a traditional 9-5 government job.
Well, I’m finally writing about it. Or at least, part of it. To keep things manageable, this post will only outline the various strategies we use to maximize Jen’s time off. I’ll address how we’ve created my own time freedom in a future post.
I offer this post as a glimpse into how we approach maximizing her time off, knowing that the specifics apply to us alone. But hopefully they give you some insight into how we pull this off, and perhaps generate some inspiration for finding similar ways to increase your own travel opportunities.
Setting the stage
A job in the federal government comes with various benefits and detriments compared to one in the private sector. It’s a job that, at least historically, has offered quite a bit of employment security and job-task stability. Your position isn’t suddenly “redundant” after a merger, and your job description doesn’t radically change one day because your company pivoted to a new industry.
You qualify for a retirement pension1, which is increasingly a rarity among our age cohort, and you get a generally good slate of holidays off and vacation time earnings, which rise along a set schedule of tenure.
The detriment is that the pay is much, much lower than you could command in the private sector2, and there’s very little way for high performers to increase their salary. For instance, you can’t bonus your way to a higher paycheck like you could working in sales in the private sector, or go work for a competitor for a big pay bump. Indeed, in the federal government, your pay is tied to a set salary table that only changes by a literal Act of Congress3.
And the same goes for location and time freedom. If you’re a high performer in the private sector, you could spend your leverage to negotiate to work remotely4, or for additional annual leave, or even for a sabbatical as part of your compensation. Not so in government—you must comply with broad, established policies that rarely offer any wiggle room, even for the very best employees. This structure can be especially frustrating if you’re trying to travel as often as possible.
In general, the biggest limiting factor to our travel is Jen’s work schedule5. But that doesn’t stop us from pulling out all the stops and using every trick in the book to maximize what travel we can do given those limitations.
So let’s get to it.
As background, Jen has worked more than two decades in her position, opting to remain out of upper management (to the constant consternation and prodding of her bosses)6. Since virtually anyone with her impressive resumé would have sought a promotion ages ago, she now has the highest seniority in her office—which means that she gets priority for what time off she requests. If she requests to use vacation time on a certain date, it’s always granted.
In terms of PTO7, she now earns a total of 8 hours per pay period—the maximum allowed for a federal employee. That equals of total of 208 hours per calendar year, the rough equivalent of 26 days off. Not too shabby!8
PTO is for travel
First, we consider PTO hours to be sacred. They are not to be wasted on anything but travel. No “mental health” days off and no staycations here—that’s what regular two-day weekends are for. Every hour, and yes I mean every single hour of PTO, goes towards some sort of travel.
3-day weekends
Jen works a 9/80 “alternative work schedule,” meaning she works the standard 80 hours9 per pay period, but over the course of only 9 work days. That means working an extra hour every day, but with the important benefit that she gets every other Friday off. Those three-day weekends—two per month!—are absolutely key to our travel scheduling. They essentially add an extra weekend “holiday” 24 times each year. That’s a big deal!
And so we maximize the fuck out of them. In fact, we list out every single three-day weekend for the entire upcoming year in our travel database (along with all the normal paid holidays), and have a database view focused exclusively on as-yet-unscheduled 3-day weekend travel opportunities, just to make sure as many as possible get used effectively. An untraveled three-day weekend is a fail, as far as we’re concerned10. Every long trip we take incorporates one or more of these three-day weekends (yes, there’s a way to get them on back-to-back weekends, stay tuned for more on that).
So, how best to utilize those three-day weekends? Well, one strategy is adding an extra PTO day to the mix. Four days off feels like a much bigger break than just three days, especially if you fly out of state. Similarly, having three days off is much better than just two days—it opens up many more trip destinations, even if it’s just a simple camping trip. It’s uncanny how much of a difference that extra day makes.
Right after work
Another strategy is making sure that Jen leaves right after work, which can sometimes be as early as 3pm (again, stay tuned for a deeper explanation). By doing so, we can often get to our destination on Thursday night (even really late is worth it), which frees up an entire Friday for exploring our destination(s). She’ll then return as late as possible on Sunday to maximize the time we can spend on the trip.
Holidays
Of course, as a federal employee, my wife does not work any of the federal holidays—11 in total. As you’d expect, we try to plan travel to utilize every single one of these. It’s free time off. If we can pair a Friday off with a holiday weekend 11? That’s golden.
Flex work schedule
Another schedule benefit that Jen gets is that she can “flex” hours during pay periods. For most of our time together, she’s been required to work between the hours of 9a to 3p, which are designated as “core” work hours12. The underlying idea here is to offer some flexibility on start/end times to accommodate work needs while still requiring employees to be working during the main part of the day.
So if she wants time off during those six hours, she needs to take PTO or sick leave. But—and this is an important but—if she works at least 80 hours in her (two-week) pay period, she can flex how many hours she works each day (with a maximum of 12 hours worked per day, specifically 7a-7p).
That means that she only has to use 5 hours per day off (9a-3p, minus an hour for lunch) as vacation time, as long as she works a total of 80 hour per pay period. So, she can work 12-hour days (within that 7a-7p working window mentioned above) before and/or after a trip to “make up” for the time she spends traveling.
And boy oh boy do we make use of this tactic. For nearly every long trip we take, she works 12-hour days leading up to it13, and then again after, the actual trip dates. That adds some complications to our schedule, but it also allows us to “save” an extra 3 hours of vacation time per traditional 8-hour workday she takes off. And that’s a big deal!
Splitting pay periods
Keeping the above flex work schedule in mind, a related strategy we often use is ensuring that our trips are scheduled to overlap into 2 different pay periods. That allows her to work those 12-hour days on one side of the trip (in one pay period), and then work 12-hour days after the trip (in another pay period).
Yes, that sort of schedule is demanding and requires some forethought, but we have a plan for how to deal with that—and it substantially reduces the number of leave hours we need to use for a trip.
Doubling up Fridays
Sometimes Jen can change her normal “Friday off” during a particular pay period for work needs. That means that we can occasionally double-up consecutive Fridays off in adjacent pay periods, which can effectively add an extra day off to a trip.
Annual carryover
Jen can carry over a total of 240 hours of annual leave into a new calendar year14. If you end the calendar year with more than 240 hours of leave remaining, you lose it15. You can imagine that there’s absolutely zero chance in hell that we’re giving back unused leave to the government.
That said, we do our best to maintain a bank of 240 hours of leave,16 allowing us to take as long of a trip at any point in the year without worrying about whether she’s accumulated enough leave. Without this reserve, we wouldn’t have been able to take our 100-day adventure.
Time off bonuses
Because Jen has developed herself into a critically important employee in her office, she occasionally receives performance bonuses for exceptional work. When these (generally rare) award opportunities come around, they’re offered in terms of a cash bonus. But, sometimes these end up being offered as annual leave instead—which is what we prefer.
Admin leave
Another somewhat rare occurrence is the granting of “administrative leave.” This usually comes from DC headquarters and functions as general time off. It’s usually 8 hours of leave, but is—again—pretty rare.
Occasionally, admin leave17 is also granted by the President for Christmas Eve or the day after Christmas, when it falls on a day that can allow for a four-day weekend (and POTUS is feeling generous? Not sure why this happens, but we ain’t complaining). We can’t count on this, and unfortunately, it’s not announced until just a day or three beforehand, so it’s hard to plan around. We often stay in town for Christmas anyway, so we usually can’t take full advantage.
Work travel
Occasionally, Jen has to travel for work, most commonly for some training conference. It’s only happened a handful of times since we’ve been together, though I made quite infamous use of one of her extended trips18 (an unusual month-long detail to the DC office). On some of these trips, she could add an extra weekend on her own dime to visit some national park units or something, but it doesn’t provide any additional “time off” beyond the flights themselves being counted as “work time.”
Comp time
The exception is when that work travel has to happen on a day she normally has off (usually the weekend). In those cases, she can earn compensatory time off. Banking a comp day is worth the disruption to the weekend, as it allows us to add it to another trip, which we value far more than a normal weekend day off.
Changing duties
This section is about making the “space” to take frequent time off, as opposed to how to maximize the leave Jen earns. I mentioned above that she’s remained in the same job position for a very long time. While this is true, she has been able to shift her responsibilities and even her “duty station” in the last five years. This change in job duties, with her seniority, has resulted in a bit more flexibility.
Back in 2020, we came up with an idea for taking a mini-retirement, which eventually became our 100-day Adventure Around the World. That plan seemed like a long shot at the time, but that didn’t stop us from starting to save money, reduce expenses, and make the moves necessary to increase the probability of pulling it off.
One of those moves was focused on shifting Jen’s job duties in a way that would make her absence a bit easier for her boss and coworkers when we traveled. By shifting from a set of “core” duties that needs to be completed every single day (meaning she’d need someone to cover that task anytime she was out of the office), she shifted towards a position focused far more on training and special projects. This would make it easier to take time off, as the resulting absence wouldn’t affect the office in the same way. As an added bonus, this work was more fun and the new duty station was better, too. This took a year or two to subtlety shift until the official big change, but with ongoing strategizing and a bit of luck, she pulled it off. I’m not sure we could have taken the 100-day Adventure without making this move.
Wrapping up
While Jen works a traditional government job, we do everything in our power to exploit as many possible avenues as we possibly can to increase our ability to travel within its constraints. Sure, there are some useful scheduling benefits above, though very few of her coworkers take advantage of them, at least to the degree we do. But we’re still stuck with the basic job framework, which generally translates to: work Mon-Fri, from 9a-5p, in this particular office. No remote work, and no negotiating for more time off, and (probably) no early retirement19 either. Compared to similar jobs in the private sector, it’s at best a draw. But it’s the job she has, so it’s the one we’re working with.
Another factor that might impact our optimization strategies is that Jen is an incredible employee that the rest of the office, and her bosses, trust and rely heavily on. She’s an extremely dedicated worker, putting in far more hours than she should (which I occasionally grumble about). So I imagine that her professional reputation helps smooth any edges in office jealousy at hearing about all of her travels. Everyone there knows she deserves more time off than the job actually affords her.
Ok, so what about Scott?
I know, I know…we didn’t get to how I fit in here. Simply put, it deserves its own post. But it’s safe to say that we’ve done our best to ensure that my work allows us to travel as much as possible, too.
Final thoughts
I often shy away from posts like this because all too often the default response is “see, she gets more vacation time than I do! Therefore, I should disregard all of her strategies.” Or some other dismissive excuse along those lines. That’s a shame. After all, it’s not a competition. The point of writing publicly about all of this is to explain how we manage to maximize the particular opportunities we face, which hopefully helps spark an idea or strategy that might in your own situation.
- We’ve known the specific date for ages now, and are actively counting down. Jen even has a countdown clock on her desk. 😜 ↩
- How much of a difference? This, of course, varies with the specific job and job market in question. But it can be substantial.
One of my wife’s former colleagues, who left this summer for a private sector job, reported back that equivalent positions in her new firm earned 150% more in base salary. Put another way, she now earns $2.50 for every dollar earned in her old government job.
That’s one helluva salary jump!
Oh, and it also shows you how much value we’re getting for our tax dollars. ↩ - Jen can tell you exactly what she’ll earn in each year until retirement because it’s already in that standardized salary table, save cost of living increases. It makes it easy for financial planning purposes, and you’re guaranteed some sort of raise over time, but it also severely restricts your overall earning potential. ↩
- Oh dang, if she could work remote? We would knock that out of the park. If you have any option for remote work at all, it’s a no-brainer. Take less money, choose the location-freedom. ↩
- Yes, money is a limiting factor, too. But you can travel for cheap, especially if you have aren’t constrained to a few weeks off each year. Need proof? Just look at all the (poor) college students that travel the world in a gap year, or the van lifers that explore the US while effectively earning peanuts. Cheap travel is possible, but it requires extra time, and far less comfort and convenience that what we generally regard as “vacation mode.” ↩
- Oh, she’s had plenty of opportunities to advance, but is very comfortable in the role she’s in. That’s an important facet of this, too. Climbing the career ladder entails adopting more responsibilities, which often ends up translating into less time freedom and a lot more stress. Is it worth the (minor) salary bump? No, no it’s not.
It also means that she can gain seniority among her coworkers, which allows us to travel more regularly than if she didn’t have it.
And, it also allows her to become indispensable at work, which means she has more negotiating power with her boss in taking time off.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s the best career decision she’s ever made. ↩ - PTO = Paid Time Off, which is what “vacation time” is often referred to as in the US. Sometimes, PTO includes both vacation AND sick time, but other employers separate the two.
Luckily, it’s separate for Jen. If she has a dentist appointment during work hours, she can take sick time without affecting any of her vacation time. ↩
- Yes, this is generous compared to far too many jobs in the US, but it also took more than two decades of employment to reach.
But don’t dismiss the rest of the post after reading that she starts with a solid chunk of time off—we use a variety of strategies to stretch that time even further, and hopefully some of those can serve as inspiration for yourself. ↩ - Sigh…of course, this is only what she’s technically required to work and the number of hours she’s paid for. But, in practice, she works many, many more hours than 80 in most pay periods. ↩
- Unless, of course, we have an ASU home football game (which often disrupts fall travel for us) or another important event to attend here in Phoenix. We don’t actually travel every three-day weekend, but we certainly try to travel each of them, even if it’s just a camping trip somewhere in the state. ↩
- If a holiday lands on one of these Fridays off, she doesn’t lose the day off; instead it’s moved to Thursday. ↩
- This has recently changed with this new administration, but may revert to the old standard, depending on various lawsuits currently in play. ↩
- To be clear, she has plenty of work to do, so filling this time isn’t an exercise in finding something to work on—it’s about getting the stuff she’s already working on done so she can take the time away. ↩
- Technically, it’s actually the end of the pay period if that period extends into the new calendar year, so there’s usually several days of buffer, but you get the point. ↩
- Which is why it’s often referred to as, “use or lose” leave. And yes, waaay too many federal employees don’t use all of their vacation time. But there’s also an option where you can donate your unused PTO hours to a specific person in a qualified need (such as someone with cancer who has exhausted their sick time). ↩
- How did we acquire so much unused leave, you ask? Well, there are occasional years when life intervenes and blocks us from our travel plans. Two of those years was when Jen needed major surgeries that prevented travel. Another was 2020 when the covid pandemic blocked most of our trips. Another was 2024 when my dad’s death canceled our substantive summer travel plans. ↩
- I’m not sure if this is technically classified as “admin leave” but we’ll classify it here nonetheless. ↩
- This formed the basis of my 100 National Parks in 100 Days to celebrate 100 Years of the National Parks trip back in 2016. There’s a long story here, but just know that I utilized the hell out of this opportunity beyond anyone’s expectations. ↩
- Early retirement is set by law, and requires her t work to a minimum retirement age of 57, no matter how many years of service she’ll have before then. It’s another item we’d absolutely negotiate if she worked a private sector job instead. ↩