55% of Americans Waste Vacation Days

Not including today, there are 30 days until my vacation- not that I'm counting or anything. Ha! I'm definitely counting and it's because this will be my first weeklong vacation in exactly 10 years and the first time ever that my little family has gone on vacation together.

It sort of feels strange that I'm going to be off for an entire week. I'm good about using my vacation days, but I generally take a day or two off around holiday weekends here and there through the year. What's even crazier is that I'm going someplace where there's no cell reception, no internet, no television, no electricity and there's not even indoor plumbing. I'm excited to disconnect and regroup, but absolutely scared of what I'll come back to after shutting out the world for a week.

If you haven't taken vacation in a while, or ever, it's definitely time to make it happen. 55% of Americans didn't use all of their vacation last year. Want to get a little more technical? That comes out to a staggering 658 million wasted vacation days.

According to experts, it was about 15 years ago when the trend of not taking vacation started. What's up with that? Well, employees have a fear of coming back from vacation to a suffocating mountain of work, they believe there isn’t anyone else to cover for them if they aren’t in the office because of all the downsizing in the past few years, and they worry they will be perceived negatively by higher-ups.

The employees who did use all of their vacation days has something in common- they did what I did, sat down with a calendar and planned their vacations in advance. It's never too early to start thinking about what days you want off next year, so break out that calendar and get to planning!

[via Glamour]