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I've been brainstorming how to use my husband's vacation days. We have to use some of them when we have a school holiday for my kids that I don't have off (there are a lot of those days, surprisingly, but I work in a different district and the holidays don't align pretty frequently).

He gets 5 weeks off. Let's say 5 days for random school holidays. We like to save 1 week for Christmas-New Years ever year. That leaves us 3 weeks.

Theoretically, we'd use 1 week over spring break and 2 separate weeks over the summer.

I get a decent amount of vaca (21 days plus 4 personal days, 3 “floating holidays,” and sick time) but I go through it pretty quickly. I start with noting all the childcare needs we will have throughout the entire calendar year and figure out coverage for that since we have a school ager. I then factor in any planned trips, and then see if I can take off for birthdays. Then I look at holidays and figure out how much time I would like to take off around them (ex for Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, and Christmas I like to take extra time off). Then I see if I have any wiggle room to take off extra days during the summer. In terms of taking time off for childcare whenever possible I do it when there’s also something going on (so like in the summer rather than a random day in March), and either try to work from home or get other coverage for those other days.

I re-evaluate a few times throughout the year, like when my in-laws and parents plan trips since they watch one of our girls twice a week. The past 3 years I have also tried to roll over all the vacation time I’m allowed to since we were planning on eventually having a third baby (and now I’m pregnant so thank god I did that!).

I can now take time off by the hour which is a huge help if I need to get some major errands done, or if I need to get my daughter off the bus because my parents are out of town or something. I’ve already decided I’m using 2 hours to go get a pedicure a few days before my due date with this one.

I try not to use full days unless I need to, so for doctor/dentist/etc. appointments I make them as late in the day as possible, then skip lunch so I can use that hour as well. (So if I take off at 3 and skip lunch, I'm only using 1 hour PTO instead of 2).

I also try to schedule all that stuff for Fridays if possible just to make my weekend 'that' much longer.

Even for date days, or 'me' days, I'll use a half day instead of a full day. I really only take a full day if it's for an actual vacation or one of the LO's is sick.

I’m part time remote so my vacation is pretty flexible, but I have to be pretty on top of my husband’s vacation time. He started a new job last year and he’s back to 15 days and it’s a huge bummer because he was coming from 21. C’est la vie...

I start with a quick budget for the whole year. Looks something like this:

3- Spring break
7- New baby
1-Boys trip
1- Fall trip
0-Thanksgiving
3-Christmas

As things come up throughout the year I have to take that day from somewhere if I want to give it somewhere else. He’s lucky in that he can work remote, so for spring break we’ll travel Sat-2 Monday’s hence. He’ll work remote 3 days during spring break week and then take off the Monday we are traveling.

Last year Christmas ended up being really light because as things came up we borrowed from there. We also chose to have him work an extra day so we could bank one more day for the new baby.

What we've been doing is splitting DH's vacation days in half so he doesn't take the whole chunk of it straight. It really works for us because he gets to work for a few weeks during summer, then goes on vacation again. It makes our summer seem extra long and because of the break, we feel more energized to go out and do things. If you're able to split the time, I highly recommend it.

@Ajsmommy: I’m not frugal with my sick time since I can carry all of it over into the next year (unlike vacation time), and I only ever use all of it up when I’m on maternity leave. I accrue at a rate of 1 day/8 hours per month. Looking back at last year I used 40 hours (5 days) of sick time. In 2018 I used 7.25 days. I’d estimate 4 days of sick time per year for the kids.