Wednesday, August 25, 2010

American's take a vacation?


People in other countries think we Americans are a little weird in our work habits, and they may be right. The web site Expedia.com has recently conducted its ninth annual survey of international vacations, telling us how many vacation days are taken by workers of different countries. French workers get the most 38 days a year, on average, although they typically only take 36 of them. Italians receive 31 days, although, on average, they leave 6 of them on the table.
The American workers? The web site reports that "throughout the eight years that the Vacation Deprivation survey has been conducted, the U.S. has long-held the dismaying distinction of being the country with the worst vacationing habits." Our workers, on average, receive 13 days of vacation time, less than any country in the developed world, including Japan 15 days, Australia and Canada 19 day apiece, Germany 27 days and Britain 26days. Even so, more than a third of Americans don't take their full yearly allotment of vacation days. In the 2009 Expedia study they found Americans give back a total of 436 million of them.

To make matters worse, there is plenty of evidence, on the beaches, in restaurants and the theme parks that many workers are still slipping in an hour or two of productive labor on their days off, calling the office on their cell phones or earnestly consulting their blackberries. Expedia says that 24% of employed American adults do this, but this may be an undercount.

Meanwhile, 37% of employed American adults report regularly working more than 40 hours a week.

This compulsive work ethic may help explain another phenomenon that American financial planners frequently talk about at conferences: how difficult it is for some of their clients to spend their hard-earned money once they've accumulated more than they're ever likely to need.

It's not hard to find advice online and elsewhere for people who overspend and can't stay on a budget, but there seems to be no support or therapy available for a sizable number of Americans who long ago got in the habit of accumulating, and even when they've achieved the point where they no longer have to work, they still do, meanwhile living not beyond their means, but significantly, sometimes uncomfortably, under it. For some of us, stopping to enjoy what we've accumulated seems to be as hard as fully disconnecting from the office.

Is this really a problem? If your goal in life is to increase America's GDP and raise our average worker productivity statistics, then no, everything is fine. But one of the most poignant statements I ever heard was by a rabbi who was asked to travel to Oklahoma City to offer grief counsel to the families of the victims of the bombing incident.

"In my line of work, I regularly sit with people in their last hour of life," he said, "and often people will tell me, with the benefit of hindsight, looking over the course of their lives, that they wish they had spent more time with their loved ones or children, or doing things that gave them pleasure. Never once, in all my years," he added, "has anybody expressed regret that they didn't spend more time at the office."

By the way, as I write this I am on vacation?


Ted Feight, CFP® is a fee-only Certified Financial Planner with 37 years of experience. He limits the amount of clients and planner can have to 100 or less. Ted is the Chair of the Midwest National Association of Personal Financial Planners and is a member of the National Board of Directors for the National Association of Personal Financial Planners. He has offices in Lansing and Postage, Michigan and is toying with the idea of opening an office in the Detroit Metropolitan area.

Link to the Expedia article: http://www.expedia.com/daily/promos/vacations/vacation_deprivation/default.asp .

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