With this past weeks paycheck safely in my bank account I noticed something rather interesting...
only 3 of my paycheck for 2011 have been "normal..."
out of the 13 paychecks I've received this year, 10 of them have had overtime on them... which has been a great help when it comes to paying for the wedding...
I was talking with a gal in the office about how glad we were to have the extra money to help with the wedding... but now that we are starting our married life together it might be nice if we could bank that over time into additional vacation time so we could see him family more often...
Then she told me there was a way because she frankly loves traveling and isn't big on getting paid overtime...
Apparently each employee is allowed to convert no more than 16 hours of overtime that they work into what they call "Comp Time." You earn 1.5 hours of vacation for ever hour of overtime you choose to bank... so for some, not getting paid overtime is a great option because 16 working hours turns into 24 hours of vacation (The max you can have at any one time so people can't abuse the system.)
With the 4th of July holiday, I'll be getting overtime again if I choose do continue to mark my paychecks the way I do... or I could bank some Comp time to use for the honeymoon in September if my supervisor approves it. Since we get 3 paychecks this month and SCB has work lined up after the stay-cation honeymoon, and we are very close to finishing off the EF, I think I might bank the 8.25 hours i'll work on the 4th and trade it for 12.375 hours of vacation since I know I'm taking a whole week off in September for the cruise.
This way I don't have to worry about exhausting all of my time off this year between the wedding (2 weeks) & the honeymoon (another week), especially since we'd like to go to Utah for Christmas :)
On the other hand, Now that i'm a 5 year employee i'm earning 7.69 hours of vacation every paycheck (it bumps up the longer you work for the city)... and even after I take off the 64 hours of vacation for the wedding (and one floating holiday), i'll still have 158 hours of vacation left... and by the time September comes along, when I get back from the cruise and take a week off (40 hours) i'll still have 163 hours left sitting in the bank... and even if I took 8 days off in December, i'd have around 168 hours that would roll over into next year...
So maybe I should take the money since I won't really have my hours go below 150 at any time this year (which is essentially 1 month of time off)???
Personally, I would take the OT simply because you already have so much time banked though. How long can you continue to roll it? I don't know your work policies, but it would be helpful if you could save it all till you want to have kids so all your leave would be paid (if it isn't already).
ReplyDeletecouple of things - If you're in a union, check to see if you are allowed to switch back and forth between comp and OT. Some only allow you to make an election once per year. I can switch back and forth, but prefer comp time because I can ask for it to be paid at any time because it's in its own category of comp time. It's like a mini savings account!
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