The idea of having 52 days off from work next year sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Well, according to TikTok personality John Liang, you can swing it by some creative requesting of your 15 vacation days, as reported by Travel + Leisure.
Liang’s 1.5-minute video on his site johnsfinancetips is a charming and sort of silly look at how you can use your PTO (paid time off) days in tandem with weekends and already-established federal holidays to get long stretches of time off.
For instance, Liang suggests you request the day after New Year’s Day off. Since you already have the previous Saturday, Sunday and Monday off, taking off January 2 as well means you get four consecutive days off in a row. With Liang’s math, that counts as four days (although you already have three of them off!)
Similarly, he suggests requesting the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day off. Since MLK Day falls on a Monday, requesting that Tuesday also gives you four consecutive days off in a row. You can see the importance of asking for these days far in advance because most people are already hip to the idea of extending a long weekend—and in fact, that’s Liang’s first piece of advice: make the request early.
Liang’s video walks you through the rest of the year, month by month, showing you which days can be pieced together with already-existing holidays to extend your time away from work. Comments on the TikTok post contained a mixture of people complaining they don’t get these federal holidays off so the plan doesn’t work, and people making fun of the concept. One user commented, “I take Saturday and Sunday off every week. That’s 110 days!” and another wrote, “Bro, those are called long weekends; everyone has been doing this since the invention of the five day work week.” And of course, there were many “cries in retail” comments since the weekend isn’t off automatically for retail workers or those in industries like healthcare.
But you can’t blame Liang for pointing out the possibilities!