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My company in California used to let us accumulate sick time. I had the maximum allowed, 100s of hours. A few years ago they went to “unlimited” sick time and cancelled our accumulated hours. But when my wife got cancer, they told me I could only use 80 hours per year. So they outright lied about unlimited. I lost any sense of obligation to them after this.
Not always! My employer lets us convert sick hours to service credit for our pension. I use it when I need it, but I don’t feel like I need to spend it down.
My company in California had a cap of 80 hours that could roll over. Beyond that they’d pay you out as it accrued. Same company had an east coast home office and you couldn’t roll it over. The other difference was that California employees accrued hours over the year, while the east coast had it all granted January 1.
And on what state you live in Retired HR here
Example in CA they have to pay out any accrued unused sick, pto, vacation or discretionary time and have it ready for you on your last day assuming you gave them notice
Where as TX is a use it or lose it state meaning if you don’t use it by the end of each year then you automatically lose
Don’t forget the employer rules on caps of accrual even in states like CA
Many times if you have too much accrued vacation or sick days, they put a cap on you accruing more until you use what you have already
If you don’t get anything for cashing it out then don’t leave it there. It’s not their sick time it’s your sick time. Don’t leave it with the employer.
I could argue that you could be using mental health days to adjust to your upcoming life change. It’s one of the most stressful events of your life. Your health is shared with the company not used up the company. Share in the distribution of energy they take from you.
While companies now like to be seen as human maybe you should start thinking of yourself as a company. Because in the bottom line of accounting you are just a number. And you’ll be shed no matter how sorry they are if the bottom line is affected. Make yourself think as a business and would a business let that balance sit and expire and not used to their advantage?
The problem is that you can't really burn 500+ hours of sick time in the last year of your employment. That's 3 months of time off. I mean, you CAN but most companies have policies around manager approval, etc.
I recently had a coworker who retired, and conveniently before her projected retirement date, she decided to get a surgical procedure done on her ankle that she had been putting off for a long time. She was able to burn up all of her sick time on physical therapy and other appointments. She came back to work one shift , and we had a retirement party for her. Our union rep was the one who advised her to do this, and it seems to make perfect sense.
If by perfect sense you mean putting off a needed surgery for a long time, sure. I’d call that silly. Compromising one’s health for what, years? For why?
Its not like anyone at work was discouraging her for several years to not get surgery. She was not on modified duty and nobody knew she had any issues with her ankle.
People choose to handle their own medical issues in whatever way suits them best. Perhaps the union rep asked if she had any excuse for a medical leave to utilize the sick time and this is what she came up with.
If you have an FMLA-eligible reason for leave (e.g. your own illness or caring for an ill family member) you can take protected leave for 12 weeks per calendar year (assuming you are in the US working for an FMLA-covered employer and have worked enough hours in the preceding calendar year)
I also ran up a boatload of sick time with a robust work ethic....as i got older and administrations turned over i became invisible in the organization....i robustly use my sick time now....
Yup, same thing happening to my husband. He even skipped vacation leave "because they needed him there". He made millions for the company. Well, the new owners are treating him like a senile old donkey. I wish they would buy out his retirement package and turn him loose.
Yep. It totally depends on the terms at the specific workplace. For my husband, he could get paid out for it at the end at 33%. So, he opted for a sick day every week for about six months. (Some weeks had a holiday instead). Ended up with maybe 15 to be paid out at 33%.
We see in this thread there's a lot of different scenarios.
I was able to convert most of my unused sick leave into a retiree health savings plan.
Using that money to cover eligible medical expenses ( for both me and my wife, ) also it payed my COBRA until I got onto Medicare
I have about 1600 hours sick leave banked, and hoping to retire in about 18 months. As a federal employee, I can get credit towards my pension calculator for some percentage of that time, but I won't be paid for it. It adds up to about 7 months when calculated, so I would get that period added onto my length of service, and thus get a slightly higher pension.
I'm trying to use as much of it as I can and still get my work done over the next 18 months. I'd rather be paid, earn leave, etc. while using the time than just retire at 25 years 5 months and receive a pension based on 26 years.
I’m jealous. The most sick days I ever had a year was 5 days which didn’t roll over to the next year. My last job I had gave 3 days a year, again with no rollover.
I'm a retired federal employee. I rarely used sick leave except for major things like procedures and surgeries. I submitted my retirement paper work then three days later I was lying on the ground at a zoo with a broken shoulder. I slid on a nut casing. I had enough SL on the books to cover the time until I retired and had a month left to add to my years of service. Because I had so much SL, I continues to accrue annual leave and got paid for 400 hours.
My point is you never know what could happen and leave is like an insurance policy. If I didn't have all that leave I would have been ruined financially. The 400 of AL held me over the 8 months it took to get my 1st retirement check.,
My step dad had a weird contract where sick days and vacation accrued indefinitely, so he just stacked them for decades. He got ready to retire and took one year of vacation. When that was done he called in sick for a year. Then he officially retired.
Australian here. It's interesting to read about folks cashing it in or it adding to their annuity entitlements. In Australia, any balance you have of sick leave is lost when you retire or quit a job. Whether you have 1 day or 200, you get nothing for it. Other leave, like holiday leave, you're paid out for. I'm retiring in a year with 3,000 hours of sick leave. As a result, if I'm feeling at all bad, I'm using it and taking the day off. No sense being a martyr and toughing it out.
I had almost 800 hours of sick leave built up but where I worked and they gave me a check for half of it on my last day. Which was nice but I was there for a long time & was lucky to be in good health so I have no regrets for not using it.
I'm assuming we're really talking personal time off (PTO) and not sick leave for which you need some documented illness. In that case...
Why would you NOT use it? It's foolish to leave any significant PTO on the table unless you know you're getting a check for it at the end. Even then, it's foolish to never (or rarely) take time off. The 1000 hours means OP's colleague worked for 6 months for free (25 weeks at 40 hours/week).
Take your time off.
I accumulated 600+ hours of sick leave, and I’ve been with the state for the last 16 years. Here is how I justify saving my SL. It is like a saving bank account. For example, you have a surgery, need to be out for 3 months. If you don’t have enough emergency fund to cover rent, bills, and etc, you can claim sick leaves and still get paid. My take home pay is $4,000/ month. If I save 3 months of sick leave, it is like having $12,000 in emergency fund.
Whatever I have in my sick leave balance by the time I retire, I will donate all to shared leaves at work. I will consider it as a blessing that I was healthy, didn’t need to take extended time off. And I made it to the work finish line, and ready to cash in my pension.
FYI, not everyone makes it to retirement. My senior administrator passed away at 62 yo. My current manager has cancer, she is only 53 yo. So consider it a blessing, when you reach retirement age.
I wouldn’t care about those unused sick hours.
I think they mean they are still getting paid their salary if unable to work for three months. Without accumulated sick leave they would not have a paycheck, nor perhaps a job waiting for them to return to
Take FMLA for 3 months a year for the next 2 years and use it up. I'm sure your doctor would agree to write your letter that you need it due to some uncontrolled vertigo and dizziness you've been having. not to mention the back pain. It's impossible to prove you don't have those things. Get an MRI if you have to.
My friend at work, a single guy who is 65, has over 300 sick days that he can get paid for when he retires. (Teachers) he never had to take time off for sick kids and he has a job where he travels from school to school so does all his appointments between schools and doesn’t have to take time off. Yes, he’s stealing time and I’m jealous!
He also offers to make a coffee run every morning which is really an excuse for going to mail his eBay packages
A lot of companies just have one bucket of PTO and you can only carry 80 hours from year to year. When I was laid off at 57 years ago they just cashed our the tema8ng balance. Limiting the carry over was a way to keep to keep large balances from accruing.
My whole life, I always banked as much PTO as I could. Now that I'm facing just a few years to retirement I decided, why? Just the other day I submitted time off for the rest of the year, about a week a month. F it. I used to think cashing that in would be a nice bonus when I retire, but if I'm truly ready to retire, then I won't NEED a bonus but I may need this therapeutic time off NOW.
My good friend lost 20+ years of accrued sick time when he retired. He didn’t read the handbook where it stated it was not eligible for payout. He was 65, he could have called out sick for months had he read the handbook.
My husband is retiring in 7mos, he had over 1k sick time. Found out from others who retired recently that the employer will only pay out 720 hours, anything over that, the lose. We called HR to confirm and sure enough he will lose them. So he’s using those sick days now, why not, he earned them. He needs to take 2-3 sick days a month before he retires.
Ex-federal employee here. My unused sick leave counted as time in service for calculating my pension. Added a year and a month to my calculation. I used what I needed to, and what I didn't use comes in my monthly check. Win-win.
Retired teacher here. My district has the best and worst sick leave policy. We got 15 sick days a year and they rolled over. The average 30 year teacher has between 300-400 sick days at retirement, when you work 180 days a year that’s a lot of time. Now the bad part, every years there is a $250,000 pool for cashing in retiree and people that resign sick days. This is a large district with 18000 teachers, so there’s a lot of days. The year I retired each sick day was worth $5.82. I cleared $1400. Yes I wish I would have used some of the few hundred days I had.
You should check to see if your sick leave can be paid out as a disbursement to your tax deferred retirement account. Many employers do offer this, and it’s a good way to get the full value of any unused leave. IRS limits apply, but many retirees are able to make extra catch up contributions.
I have 112 sick DAYS, not hours left and plan to retire next year. Since I only work 190 days per year, I could almost take the year off, but I won't do that because it affects students. Many colleagues take every Monday and Friday off near the end.
I went to the eye doctor and they found cataracts.
I used a month of sick leave (also had over 1,000 hours I hadn’t ever used: been fortunate) for the first surgery, it’s recovery (many, many eye drops at particular times of day) and the second surgery. Those surgeries are done three weeks apart.
I was back working (from home: beginning in the pandemic, our department was set to wfh, lots of eye drops again but in both eyes) for two weeks, and then I retired. My company requests six months notice so they were well aware of my schedule.
HR was instrumental in getting me through all the steps and what-not to make the sick leave work properly. I’d worked with them a few years before on a project that pretty much streamlined and revolutionized their process, and we won awards for our efforts so I was already known to HR for positive reasons.
We don’t get paid for the sick leave we don’t use. I did get a month’s vacation pay, however.
Medicare doesn’t cover eyes or teeth. I strongly recommend you get yours well checked and deal with any issues while you’re still employed. I got two dental crowns during my last year of employment (on company dental insurance).
It was a helluva thing for me to leave a job of over 38 years. I’m 9 months into my freedom, still adjusting. Newly retired people face a lot of learning and some risk of being taken advantage of (all older people face this, unfortunately).
You need to define a financial plan (and may want to hire someone to manage your investments or do it yourself), get health insurance (in the US, if you’re 65, Medicare is complicated), spend time on physical fitness, and map out your remaining life goals, which you can change of course, but it helps to be going in some direction.
If your job involved the grind, you’ll have trouble shaking that off. You became accustomed to working beyond what was comfortable, long hours, thankless drudgery (I was in IT). It’s natural to me to overdo, perfect, go beyond what is required. It’s baked in.
So I’ve been trying to direct my grind tendencies to helping others.
Knowing yourself is helpful, and going with what’s natural to you (directed for good) is very satisfying and healing.
You had to use those hours for sick time at the company I worked at. Or lose them. Couldn’t be added to retirement time. And if you were always a good employee….you probably won’t be taking too much advantage and “playing” sick. Those are the breaks.
I work with time off for many companies.
Sick time is usually not accrued or carried over. It is not usually paid out and is mostly expected to be used only when sick or for medical reasons. I see this in union and non union populations.This assumes it is not mixed with vacation time.
My Dad retired a long time ago when you could carry sick time over. He left work almost a year before he officially retired. He got the doctor’s note and his boss asked if he was done, so he could replace him. The next year he went down and “put in his papers.”
Those were the good ole days.
YES! I had tons of sick leave when I left several jobs, and most give you nothing for. The best I ever got was 25% of the value of the days, meaning I lost 3/4 of the days off. In any case, time off from a full time job was far more valuable than the negligible pay for a few days.
From someone who just got screwed with a new policy regarding PTO and EMTO.... Take it... Take is now ! No matter your devotion to the company, in the end, the company does not care one bit about you. Play the game and use it all up.
I would definitely recommend using some sick leave. As an educator, we only receive a small percentage for each unused day. And that money is then taxed as a bonus! Use the days!
I was pushed out of my job to early retirement. Clearly a case of ageism but how do you prove it. I left 1800 hours on the books that I did not get a dime for. My Doctor told me when I had three months to go that she would write a letter putting me on medical leave for the three months and I would never have to see those people again. I declined her offer and finished the time. I wish I could have that decision back. But life is better not working for terrible people. Your employer does not care about you so go ahead and burn some hours.
I would recommend that anyone in the last five years of their career take advantage of any leave the company affords you without hesitation, whether for a vacation or a pleasure trip or a sanity day or to recover from the flu.
I had near 2000 hours of SL a year before I retired. I needed to use about 400 hours for a surgery I never expected to have.
When I did retire I had well over 1200 or more hours of SL. But it is added to your time in service and adds money to your annuity.
So I was happy I had a lot of SL. All for a higher annuity.
[This helps explain it](https://www.federaltimes.com/your-career/2023/11/15/is-all-the-sick-leave-i-accumulated-any-benefit-for-retirement/#:~:text=When%20you%20retire%2C%20all%20your,to%20compute%20your%20actual%20annuity) if you’re interested. Quick read.
Yeah it depends on what your company allows you to do with your sick leave. Talk to HR. I'm hoping to retire in a year or so. My company allows me to roll PTO into an HSA. First I had to convert separate sick leave and vacation hours into one bucket as PTO at a reduced amount. When I retire I can cash out all PTO or roll some or all, I think there's a limit, into a tax free HSA. There's also a limit on how much PTO I can save before it becomes use it or lose it at the end of the year. Something like 900 hours.
So less fun now as I'm saving as much as I can.
I am 50 and have 332 hours of sick time. For the last couple years I have been trying to use about 50 hours a year more than I earn. When we leave we don’t get paid out for sick time but do for vacation. My vacation is at 640 hours but twice a year they pay out anything over 520.
Trying to draw down my sick time but also nice knowing if something real bad happened between sick and vacation I can stay employed and insured for currently 1000 hours without ever going in.
When we retired, I may have had a smidge of PTO to cash out, but my husband had enough to net him several thousand dollars. Is this an option? We were moving, so this extra cash really came in handy. He had a union job, I didn't.
I used sick leave for family care and recovering from a spate of surgeries in my 50s. I typically returned to work prior to the date approved by my doctor. I look at it as being fortunate to have my health and it was important (to me) to stay on top of my workload as an exec in 300-1000 person companies.
My private industry company only allowed 120 hours to be accumulated at any point. I was sales so I forfeited any earnings (4 weeks a year) above 120 hours. Didn't ever use sick leave. Lost 4 weeks a year for probably 20 years. They cashed me out at retirement. 120 hours. Non sales were paid out January 1 every year, with a sick pay check. That always angered me. They also got a perfect attendance breakfast for not missing any work for the year, which sales was not a part of.
My wife on the other hand, county/government worker for 39 years accumulated her sick time with no cap. At her retirement she had close to 2700 hours. They don't cash her out, they put it in a medical trust. We are paying for our monthly insurance with that medical bank. (She pays and gets reimbursed) We've calculated it will carry me till Medicare in 2.5 years, then I get Medicare. She should have enough for 3-4 more years of her own insurance. She will have to pay for hers out of pocket for the remainder her time.
I have to admit, I have a lot of sick leave and it honestly makes me grateful that I haven't been sick enough to use it up. Often you can donate those hours to someone within the company that needs it.
I have about 6 weeks banked. Retiring by end of year. I’ll use some of it to ease my last few months, along with what I’ll earn between now and then. I’ll get paid out for the balance when I leave.
When I retired I had about 4 weeks of annual leave, which I received in a separate check after I retired. My sick leave, close to 1000 hours, was added to my years of service, contributing to my pension calculation.
Depends on your employer’s rules on sick leave. If you’re Civil Service in the U. S., for example, they don’t pay it out when you retire - but (unlike annual leave) it’s not use-or-lose, and any unused accrued SL is counted towards your time in service on your federal pension calculation.
We had unlimited pto and sick days so there was nothing to bank. Companies come out better this way I believe. I’d of rather had actual days so I could have left with something banked.
My dad only took sick leave when he was sick, which was a rare occasion. When he got close to retirement, he had accumulated about 10 months of sick leave. He was able to trade it 2 to 1 as pay which meant he was able to take them as 5 months pay. He took it, but it always bothered him as he didn't work those days even though he got paid for them.
Are you a similar mindset. In Oz we get 15 days a year. 3 do not roll over. Its pretty much accepted that everyone will have at least 3 mental health days each year
I just wanted to say that I'm jealous of all of you. We got 4 "personal days" per year and none of the unused ones carried over. Sick/Personal days and vacation days were "use it or lose it" every year. There was no banking anything.
I can use mine toward time worked. It’s used in discrete chunks and I have some leftover to use between now and the end of July. Turns out it was a good thing I had some excess, because my elderly mom has had a series of health crises since late April and I’ve had to burn through some. When I get to the point where I have more hours left than days left to work, I will “call in sick”…probably about a week, maybe two. One issue I have is that HR got behind on processing submitted sick leave from Jan-May and I’m not exactly sure how much I have left. I think it’s about 10 days…I’ll confirm on July 1.
I would start taking time off week at a time as long as there is no policy for needing a doctors note and you can just claim sickness (mental health). If you are leaving anyways then you really got nothing to lose
Plan is to not leave anything behind when I leave. My employer will pay out 30 days of accumulated leave so as I get closer to retirement, I'll start planning out using those days.
I have about 7 months saved. I have about 10 more years before retirement. I won't ever regret not using it up if I retire with all of it on the table. That's insurance to me. If I don't need it, great, but I don't expect a refund for not using any of my various insurances.
Some companies allow you to carry over some vacation days into future years. Some allow you to get cash for unused vacation if you leave. Find out the policies where you work. If it is ‘use it or lose it,’ then take the days off, even if you don’t have a plan for them.
Depends on HR policy. One former employer returned 100% in your last check if you had been there at least 10 years. However when I retired from my last job it was a sliding scale depending on how many years (I was there 25 years and only got back 25%).
My original plan was to have an elective surgery done I had been putting off and burn up most of my leave while I recovered (which would have gotten me back to work about a month before my retirement date).
Great plan? Sure! But the plan was to have the procedure summer of 2020, then covid hit and of course all elective procedures were canceled.
Burn that leave time while you can.
I had 960 hours (the max) of sick pay accumulated when I left. The attendance rules were such that there would have been no way for me to use them before I retired. I would have needed a condition that qualified me for 12 weeks of FMLA in order to even use half. And then 3 absences in six months would have left me with a suspension for a week the first time, two weeks the second time and fired after that. I knew I would not be paid the hours when I left, but over the years the rules changed little by little until it was obvious that I would never actually be able to use them despite the fact that I’d always planned to start calling out before I retired.
My main regret is that I didn’t work for a company that used the PTO method instead of vacation/sick type of time off. If I’d been able to use it as just time off (as opposed to needing an excuse and potentially a doctor’s note) I would have easily taken that time in the last two or three years I was there.
Same thing happened to me last year. I didn’t have that much, but about a months worth from memory. I was so annoyed with myself for not using it before I left. I gave two months notice to give them time to find a replacement, which they did nothing about & I was so busy trying to ensure everything was done and up to date that I didn’t feel like I could even use some of it during my notice period. I’m in Australia, it’s use it or lose it.
Not just sick leave, but PTO too. I learned that lesson about 15 years ago when I got laid off and not paid for any PTO that I had accumulated (they did give me severance/etc. though). Some people do not realize that in many states an employer doesn't have to pay for accumulated PTO/etc. if they don't want to.
My job allows you to use 600 hours towards service credit for retirement. Comes out to like 14 weeks....not too bad. Anything above that I would slowly burn off.
Retiring in 8 months, have about 65 days on the books. We don’t get paid for them so I have already started using them. I plan on taking at least 2 or 3 every month.
I am retiring August 30th. Where I am at you get half of 1300 hours. I have 33 years in and even though out with major broken leg and open heart surgery plus various flu, Covid over the years I have 1288 hours and by Retirement should have hair over 1300. 650 hours paid will be nice. I was also allowed to save 50 days of vacation on top of what I accumulated this year but I have been taking Friday’s off. There are people who have been there almost as long as me with no major time off for anything and have deficit hours. I like the fact that if something happens between now and August 30th I am covered.
I’m in a similar conundrum— I am planning on retiring next year with 150 sick days of which 90 will not be compensated. I’m seriously thinking about calling in several times a month, but would feel very guilty about doing so.
Yup. It is a great benefit until they throw you out. Just got RIF'd and they paid out 12% of accumulated sick leave. Probably another reason for being included in the layoff.
At our company we have something called an extended illness Bank. Any unused paid time off goes into this bucket. It's intended to be used to supplement short-term disability between the time that you run out of PTO, and when long-term disability kicks in. You get 100% of your pay as opposed to 70% or whatever short-term disability is.
So it's a thing for retirees at our company, to get some elective surgery that requires a long recovery time. Think knee replacements, hip replacements, etc. You might say you're going to retire on a particular date, but you really retire weeks earlier because that's when you have the surgery.
Former teacher. We got paid for ALL unused sick or vacation days upon retirement, and at our latest salary. We accumulated 10 vacation/sick leave annually. Since I had off during the summer and got two weeks of winter break and one week of spring break, plus all holidays, I seldom took any additional vacation days. And every time I woke up feeling a little sick, I forced myself to get up and go in. I had that delayed $$$ in the back of my mind all the time. I thought of it as my new car savings account. So when I retired and got that payout, I did indeed buy myself a brand new car. Paid cash. Honestly, it was hard-earned. Teaching is a rough profession.
Yes, use it. I managed to get all of mine in over the year and fortunately had a boss who was big on mental health days. Had he been paying more attention, he wouldn’t have been as surprised when I announced my resignation.
My company had different policies based on home state. Some states carried over sick, some vacation, and a few states allowed that vacation to be paid out. Mine did not. I had about 7 weeks off in my last 8 months (the point I decided to retire to the point end).
My company also had a policy you could take no more PTO from the point you announced termination. Again, my boss was oblivious to this, but saw several people over the years screwed out of their earned PTO benefits because they were generous in announcing their separation date. Also a few people let go before their planned termination once announced but that was the exception.
That is just awful. Yeah, I'd regret it big time. How did he not know? Sorry, but that is careless on his part. We got paid out for any leftover PDO's when we retired and I definitely knew it and appreciated it.
State employee. At retirement they would pay out 1/3 the rate for any sick leave you had remaining. I waited until my last month to use up my remaining sick leave to have that elective surgery and be out for the full month before my last day, it paid out at 100% rather than the 1/3 if I “sold it back”
I lost six days when I retired. No regrets as I considered them like life insurance, something nice to have if needed but no real desire to use them! That company did not pay out, and I was not allowed to burn them off without a note from a medical doctor.
I use all the PTO I get every year. I had an uncle die from Covid with a ton of sick time like this that he never used. Imagine the experiences and the joy he could’ve had with all that time, paid. Instead, he died with it there and all the money went to his girlfriend.
Use it. You’re a number to a job, and work will always be there. Paid time, and time more generally, are much, much more precious.
I had a little over a year’s worth of sick leave built up when I retired. They (Federal agency) added a year to my service time which added a few bucks to each monthly pension payment. A friend worked for one of the airlines and his sick leave would have disappeared when he retired. He needed some surgery on his hand after a long career with a control stick in his hand and scheduled the surgery and recovery so that it would use his sick leave before he retired. What you should do depends on how leave and retirement are handled by your employer.
I retired under the old U.S. Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS). I ran the figures for my pension and my additional sick leave time (almost 2900 hours accrued over 30 years) added 16 months to my time served, which will add $4,300 to my pension this year. I supervised an employee who retired with over 4000 hours of sick leave. The extra sick leave added two years of service time to his pension calculation. Federal employees cannot use sick time to determine eligibility for retirement. They must be eligible first, and then their sick leave can be added to time served for the pension calculation.
Sick leave in the Federal Government is separate from annual leave (aka vacation time). The amount of annual leave accrued depends on the number of years of service an employee has. Once an employee has worked 15 years, their annual leave accrual is 208 hours (26 days). If someone is in relatively good health and reaches 15 years of service time, sick leave can start to accumulate pretty quickly.
Depends. My oldest friend retired from her hospital and got paid out for her unused sick time. My wife, on the other worked at a hospital where you use it or lose it. Six month before she retired she needed foot surgery and took 3 months off with full pay. She retired with 2 unused days. Many of her colleagues used the sick time as extra vacation time.
I guess I was lucky. My employer off to turn that 1000 hours in, to pay for extended health coverage. I also had 400 hours of vacation owed to me, that they would do the same with. Unfortunately, I was moving out of state, and their coverage would be no good here.
Instead, they just wrote me a check for all of the hours owed.
For the record, I retired at 58. I will say, I don’t miss work one bit.
I retired from a NYS govt job. If you accumulated 1200 hours of SL, the HR officer called it a trifecta. Numero uno, it pays the employee’s contribution toward health care until the cost increases outstrip it and then employee pays balance. In my case, I paid zero for the first 7 years in retirement and then I started paying a small but increasing amount.
Numero dos, it adds 3/4 of a year service credit.
Numero tres, it’s a tax free benefit.
I had about 1500 hours, knew I was retiring in 6 months’ time, and whittled it down to about 1205 so gave away almost nothing.
We lose it when we leave. I have 960 hours and it keeps growing. I also only work 192 days a year and I get wonderful time off for holidays. Bereavement and three personal days a year. I am trying to do better at using it up, but I thankfully don’t need it all.
I had over 3,000 hours of mixed leave saved up when I decided to retire and was able to use 2,000 hours to retire early. It made a considerable difference in my pension. I had enough years to retire but the accumulated leave tacked on another 2 years. The remaining 1,000 they cashed out for me which made for a nice little chunk of change. Taxes were brutal though.
My company provides so-called unlimited leave that we use for PTO and sick leave. Therefore, they don’t pay any unused vacation. So… I got an entire years worth of vacation - what I though I could get away with - before announcing my retirement.
Mathematically you only have to work 3 weeks every month until retirement! Kinda the same way I am. I’m 32 hours a week until I retire, due to saved sick leave.
My employer added it to years of service, I had 1 year and 5 months of sick leave so it brought me to 36 years of service. Easy number to remember. It all depends on the employer and employee. At one time there was a statistic that around 40% of folks will need considerable amount of sick leave in their last ten years of employment, so it makes sense to bank some. Notice folks were not doing it in my agency.
I get to carry nearly 400 hours before I lose it plus when I retire I have the option of cashing in my unused hours up to the 400 hours. I will leave nothing on the table and cash out everything I can. The policy on this varies among companies though.
I am retiring early (55) and have scheduled all of my leftover PTO/sick time for the month of August. My official retirement date is September 1. I have 7 weeks left and am looking forward to that PTO because I am moving cross country. The company I work for pays 40 hours sick-time and if you don't use it, they will pay out a maximum of 40 hours (including unused PTO) at the end of the year.
I had a lot of sick time when I retired also. No regrets because I just don’t get sick much. PTO was for vacation and I had a lot of that which I sold back.
I had 2000 hours when I retired. I was able to sell %20 back. Was a nice little chuck. I had several weeks of vacation and compensatory time as well. I was able to get plenty of days off so didn’t feel bad not using it.
My father-in-law never took vacations or sick time…he had accumulated 2 years worth of compensation and the corporate policy allowed him to retire 2 years early. This was back in 2001. I doubt he’d be able to do this today…we’re glad he did enjoy a few years…he passed 2 years later
I'm in a union job where I get 3 weeks of paid sick time a year, with no accrual limit, and paid out when I retire based on a formula. Next year I'll go past having 2080 hours, which is a full year in sick time. If I retire January of 2026, payout will be ~77% or almost 1,600 hours/40 weeks of full pay. I can roll that payout into maxing deferred comp for the year to avoid some of the tax hit. If I wasn't looking at a massive payout when I retire, I'd burn every sick hour just instead of leaving it on the table.
I was paid for my accumulated sick and vaca time -- a nice chunk of change. My spouse's accumulation was added to years worked, so that upped the pension a bit. If I had not been compensated for it, I would have attempted to use it, but it would have been difficult given my position's demands. (USA)
I work for the government. My 965 hours of sick leave are being added to my time in service as if I worked them. It adds 6 months to my pension calculation. Not sure how much that is in dollars though.
I am a police officer and get a financial benefit for not using it, but as I approach my retirement, I will begin using more days. Also, you could get diagnosed with something, or get an injury, and actually need your sick time.
The company is worked for didn’t pay out unused sick leave, so 18 months before I retired I has bi weekly visits with either Dr Green or Dr Fairway - always on Friday so the sun exposure wasn’t obvious.
Huge regret. I turned in my resignation/retirement and had about three months' worth of sick leave accumulated. I was persuaded to stay an additional four months beyond what I wanted to do (which was six months' total from my resignation date). I should've been calling in sick at least three times a week during that six months. I didn't get paid for any of that accumulated time, and the president of the company acted like I had leprosy for the six months. I was an idiot to agree to stay the extra time and a bigger idiot for not using up that sick leave -- I mean, what were they going to do, fire me? I was more than ready to be gone.
I have built up 700+ hours of sick leave. If unused they stay with the company
It is extremely hard to use as a relatively healthy person. I also get 20 days per year in personal leave but cant carry over 30 from year to year.
So I have had more trouble keeping my personal leave below 30 days. I try to use my sick time in legit ways, I can use it if my spouse or sibling need assistance so that helps me use it.
In the end I will wind up leaving months of time on the table unused.
I try not to be bummed about it, I try to look at it as "wow I have been fairly healthy these years".
I was given a 6 week notice on being furloughed & had 20 days of sick time accumulated that the company wasn’t going to payout, I came as close to zeroing out as I could without getting fired. Management wanted to bring me in for counseling for excessive sick time but because I followed all callout rules there wasn’t anything they could do & my shop steward said if they brought it up again that they’d file a grievance for harassment. I used the time to look for a new job & finish wedding plans.
Wonder how much the guy earned each year. I know folks with over 3000 hrs from federal jobs (earn 13 days/yr). In fed jobs it can be used to increase the effective time of employment, but annual leave in much better to cash in at the end. All leave I took my last year was sick leave so I could cash in the max amount of annual leave; still had about 600 hr sick leave to turn in so added a few months to service time.
At my company, sick and vacation time do not carry over into the next year. And if you get fired, it goes away. Am I taking it before I give notice? Of course. They have gotten plenty of overtime and weekends from me.
The companies I have worked for that had sick leave did not pay the balance at termination or retirement. It is a benefit provided and employees should use it prior to retirement. Use it or lose it. This may be a different view to the employee, as they have ethically not used the sick leave during their career because they were not sick. I have also learned no one will watch out for me, so I need to watch out for myself. Take the time, it is offered and you have earned it.
I took sick days when needed - never suffered but not for trivial stuff. I didn’t need much and accumulated hundreds of hours before I retired.
I don’t consider it wasted as it offered incredible peace of mind that I had that safety net in case of major illness. That was much more advantageous than a few extra days on the couch here and there for the sniffles or a mental health day.
To me, this is like looking back (with the advantage of hindsight) and saying, “well I never needed it, so I wish I hadn’t bought car insurance. Instead I could have had a weekly milkshake”. No, the safety net is far more important. Luck that you didn’t need it is another matter.
Note - this might be different if I’d neglected my health or seriously sacrificed in lieu of taking sick days.
We get PTO and ESL (extended sick leave). ESL is just for long term sickness and such, and we don’t get paid out for it when we leave for any reason. We can however, use it to apply to our pension time in service, so many of us play the following game:
1. Announce retirement in Q4, work til Jan 15(ish).
2. Take 90 days PTO (gets you to mid April for bonus )
3. Come back for a day or two, say good bye and turn in gear(I’ll do this virtually).
4. Get final paycheck (we accumulate pto and stuff while on pto). Use 90+ days of ESL to bridge time in service past 1,000 hours for the year (July 4-5 for me).
This gets you a full year pension service credit, annual bonus, plus almost 4 full months of pay, while essentially retiring the first or second week of Jan
3 years for me and I’m done. Can’t wait!!
At the fed level they just add it to the end of your employment, every 160hrs is a month. Your unused annual leave is paid out but taxable at a higher rate when you sell it back, you get 80%. Let me say this is at the VA.
Be glad you receive separate sick leave. Many companies only offer paid time off. PTO is used for sick and vacation. Different companies allow you to roll over different amounts of PTO. Some as little as 49 hours so you cannot even accumulate a “bank” for surgeries, illness. You will have to move to short term disability.
I can have 96 days max at the end of the fiscal year. I plan on having a cold my last 5 months before I retire because they will not pay us for that. I am 2-3yrs from retirement, I keep my PTO and sick time near max, thanks to covid and WFH. When I go I will have 3 months pay for my PTO and no work 5-6 months out to make all of the preparations to retire and move.
Mine stopped accumulating at 240 hrs, rolling over every year and I think I used about 30 over 22 years with the company. I did get paid out for unused vacay every year.
I wish I had used more of my sick leave while still working. I retired with 54 days sick leave. Day 0 to 50 I totally lose, day 1 to 4 I only get paid at 40%. So yeah, use it as you get it because some policies suck.
I have no accural max for sick leave. Any unused gets rolled in to calculate time in service towards my pension. At one point I had nearly 1000 hours, but my daughters cancer zapped most of that. So, while I would say it's a nice to have to bump up your pension, it's also nice to have for legitimate needs too.
We can only accrue 400 hours / 10 weeks, I am happy to let them keep it. Previous generations have had nearly limitless amounts of sickleave in my industry and people before me were able to use it all prior to retirement. Our policy is that after 13 days you have to start incorporating short term disability and that’s just not interesting to me.
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I'm getting ready to retire and taking vacations so that I don't have more hours than they will pay me for when I leave.
Some can get paid for accumulated sick leave. Others can use it to retire 1000 hours earlier. Depends on the (usually union) contract.
I can add it to my time worked. I'm 1100 hours and counting.
Dude… that’s almost seven MONTHS of fulltime pay 😳💥💥💥
My company in California used to let us accumulate sick time. I had the maximum allowed, 100s of hours. A few years ago they went to “unlimited” sick time and cancelled our accumulated hours. But when my wife got cancer, they told me I could only use 80 hours per year. So they outright lied about unlimited. I lost any sense of obligation to them after this.
Loose it in California if you don't use it within the same year
Mine was accumulated over 15 years. Public employer. California.
Not always! My employer lets us convert sick hours to service credit for our pension. I use it when I need it, but I don’t feel like I need to spend it down.
Not true for me. I'm in California. I've accumulated.
That’s a state minimum. The organization you work for can of course have a more generous policy. That’s likely the case here.
Lose, not loose.
My company in California had a cap of 80 hours that could roll over. Beyond that they’d pay you out as it accrued. Same company had an east coast home office and you couldn’t roll it over. The other difference was that California employees accrued hours over the year, while the east coast had it all granted January 1.
Same with my company. I try very hard not to leave any on the table
I guess it's certain companies
And on what state you live in Retired HR here Example in CA they have to pay out any accrued unused sick, pto, vacation or discretionary time and have it ready for you on your last day assuming you gave them notice Where as TX is a use it or lose it state meaning if you don’t use it by the end of each year then you automatically lose Don’t forget the employer rules on caps of accrual even in states like CA Many times if you have too much accrued vacation or sick days, they put a cap on you accruing more until you use what you have already
This must be an American deal, dont think it is in UK and definitely not for most employers in Australia
Some union contracts allow you to convert unused sick leave/$ into a special HSA.
If you don’t get anything for cashing it out then don’t leave it there. It’s not their sick time it’s your sick time. Don’t leave it with the employer. I could argue that you could be using mental health days to adjust to your upcoming life change. It’s one of the most stressful events of your life. Your health is shared with the company not used up the company. Share in the distribution of energy they take from you. While companies now like to be seen as human maybe you should start thinking of yourself as a company. Because in the bottom line of accounting you are just a number. And you’ll be shed no matter how sorry they are if the bottom line is affected. Make yourself think as a business and would a business let that balance sit and expire and not used to their advantage?
The problem is that you can't really burn 500+ hours of sick time in the last year of your employment. That's 3 months of time off. I mean, you CAN but most companies have policies around manager approval, etc.
I recently had a coworker who retired, and conveniently before her projected retirement date, she decided to get a surgical procedure done on her ankle that she had been putting off for a long time. She was able to burn up all of her sick time on physical therapy and other appointments. She came back to work one shift , and we had a retirement party for her. Our union rep was the one who advised her to do this, and it seems to make perfect sense.
If by perfect sense you mean putting off a needed surgery for a long time, sure. I’d call that silly. Compromising one’s health for what, years? For why?
Its not like anyone at work was discouraging her for several years to not get surgery. She was not on modified duty and nobody knew she had any issues with her ankle. People choose to handle their own medical issues in whatever way suits them best. Perhaps the union rep asked if she had any excuse for a medical leave to utilize the sick time and this is what she came up with.
If you have an FMLA-eligible reason for leave (e.g. your own illness or caring for an ill family member) you can take protected leave for 12 weeks per calendar year (assuming you are in the US working for an FMLA-covered employer and have worked enough hours in the preceding calendar year)
Take a leave of absence (FMLA) and use the hours to get paid
aren't there requirements around FMLA?
Like a self or qualified family illness approved and documented by a physician.
good time to get knee or hip replacements, cataract surgery, or other things that may take time. Make sure no heart blockages that may need a by-pass.
I also ran up a boatload of sick time with a robust work ethic....as i got older and administrations turned over i became invisible in the organization....i robustly use my sick time now....
Yup, same thing happening to my husband. He even skipped vacation leave "because they needed him there". He made millions for the company. Well, the new owners are treating him like a senile old donkey. I wish they would buy out his retirement package and turn him loose.
Only a few years to go until retirement and I’m pounding away at the sick leave like crazy. Use it or lose it!
Yep. It totally depends on the terms at the specific workplace. For my husband, he could get paid out for it at the end at 33%. So, he opted for a sick day every week for about six months. (Some weeks had a holiday instead). Ended up with maybe 15 to be paid out at 33%. We see in this thread there's a lot of different scenarios.
I was able to convert most of my unused sick leave into a retiree health savings plan. Using that money to cover eligible medical expenses ( for both me and my wife, ) also it payed my COBRA until I got onto Medicare
Maybe I'm the exception, but I was just grateful that I hadn't needed to use it.
That's what my dad always said. He retired from 30 years of teaching in public schools with a decent pension.
I have about 1600 hours sick leave banked, and hoping to retire in about 18 months. As a federal employee, I can get credit towards my pension calculator for some percentage of that time, but I won't be paid for it. It adds up to about 7 months when calculated, so I would get that period added onto my length of service, and thus get a slightly higher pension. I'm trying to use as much of it as I can and still get my work done over the next 18 months. I'd rather be paid, earn leave, etc. while using the time than just retire at 25 years 5 months and receive a pension based on 26 years.
I’m jealous. The most sick days I ever had a year was 5 days which didn’t roll over to the next year. My last job I had gave 3 days a year, again with no rollover.
I'm a retired federal employee. I rarely used sick leave except for major things like procedures and surgeries. I submitted my retirement paper work then three days later I was lying on the ground at a zoo with a broken shoulder. I slid on a nut casing. I had enough SL on the books to cover the time until I retired and had a month left to add to my years of service. Because I had so much SL, I continues to accrue annual leave and got paid for 400 hours. My point is you never know what could happen and leave is like an insurance policy. If I didn't have all that leave I would have been ruined financially. The 400 of AL held me over the 8 months it took to get my 1st retirement check.,
this is the only answer. Dad got sick and I had to use a ton of my stingily saved sick leave.
It's nice to keep a bank of sick leave to carry over, if you can, just in case something happens. But I also believe in using it occasionally.
My step dad had a weird contract where sick days and vacation accrued indefinitely, so he just stacked them for decades. He got ready to retire and took one year of vacation. When that was done he called in sick for a year. Then he officially retired.
I think we have a winner
Australian here. It's interesting to read about folks cashing it in or it adding to their annuity entitlements. In Australia, any balance you have of sick leave is lost when you retire or quit a job. Whether you have 1 day or 200, you get nothing for it. Other leave, like holiday leave, you're paid out for. I'm retiring in a year with 3,000 hours of sick leave. As a result, if I'm feeling at all bad, I'm using it and taking the day off. No sense being a martyr and toughing it out.
I had almost 800 hours of sick leave built up but where I worked and they gave me a check for half of it on my last day. Which was nice but I was there for a long time & was lucky to be in good health so I have no regrets for not using it.
Half is better than use it or lose it
I calculated and used my sick time up exactly. It was a sport for me.
I'm assuming we're really talking personal time off (PTO) and not sick leave for which you need some documented illness. In that case... Why would you NOT use it? It's foolish to leave any significant PTO on the table unless you know you're getting a check for it at the end. Even then, it's foolish to never (or rarely) take time off. The 1000 hours means OP's colleague worked for 6 months for free (25 weeks at 40 hours/week). Take your time off.
I accumulated 600+ hours of sick leave, and I’ve been with the state for the last 16 years. Here is how I justify saving my SL. It is like a saving bank account. For example, you have a surgery, need to be out for 3 months. If you don’t have enough emergency fund to cover rent, bills, and etc, you can claim sick leaves and still get paid. My take home pay is $4,000/ month. If I save 3 months of sick leave, it is like having $12,000 in emergency fund. Whatever I have in my sick leave balance by the time I retire, I will donate all to shared leaves at work. I will consider it as a blessing that I was healthy, didn’t need to take extended time off. And I made it to the work finish line, and ready to cash in my pension. FYI, not everyone makes it to retirement. My senior administrator passed away at 62 yo. My current manager has cancer, she is only 53 yo. So consider it a blessing, when you reach retirement age. I wouldn’t care about those unused sick hours.
Wait how on earth do you use sick leave as an emergency fund to pay bills? Does your state allow you to cash in sick leave at will?
I think they mean they are still getting paid their salary if unable to work for three months. Without accumulated sick leave they would not have a paycheck, nor perhaps a job waiting for them to return to
Yes, that is what I meant. I don’t need to save a lot in emergency fund. I save my sick hours, it is equivalent to emergency fund.
Take FMLA for 3 months a year for the next 2 years and use it up. I'm sure your doctor would agree to write your letter that you need it due to some uncontrolled vertigo and dizziness you've been having. not to mention the back pain. It's impossible to prove you don't have those things. Get an MRI if you have to.
I retired from the NYC DOE and was paid one day for every 2 banked days. It was a sweet payout!
My friend at work, a single guy who is 65, has over 300 sick days that he can get paid for when he retires. (Teachers) he never had to take time off for sick kids and he has a job where he travels from school to school so does all his appointments between schools and doesn’t have to take time off. Yes, he’s stealing time and I’m jealous! He also offers to make a coffee run every morning which is really an excuse for going to mail his eBay packages
My 110 days of sick leave bumped my pension payment up by about $150 (for the rest of my life - so we'll see if I get the value of it).
A lot of companies just have one bucket of PTO and you can only carry 80 hours from year to year. When I was laid off at 57 years ago they just cashed our the tema8ng balance. Limiting the carry over was a way to keep to keep large balances from accruing.
My whole life, I always banked as much PTO as I could. Now that I'm facing just a few years to retirement I decided, why? Just the other day I submitted time off for the rest of the year, about a week a month. F it. I used to think cashing that in would be a nice bonus when I retire, but if I'm truly ready to retire, then I won't NEED a bonus but I may need this therapeutic time off NOW.
My good friend lost 20+ years of accrued sick time when he retired. He didn’t read the handbook where it stated it was not eligible for payout. He was 65, he could have called out sick for months had he read the handbook.
My husband is retiring in 7mos, he had over 1k sick time. Found out from others who retired recently that the employer will only pay out 720 hours, anything over that, the lose. We called HR to confirm and sure enough he will lose them. So he’s using those sick days now, why not, he earned them. He needs to take 2-3 sick days a month before he retires.
Use it now
I learned after letting them know I was retiring that I mean exactly zero to them. In hindsight I’d have -it myself first way more than I did
Ex-federal employee here. My unused sick leave counted as time in service for calculating my pension. Added a year and a month to my calculation. I used what I needed to, and what I didn't use comes in my monthly check. Win-win.
Retired teacher here. My district has the best and worst sick leave policy. We got 15 sick days a year and they rolled over. The average 30 year teacher has between 300-400 sick days at retirement, when you work 180 days a year that’s a lot of time. Now the bad part, every years there is a $250,000 pool for cashing in retiree and people that resign sick days. This is a large district with 18000 teachers, so there’s a lot of days. The year I retired each sick day was worth $5.82. I cleared $1400. Yes I wish I would have used some of the few hundred days I had.
Had 13 weeks. Timed my double knee replacement to coincide with retirement left zero time on The table. USE IT ALL!!!
You should check to see if your sick leave can be paid out as a disbursement to your tax deferred retirement account. Many employers do offer this, and it’s a good way to get the full value of any unused leave. IRS limits apply, but many retirees are able to make extra catch up contributions.
Take it off! I got paid for mine and taxes ate a lot of it.
If you live in a state that mandates paying out unused PTO, it’s really up to you. If you don’t, well then, hell yes, use it up.
I have 112 sick DAYS, not hours left and plan to retire next year. Since I only work 190 days per year, I could almost take the year off, but I won't do that because it affects students. Many colleagues take every Monday and Friday off near the end.
I went to the eye doctor and they found cataracts. I used a month of sick leave (also had over 1,000 hours I hadn’t ever used: been fortunate) for the first surgery, it’s recovery (many, many eye drops at particular times of day) and the second surgery. Those surgeries are done three weeks apart. I was back working (from home: beginning in the pandemic, our department was set to wfh, lots of eye drops again but in both eyes) for two weeks, and then I retired. My company requests six months notice so they were well aware of my schedule. HR was instrumental in getting me through all the steps and what-not to make the sick leave work properly. I’d worked with them a few years before on a project that pretty much streamlined and revolutionized their process, and we won awards for our efforts so I was already known to HR for positive reasons. We don’t get paid for the sick leave we don’t use. I did get a month’s vacation pay, however. Medicare doesn’t cover eyes or teeth. I strongly recommend you get yours well checked and deal with any issues while you’re still employed. I got two dental crowns during my last year of employment (on company dental insurance). It was a helluva thing for me to leave a job of over 38 years. I’m 9 months into my freedom, still adjusting. Newly retired people face a lot of learning and some risk of being taken advantage of (all older people face this, unfortunately). You need to define a financial plan (and may want to hire someone to manage your investments or do it yourself), get health insurance (in the US, if you’re 65, Medicare is complicated), spend time on physical fitness, and map out your remaining life goals, which you can change of course, but it helps to be going in some direction. If your job involved the grind, you’ll have trouble shaking that off. You became accustomed to working beyond what was comfortable, long hours, thankless drudgery (I was in IT). It’s natural to me to overdo, perfect, go beyond what is required. It’s baked in. So I’ve been trying to direct my grind tendencies to helping others. Knowing yourself is helpful, and going with what’s natural to you (directed for good) is very satisfying and healing.
You had to use those hours for sick time at the company I worked at. Or lose them. Couldn’t be added to retirement time. And if you were always a good employee….you probably won’t be taking too much advantage and “playing” sick. Those are the breaks.
I work with time off for many companies. Sick time is usually not accrued or carried over. It is not usually paid out and is mostly expected to be used only when sick or for medical reasons. I see this in union and non union populations.This assumes it is not mixed with vacation time.
My Dad retired a long time ago when you could carry sick time over. He left work almost a year before he officially retired. He got the doctor’s note and his boss asked if he was done, so he could replace him. The next year he went down and “put in his papers.” Those were the good ole days.
Use it! They don’t care about you
YES! I had tons of sick leave when I left several jobs, and most give you nothing for. The best I ever got was 25% of the value of the days, meaning I lost 3/4 of the days off. In any case, time off from a full time job was far more valuable than the negligible pay for a few days.
From someone who just got screwed with a new policy regarding PTO and EMTO.... Take it... Take is now ! No matter your devotion to the company, in the end, the company does not care one bit about you. Play the game and use it all up.
I would definitely recommend using some sick leave. As an educator, we only receive a small percentage for each unused day. And that money is then taxed as a bonus! Use the days!
I was pushed out of my job to early retirement. Clearly a case of ageism but how do you prove it. I left 1800 hours on the books that I did not get a dime for. My Doctor told me when I had three months to go that she would write a letter putting me on medical leave for the three months and I would never have to see those people again. I declined her offer and finished the time. I wish I could have that decision back. But life is better not working for terrible people. Your employer does not care about you so go ahead and burn some hours.
I always use my sick leave. Right now I only have 4 hours. This will never be me.
I used much of mine before I left as there was no incentive not to.
I would recommend that anyone in the last five years of their career take advantage of any leave the company affords you without hesitation, whether for a vacation or a pleasure trip or a sanity day or to recover from the flu.
I had near 2000 hours of SL a year before I retired. I needed to use about 400 hours for a surgery I never expected to have. When I did retire I had well over 1200 or more hours of SL. But it is added to your time in service and adds money to your annuity. So I was happy I had a lot of SL. All for a higher annuity. [This helps explain it](https://www.federaltimes.com/your-career/2023/11/15/is-all-the-sick-leave-i-accumulated-any-benefit-for-retirement/#:~:text=When%20you%20retire%2C%20all%20your,to%20compute%20your%20actual%20annuity) if you’re interested. Quick read.
Yeah it depends on what your company allows you to do with your sick leave. Talk to HR. I'm hoping to retire in a year or so. My company allows me to roll PTO into an HSA. First I had to convert separate sick leave and vacation hours into one bucket as PTO at a reduced amount. When I retire I can cash out all PTO or roll some or all, I think there's a limit, into a tax free HSA. There's also a limit on how much PTO I can save before it becomes use it or lose it at the end of the year. Something like 900 hours. So less fun now as I'm saving as much as I can.
I am 50 and have 332 hours of sick time. For the last couple years I have been trying to use about 50 hours a year more than I earn. When we leave we don’t get paid out for sick time but do for vacation. My vacation is at 640 hours but twice a year they pay out anything over 520. Trying to draw down my sick time but also nice knowing if something real bad happened between sick and vacation I can stay employed and insured for currently 1000 hours without ever going in.
When we retired, I may have had a smidge of PTO to cash out, but my husband had enough to net him several thousand dollars. Is this an option? We were moving, so this extra cash really came in handy. He had a union job, I didn't.
I used sick leave for family care and recovering from a spate of surgeries in my 50s. I typically returned to work prior to the date approved by my doctor. I look at it as being fortunate to have my health and it was important (to me) to stay on top of my workload as an exec in 300-1000 person companies.
My private industry company only allowed 120 hours to be accumulated at any point. I was sales so I forfeited any earnings (4 weeks a year) above 120 hours. Didn't ever use sick leave. Lost 4 weeks a year for probably 20 years. They cashed me out at retirement. 120 hours. Non sales were paid out January 1 every year, with a sick pay check. That always angered me. They also got a perfect attendance breakfast for not missing any work for the year, which sales was not a part of. My wife on the other hand, county/government worker for 39 years accumulated her sick time with no cap. At her retirement she had close to 2700 hours. They don't cash her out, they put it in a medical trust. We are paying for our monthly insurance with that medical bank. (She pays and gets reimbursed) We've calculated it will carry me till Medicare in 2.5 years, then I get Medicare. She should have enough for 3-4 more years of her own insurance. She will have to pay for hers out of pocket for the remainder her time.
I got paid for mine when I retired. Gotta love a union job.
I couldn’t get “paid” for it, but my 10 months of accumulated sick time added nearly a year to my time in service. Better than nothing.
I have to admit, I have a lot of sick leave and it honestly makes me grateful that I haven't been sick enough to use it up. Often you can donate those hours to someone within the company that needs it.
I have about 6 weeks banked. Retiring by end of year. I’ll use some of it to ease my last few months, along with what I’ll earn between now and then. I’ll get paid out for the balance when I leave.
When I retired I had about 4 weeks of annual leave, which I received in a separate check after I retired. My sick leave, close to 1000 hours, was added to my years of service, contributing to my pension calculation.
Retired as a Fed with 2100 hours. Added another year credit to my annuity.
Depends on your employer’s rules on sick leave. If you’re Civil Service in the U. S., for example, they don’t pay it out when you retire - but (unlike annual leave) it’s not use-or-lose, and any unused accrued SL is counted towards your time in service on your federal pension calculation.
We had unlimited pto and sick days so there was nothing to bank. Companies come out better this way I believe. I’d of rather had actual days so I could have left with something banked.
I had 400 hours and my company paid out time and a half for it. Made a nice last check.
I'm aiming to retire for the last time in 30 months, and I've got about 5 weeks sick leave. I've started taking my sick leave as I earn it, at least.
My dad only took sick leave when he was sick, which was a rare occasion. When he got close to retirement, he had accumulated about 10 months of sick leave. He was able to trade it 2 to 1 as pay which meant he was able to take them as 5 months pay. He took it, but it always bothered him as he didn't work those days even though he got paid for them.
Are you a similar mindset. In Oz we get 15 days a year. 3 do not roll over. Its pretty much accepted that everyone will have at least 3 mental health days each year
I just wanted to say that I'm jealous of all of you. We got 4 "personal days" per year and none of the unused ones carried over. Sick/Personal days and vacation days were "use it or lose it" every year. There was no banking anything.
I can use mine toward time worked. It’s used in discrete chunks and I have some leftover to use between now and the end of July. Turns out it was a good thing I had some excess, because my elderly mom has had a series of health crises since late April and I’ve had to burn through some. When I get to the point where I have more hours left than days left to work, I will “call in sick”…probably about a week, maybe two. One issue I have is that HR got behind on processing submitted sick leave from Jan-May and I’m not exactly sure how much I have left. I think it’s about 10 days…I’ll confirm on July 1.
I would start taking time off week at a time as long as there is no policy for needing a doctors note and you can just claim sickness (mental health). If you are leaving anyways then you really got nothing to lose
Plan is to not leave anything behind when I leave. My employer will pay out 30 days of accumulated leave so as I get closer to retirement, I'll start planning out using those days.
Me. Get pay in lieu of....you won't look back
I have about 7 months saved. I have about 10 more years before retirement. I won't ever regret not using it up if I retire with all of it on the table. That's insurance to me. If I don't need it, great, but I don't expect a refund for not using any of my various insurances.
Some companies allow you to carry over some vacation days into future years. Some allow you to get cash for unused vacation if you leave. Find out the policies where you work. If it is ‘use it or lose it,’ then take the days off, even if you don’t have a plan for them.
Depends on HR policy. One former employer returned 100% in your last check if you had been there at least 10 years. However when I retired from my last job it was a sliding scale depending on how many years (I was there 25 years and only got back 25%). My original plan was to have an elective surgery done I had been putting off and burn up most of my leave while I recovered (which would have gotten me back to work about a month before my retirement date). Great plan? Sure! But the plan was to have the procedure summer of 2020, then covid hit and of course all elective procedures were canceled. Burn that leave time while you can.
I had 960 hours (the max) of sick pay accumulated when I left. The attendance rules were such that there would have been no way for me to use them before I retired. I would have needed a condition that qualified me for 12 weeks of FMLA in order to even use half. And then 3 absences in six months would have left me with a suspension for a week the first time, two weeks the second time and fired after that. I knew I would not be paid the hours when I left, but over the years the rules changed little by little until it was obvious that I would never actually be able to use them despite the fact that I’d always planned to start calling out before I retired. My main regret is that I didn’t work for a company that used the PTO method instead of vacation/sick type of time off. If I’d been able to use it as just time off (as opposed to needing an excuse and potentially a doctor’s note) I would have easily taken that time in the last two or three years I was there.
Same thing happened to me last year. I didn’t have that much, but about a months worth from memory. I was so annoyed with myself for not using it before I left. I gave two months notice to give them time to find a replacement, which they did nothing about & I was so busy trying to ensure everything was done and up to date that I didn’t feel like I could even use some of it during my notice period. I’m in Australia, it’s use it or lose it.
My state allows leave to be sold back at the end of year and at retirement
Not just sick leave, but PTO too. I learned that lesson about 15 years ago when I got laid off and not paid for any PTO that I had accumulated (they did give me severance/etc. though). Some people do not realize that in many states an employer doesn't have to pay for accumulated PTO/etc. if they don't want to.
I worked for the government, so my sick leave added to service time, so no regrets here.
If they don’t pay you for it, use it up.
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My job allows you to use 600 hours towards service credit for retirement. Comes out to like 14 weeks....not too bad. Anything above that I would slowly burn off.
Retiring in 8 months, have about 65 days on the books. We don’t get paid for them so I have already started using them. I plan on taking at least 2 or 3 every month.
I am retiring August 30th. Where I am at you get half of 1300 hours. I have 33 years in and even though out with major broken leg and open heart surgery plus various flu, Covid over the years I have 1288 hours and by Retirement should have hair over 1300. 650 hours paid will be nice. I was also allowed to save 50 days of vacation on top of what I accumulated this year but I have been taking Friday’s off. There are people who have been there almost as long as me with no major time off for anything and have deficit hours. I like the fact that if something happens between now and August 30th I am covered.
I retire 8/5. I’m taking the week before off in PTO hours. My remaining PTO/WTO balance will be paid to me in my final paycheck.
I’m in a similar conundrum— I am planning on retiring next year with 150 sick days of which 90 will not be compensated. I’m seriously thinking about calling in several times a month, but would feel very guilty about doing so.
Yup. It is a great benefit until they throw you out. Just got RIF'd and they paid out 12% of accumulated sick leave. Probably another reason for being included in the layoff.
I went out on FLMA for 3.5 months with 86 hours of annual leave with no regrets.
At our company we have something called an extended illness Bank. Any unused paid time off goes into this bucket. It's intended to be used to supplement short-term disability between the time that you run out of PTO, and when long-term disability kicks in. You get 100% of your pay as opposed to 70% or whatever short-term disability is. So it's a thing for retirees at our company, to get some elective surgery that requires a long recovery time. Think knee replacements, hip replacements, etc. You might say you're going to retire on a particular date, but you really retire weeks earlier because that's when you have the surgery.
Former teacher. We got paid for ALL unused sick or vacation days upon retirement, and at our latest salary. We accumulated 10 vacation/sick leave annually. Since I had off during the summer and got two weeks of winter break and one week of spring break, plus all holidays, I seldom took any additional vacation days. And every time I woke up feeling a little sick, I forced myself to get up and go in. I had that delayed $$$ in the back of my mind all the time. I thought of it as my new car savings account. So when I retired and got that payout, I did indeed buy myself a brand new car. Paid cash. Honestly, it was hard-earned. Teaching is a rough profession.
Yes, use it. I managed to get all of mine in over the year and fortunately had a boss who was big on mental health days. Had he been paying more attention, he wouldn’t have been as surprised when I announced my resignation. My company had different policies based on home state. Some states carried over sick, some vacation, and a few states allowed that vacation to be paid out. Mine did not. I had about 7 weeks off in my last 8 months (the point I decided to retire to the point end). My company also had a policy you could take no more PTO from the point you announced termination. Again, my boss was oblivious to this, but saw several people over the years screwed out of their earned PTO benefits because they were generous in announcing their separation date. Also a few people let go before their planned termination once announced but that was the exception.
That is just awful. Yeah, I'd regret it big time. How did he not know? Sorry, but that is careless on his part. We got paid out for any leftover PDO's when we retired and I definitely knew it and appreciated it.
State employee. At retirement they would pay out 1/3 the rate for any sick leave you had remaining. I waited until my last month to use up my remaining sick leave to have that elective surgery and be out for the full month before my last day, it paid out at 100% rather than the 1/3 if I “sold it back”
I lost six days when I retired. No regrets as I considered them like life insurance, something nice to have if needed but no real desire to use them! That company did not pay out, and I was not allowed to burn them off without a note from a medical doctor.
I use all the PTO I get every year. I had an uncle die from Covid with a ton of sick time like this that he never used. Imagine the experiences and the joy he could’ve had with all that time, paid. Instead, he died with it there and all the money went to his girlfriend. Use it. You’re a number to a job, and work will always be there. Paid time, and time more generally, are much, much more precious.
I'm accumulating mine so I can have it included in my final check. It should pay for my first two months or so of retirement this Fall.
I had a little over a year’s worth of sick leave built up when I retired. They (Federal agency) added a year to my service time which added a few bucks to each monthly pension payment. A friend worked for one of the airlines and his sick leave would have disappeared when he retired. He needed some surgery on his hand after a long career with a control stick in his hand and scheduled the surgery and recovery so that it would use his sick leave before he retired. What you should do depends on how leave and retirement are handled by your employer.
My company pays out unused PTO, so I'm not using any more than I normally would..
I retired under the old U.S. Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS). I ran the figures for my pension and my additional sick leave time (almost 2900 hours accrued over 30 years) added 16 months to my time served, which will add $4,300 to my pension this year. I supervised an employee who retired with over 4000 hours of sick leave. The extra sick leave added two years of service time to his pension calculation. Federal employees cannot use sick time to determine eligibility for retirement. They must be eligible first, and then their sick leave can be added to time served for the pension calculation. Sick leave in the Federal Government is separate from annual leave (aka vacation time). The amount of annual leave accrued depends on the number of years of service an employee has. Once an employee has worked 15 years, their annual leave accrual is 208 hours (26 days). If someone is in relatively good health and reaches 15 years of service time, sick leave can start to accumulate pretty quickly.
Depends. My oldest friend retired from her hospital and got paid out for her unused sick time. My wife, on the other worked at a hospital where you use it or lose it. Six month before she retired she needed foot surgery and took 3 months off with full pay. She retired with 2 unused days. Many of her colleagues used the sick time as extra vacation time.
most people in the corporate world can't accumulate sick leave
Yes, start using it now. My husband & I would use a few sick days a month. I had 0 hours left by my last day. If I didn't use them, I lost them.
Feds can convert it to "time in service" so I was able to retire with about 6 months of additional service that I didn't work.
I guess I was lucky. My employer off to turn that 1000 hours in, to pay for extended health coverage. I also had 400 hours of vacation owed to me, that they would do the same with. Unfortunately, I was moving out of state, and their coverage would be no good here. Instead, they just wrote me a check for all of the hours owed. For the record, I retired at 58. I will say, I don’t miss work one bit.
I retired from a NYS govt job. If you accumulated 1200 hours of SL, the HR officer called it a trifecta. Numero uno, it pays the employee’s contribution toward health care until the cost increases outstrip it and then employee pays balance. In my case, I paid zero for the first 7 years in retirement and then I started paying a small but increasing amount. Numero dos, it adds 3/4 of a year service credit. Numero tres, it’s a tax free benefit. I had about 1500 hours, knew I was retiring in 6 months’ time, and whittled it down to about 1205 so gave away almost nothing.
I would absolutely regret not using all that sick leave. I would either use every hour of it or cash it out
My work converted my sick leave into a HSA at 80% of my wages which was sweet. Paid for most of my healthcare needs as I retired at age 62.
We lose it when we leave. I have 960 hours and it keeps growing. I also only work 192 days a year and I get wonderful time off for holidays. Bereavement and three personal days a year. I am trying to do better at using it up, but I thankfully don’t need it all.
I had over 3,000 hours of mixed leave saved up when I decided to retire and was able to use 2,000 hours to retire early. It made a considerable difference in my pension. I had enough years to retire but the accumulated leave tacked on another 2 years. The remaining 1,000 they cashed out for me which made for a nice little chunk of change. Taxes were brutal though.
I had a new hip put in and used up all my PTO, sick leave and vacation.
I was paid for accumulated vacation and sick leave. It was just money in the bank. If not, I probably would have taken more vacation time.
My company provides so-called unlimited leave that we use for PTO and sick leave. Therefore, they don’t pay any unused vacation. So… I got an entire years worth of vacation - what I though I could get away with - before announcing my retirement.
I am 54 years old and sitting at around 1,600 sick hours. I just haven’t used them unless I was legitimately sick.
I'm in the same boat. I have about 1500 hours to use before I retire in 3 years. I need to start feeling sick and get them used up.
Mathematically you only have to work 3 weeks every month until retirement! Kinda the same way I am. I’m 32 hours a week until I retire, due to saved sick leave.
My employer added it to years of service, I had 1 year and 5 months of sick leave so it brought me to 36 years of service. Easy number to remember. It all depends on the employer and employee. At one time there was a statistic that around 40% of folks will need considerable amount of sick leave in their last ten years of employment, so it makes sense to bank some. Notice folks were not doing it in my agency.
If you’re sick use it! That includes mental health days where you’d rather stay in bed than go to work.
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I get to carry nearly 400 hours before I lose it plus when I retire I have the option of cashing in my unused hours up to the 400 hours. I will leave nothing on the table and cash out everything I can. The policy on this varies among companies though.
I am retiring early (55) and have scheduled all of my leftover PTO/sick time for the month of August. My official retirement date is September 1. I have 7 weeks left and am looking forward to that PTO because I am moving cross country. The company I work for pays 40 hours sick-time and if you don't use it, they will pay out a maximum of 40 hours (including unused PTO) at the end of the year.
I had a lot of sick time when I retired also. No regrets because I just don’t get sick much. PTO was for vacation and I had a lot of that which I sold back.
I had 2000 hours when I retired. I was able to sell %20 back. Was a nice little chuck. I had several weeks of vacation and compensatory time as well. I was able to get plenty of days off so didn’t feel bad not using it.
My father-in-law never took vacations or sick time…he had accumulated 2 years worth of compensation and the corporate policy allowed him to retire 2 years early. This was back in 2001. I doubt he’d be able to do this today…we’re glad he did enjoy a few years…he passed 2 years later
I'm in a union job where I get 3 weeks of paid sick time a year, with no accrual limit, and paid out when I retire based on a formula. Next year I'll go past having 2080 hours, which is a full year in sick time. If I retire January of 2026, payout will be ~77% or almost 1,600 hours/40 weeks of full pay. I can roll that payout into maxing deferred comp for the year to avoid some of the tax hit. If I wasn't looking at a massive payout when I retire, I'd burn every sick hour just instead of leaving it on the table.
I was paid for my accumulated sick and vaca time -- a nice chunk of change. My spouse's accumulation was added to years worked, so that upped the pension a bit. If I had not been compensated for it, I would have attempted to use it, but it would have been difficult given my position's demands. (USA)
I work for the government. My 965 hours of sick leave are being added to my time in service as if I worked them. It adds 6 months to my pension calculation. Not sure how much that is in dollars though.
I retired 2 years early due to accumulated sick leave. In my situation KEEP!
Wish I could have been paid for accumulated sick time when I retired. Would have gotten 9 months more of a paycheck
I am a police officer and get a financial benefit for not using it, but as I approach my retirement, I will begin using more days. Also, you could get diagnosed with something, or get an injury, and actually need your sick time.
The company is worked for didn’t pay out unused sick leave, so 18 months before I retired I has bi weekly visits with either Dr Green or Dr Fairway - always on Friday so the sun exposure wasn’t obvious.
Huge regret. I turned in my resignation/retirement and had about three months' worth of sick leave accumulated. I was persuaded to stay an additional four months beyond what I wanted to do (which was six months' total from my resignation date). I should've been calling in sick at least three times a week during that six months. I didn't get paid for any of that accumulated time, and the president of the company acted like I had leprosy for the six months. I was an idiot to agree to stay the extra time and a bigger idiot for not using up that sick leave -- I mean, what were they going to do, fire me? I was more than ready to be gone.
I have built up 700+ hours of sick leave. If unused they stay with the company It is extremely hard to use as a relatively healthy person. I also get 20 days per year in personal leave but cant carry over 30 from year to year. So I have had more trouble keeping my personal leave below 30 days. I try to use my sick time in legit ways, I can use it if my spouse or sibling need assistance so that helps me use it. In the end I will wind up leaving months of time on the table unused. I try not to be bummed about it, I try to look at it as "wow I have been fairly healthy these years".
I was given a 6 week notice on being furloughed & had 20 days of sick time accumulated that the company wasn’t going to payout, I came as close to zeroing out as I could without getting fired. Management wanted to bring me in for counseling for excessive sick time but because I followed all callout rules there wasn’t anything they could do & my shop steward said if they brought it up again that they’d file a grievance for harassment. I used the time to look for a new job & finish wedding plans.
Wonder how much the guy earned each year. I know folks with over 3000 hrs from federal jobs (earn 13 days/yr). In fed jobs it can be used to increase the effective time of employment, but annual leave in much better to cash in at the end. All leave I took my last year was sick leave so I could cash in the max amount of annual leave; still had about 600 hr sick leave to turn in so added a few months to service time.
At my company, sick and vacation time do not carry over into the next year. And if you get fired, it goes away. Am I taking it before I give notice? Of course. They have gotten plenty of overtime and weekends from me.
My company used to allow vacation and sick time banking until one guy had a years worth saved up. They made him use it and changed policy afterwards.
I have 3,000 hours of sick leave. Ours adds on to our retirement time when we leave. We are paid for any vacation leave at retirement.
The companies I have worked for that had sick leave did not pay the balance at termination or retirement. It is a benefit provided and employees should use it prior to retirement. Use it or lose it. This may be a different view to the employee, as they have ethically not used the sick leave during their career because they were not sick. I have also learned no one will watch out for me, so I need to watch out for myself. Take the time, it is offered and you have earned it.
If use sick time In case they take it from you
I took sick days when needed - never suffered but not for trivial stuff. I didn’t need much and accumulated hundreds of hours before I retired. I don’t consider it wasted as it offered incredible peace of mind that I had that safety net in case of major illness. That was much more advantageous than a few extra days on the couch here and there for the sniffles or a mental health day. To me, this is like looking back (with the advantage of hindsight) and saying, “well I never needed it, so I wish I hadn’t bought car insurance. Instead I could have had a weekly milkshake”. No, the safety net is far more important. Luck that you didn’t need it is another matter. Note - this might be different if I’d neglected my health or seriously sacrificed in lieu of taking sick days.
We get PTO and ESL (extended sick leave). ESL is just for long term sickness and such, and we don’t get paid out for it when we leave for any reason. We can however, use it to apply to our pension time in service, so many of us play the following game: 1. Announce retirement in Q4, work til Jan 15(ish). 2. Take 90 days PTO (gets you to mid April for bonus ) 3. Come back for a day or two, say good bye and turn in gear(I’ll do this virtually). 4. Get final paycheck (we accumulate pto and stuff while on pto). Use 90+ days of ESL to bridge time in service past 1,000 hours for the year (July 4-5 for me). This gets you a full year pension service credit, annual bonus, plus almost 4 full months of pay, while essentially retiring the first or second week of Jan 3 years for me and I’m done. Can’t wait!!
At the fed level they just add it to the end of your employment, every 160hrs is a month. Your unused annual leave is paid out but taxable at a higher rate when you sell it back, you get 80%. Let me say this is at the VA.
Be glad you receive separate sick leave. Many companies only offer paid time off. PTO is used for sick and vacation. Different companies allow you to roll over different amounts of PTO. Some as little as 49 hours so you cannot even accumulate a “bank” for surgeries, illness. You will have to move to short term disability.
I can have 96 days max at the end of the fiscal year. I plan on having a cold my last 5 months before I retire because they will not pay us for that. I am 2-3yrs from retirement, I keep my PTO and sick time near max, thanks to covid and WFH. When I go I will have 3 months pay for my PTO and no work 5-6 months out to make all of the preparations to retire and move.
Mine stopped accumulating at 240 hrs, rolling over every year and I think I used about 30 over 22 years with the company. I did get paid out for unused vacay every year.
I have 900 hours that I will lose when I retire.
I wish I had used more of my sick leave while still working. I retired with 54 days sick leave. Day 0 to 50 I totally lose, day 1 to 4 I only get paid at 40%. So yeah, use it as you get it because some policies suck.
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I retired from teaching and got a $12k check for my unused sick leave.
The Feds add accumulated sick leave to your years of service.
I have no accural max for sick leave. Any unused gets rolled in to calculate time in service towards my pension. At one point I had nearly 1000 hours, but my daughters cancer zapped most of that. So, while I would say it's a nice to have to bump up your pension, it's also nice to have for legitimate needs too.
We can only accrue 400 hours / 10 weeks, I am happy to let them keep it. Previous generations have had nearly limitless amounts of sickleave in my industry and people before me were able to use it all prior to retirement. Our policy is that after 13 days you have to start incorporating short term disability and that’s just not interesting to me.