taking holidays

[Moscow Mule]

What's a holiday?

Something you buy from here...

http://www.kuoni.co.uk/

[Moscow Mule]

sow how many holidays do you guys take
bank holidays and the odd day off takes your weeks worked down from 52 to 50
6 weeks hols takes it down to 44
so do you work 44 weeks perhaps. the contractor calculators tend to use 44 weeks.

I use 40.

[Charles Foster Kane]

Holidays are for girls. Real contractors work towards a nervous breakdown.

[The Lone Gunman]

Your rate should already account for the weeks you wont be working so you are not losing anuthing. You cant afford to think like that.
I reckon to work 45 weeks a year and try to get a rate that allows me the time off. I try to take holidays between contracts, or when the site I am on shuts down like at xmas to maximise income.

[contractor79]

but do you not sometimes think about taking no holidays for 2 years. Then you have 6*2 = 12 weeks pay to pay for very long holiday. Trouble is you might die before then.

[ratewhore]

Generally 6 weeks a year then a 5-6 month break every 3 years.

That's why I contract...

[TykeMerc]

Generally 6 weeks a year then a 5-6 month break every 3 years.

That's why I contract...

Much the same here although when I've got interesting projects I often fail and do 50 weeks, 50 weeks, 13 weeks off.

[chris79]

I think people miss the point.

If you have your payroll setup, then technically you would get paid all year round, it's only the income into your company which would suffer by not invoicing for x weeks.

I hear people go on about "oh I lose £x if I take time off", I've also seen the same people suffer BIG TIME during contracts trying to slug it out without a break, it affects their personality, their attitude, their job satisfaction, and ultimately their mental and sometimes physical health.

I work on the basis my company invoices for 46 weeks a year and my payroll spreads this out over 52 weeks, so I have a weekly income all year round. If I'm ever off sick etc, then I just reduce the amount of 'holiday' days I take, as a contractor sick days/holidays are all the same thing to the client it's just an 'unavailable day'.

[contractor79]

Generally 6 weeks a year then a 5-6 month break every 3 years.

That's why I contract...

that's nice
and someone pointed out the factor of whether contract is an interesting one, that's a fair point.
But I don't like the culture of being in a dull job and just doing it to get 6 weeks off each year. That's 46 weeks of misery.
Lucky right now I'm in an interesting contract so didn't particularly want time off to go anywhere for more than a weekend

[contractor79]

I think people miss the point.

If you have your payroll setup, then technically you would get paid all year round, it's only the income into your company which would suffer by not invoicing for x weeks..

that's a good point
and I think once you reach a stage where you have a lot in there to cover for many months out of contrac then there's less incentive to work like a dog as it's just numbers.
I mean what difference does it make if you have 30k, 50k, 80k in there.