What is your unused PTO actually worth?
Most people think of unused vacation days as “saved up” — but the average worker forfeits several days every year. This calculator turns those days into a dollar figure, so you can see exactly what you’re handing back to your employer.
Enter your salary, your unused days, and the number of working days in your year. That’s it.
Your numbers
Your unused leave is worth
$1,500
That’s $300 per day you’d be giving back to your employer if you don’t take it.
How the math works
| Annual salary | $75,000 |
| Working days per year | 250 |
| Daily rate | $300 |
| Hourly rate (8-hour day) | $38 |
| Unused PTO days | 5 |
| Value of unused leave | $1,500 |
Put another way
$1,500 could buy:
A round-trip flight to Tokyo
Economy, booked a couple of months ahead
A week in Thailand
Flights + hotels + most meals
10 days exploring Portugal or Greece
Mid-range hotels and trains
Travel comparisons are rough static thresholds in USD — directional, not live pricing.
Why people forfeit leave (and why it costs more than they think)
The hidden tax of unused PTO
Your employer prices your salary against the total value of your time — including paid leave. When you skip vacation, you’re effectively working those days for free. A single unused week on a $100k salary is worth roughly $2,000.
Multiply that by the number of years you’ve been doing this, and the figure gets uncomfortable fast.
When “saving days for later” backfires
- Caps and forfeiture rules.Many policies cap rollover at 5–10 days — the rest disappears at year-end.
- Job changes wipe the slate.Not every jurisdiction requires payout for accrued leave, and even where it’s required the rate is often pre-tax.
- Burnout has a price too.The medical and productivity research on consistent breaks is overwhelming — the “value” figure here is just the financial floor.
A note on the math
We compute daily rate as annual salary ÷ working days per year. That’s the simplest framing — the same one most HR systems use when calculating unpaid leave.
Tax effects, employer contributions, and bonuses can move the number meaningfully in either direction. Treat the figure here as a clean-room estimate, not a tax-perfect quote.
What to do about it
- Block the windows now. The single biggest predictor of taking PTO is putting it on the calendar early.
- Stack with public holidays. A well-placed Tuesday off around a Monday holiday turns 1 day of PTO into 4 days off.
- Plan around peers, not against them.Coordinated leave reduces coverage friction — the most common reason people skip it.
Don’t lose this.
Leavewise finds every efficient PTO window in your year so you can plan time off that actually uses your leave.
Plan windows that use your leave