For those that are self employed, when do you take time off for a vacation?
Looking back at my work these past years, most work come during the summer & Christmas season. This means those months when kids & everyone off are off from school & work are taking a vacation somewhere, I have to finish a survey - either fieldwork or plan preparation.
That leaves only the rainy months for a vacation. I am from Singapore so rainy months here are really rainy months.
I generally take two or three weeks in the summer, another week around Christmas, and assorted long weekends throughout the year. The Christmas one is pretty easy, as everything slows to a crawl around here during that time. Summer requires a little more planning, but most years it works out.
Hey Francis,
Am from Singapore too. Nice to see someone from the same island too. Can't say for much as I am an employee though
FrancisH, post: 351674, member: 10211 wrote: For those that are self employed, when do you take time off for a vacation?
Looking back at my work these past years, most work come during the summer & Christmas season. This means those months when kids & everyone off are off from school & work are taking a vacation somewhere, I have to finish a survey - either fieldwork or plan preparation.
That leaves only the rainy months for a vacation. I am from Singapore so rainy months here are really rainy months.
When I was self-employed I generally took off about 2 hours each evening to go home and have dinner and put the kids to bed. Usually took 1 week off in the spring when the kids had spring break. I did take off 4 straight days one June to go to a neice's wedding.
Ninety percent of my vacation is taken an hour or a half day at a time, whenever I damnwell please. Like right now. I'm not really into the concept of extended periods of so-called vacation. Might take a couple three days (that's Midwestern for less than a week) once in a great while to visit distant relatives or do some history/genealogical research out-of-state. The concept of doing no work for 14 consecutive days is pure foolishness invented by entities whose sole purpose in life is to remove money from your bank account.
"For those that are self employed, when do you take time off for a vacation?"
Whenever SWMBO says so. 😉
I take a break when it is in the 100s and hope for a 2month long winter every year so I can fly to a lower latitude.
That just don't happen most of the time.
It is actually a few days here and there.
The superhandy thing about being self-employed is that little things that become big things for many timeclock punchers can be handled quite simply. I can schedule a doctor or dentist appointment, or any appointment for that matter, then bend my personal schedule to make that as simple as possible. I'm a sort of "kill as many birds as possible with one stone" kind of scheduler. Say I have a doctor's appointment in a town 20 miles from my home. I will come up with a plan of attack that may involve a dozen different stops for a dozen different things to get done on the way there or on the way back. Everything from stopping at some post office to weigh a certain large envelope before mailing to grabbing several cans of marking paint at the farm supply store and eyeballing a jobsite that I didn't know about until the day before the doctor's appointment.
FL/GA PLS., post: 351708, member: 379 wrote: ....Whenever SWMBO says so. 😉
Which begs the question, "How come I'm self-employed and my entire family thinks I'm unemployed?"
Worse yet is when your wife tells people you are semi-retired.
I work out of a home office. It's small, but it's a dedicated room jammed to the gills with the trappings of a surveying business. The statement my wife makes that always gets my goat is when she sees that I'm not going to be doing field work and says, "Oh, you're staying home today."
I've got the same problem here Jim. My kids runa round in the house and don't know how to knock:-)
The advantage is no traffic jams and straight from the bed to the office. Downside is that the work is always round the corner 🙁
I take 3 weeks in the summer holiday and 2 weeks for christmas off.
Jim Frame, post: 351725, member: 10 wrote: and says, "Oh, you're staying home today."
yep. I wish she didn't sound so disappointed.
Which begs the question, "How come I'm self-employed and my entire family thinks I'm unemployed?"
Several years ago I still go to my office located 5km from my house. I stay there for the day even when fieldmen are on deployment for long periods of time. Lately traffic even for a 5km drive is getting terrible. A 15 min drive could take more than 1 hour during the rush hour. Decided to just stay at home and have the office space rented out.
Now my neighbors thinks that I am either retired, unemployed or just simply tired.
I generally take time off when things are a bit slack. Other than that whenever I feel like it. It's why I am self employed.
I pretty much take off when I feel like it. Plus long weekends for most Alabama football road games. However, the game Monday left too little planning time for such a long trip and tickets are very expensive.
I generally take off when ever I have time. No set dates. We don't work in the field the first week of deer season which is also Thanksgiving week. That works out pretty well. Other than that I do office work as I tend to get bored with too much time off. Plus as of last week I'm an employee too.
