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Do you get paid vacation time? Do you actually use it, by taking an annual vacation with your loved ones? If not, you may want to consider the health, monetary, & social benefits of doing so.

Take Back Your Time is launching a vacation law campaign, which hopes to guarantee at least three weeks of paid vacation for all American workers. (I’d like to see law like that to go a step further and require that companies actually make sure their workers TAKE the vacation time. Without working during it.)

According to a study on men at risk for heart disease by Brooks B. Gump, PhD, MPH and Karen A. Matthews, PhD (published in the September-October 2000 edition of Psychosomatic Medicine,) “More frequent annual vacations during the [study] was associated with a significant reduction in the risk of death during the 9-year posttrial period.” The message? Vacations can be good for your heart and possibly even reduce your risk of death. And if you’re healthy, you’ll spend less money on expensive hospitalizations, medications, and procedures.

According to the American Heart Association’s brochure on Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics, the “estimated direct and indirect cost of [cardiovascular diseases] in the United States for 2007 is $431.8 billion.” $431.8 BILLION. This includes the estimated costs of lost productivity. Companies would do well to pay their workers for vacation time instead of for sick time, short term disability, long term disability, low productivity, poor performance and errors due to stress. A happy worker is a productive worker.

Social benefits include things like family bonding, unforgettable memories, happiness, & increased satisfaction with life. You’ll also have more time to learn about the world around you and to experience other cultures (it’s a lot easier to plan a non-jet lagged trip to Europe if you have 3 weeks off than it is if you have a week, for example.) That’s a lot of value.

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