PTO is salary delivered as time. This calculator prices your vacation days in dollars — including the ones you're about to let expire.
Your vacation days have a price tag
Paid time off is part of your compensation, priced in days instead of dollars. Your employer pays your salary across the year whether you take your days or not — so each PTO day is worth one day of your pay, and every unused day is earned compensation you quietly hand back.
The formula
- Hourly rate = annual salary ÷ (hours per week × 52)
- Value of one PTO day = hourly rate × hours per workday
- Unused PTO value = day value × days left unused
How to use the result
Three practical uses. First, motivation: seeing unused days as a dollar figure makes them harder to abandon in December. Second, comparing job offers: convert each offer's PTO allowance to dollars and add it to the salary before comparing. Third, exit planning: if your jurisdiction or employer pays out accrued PTO, the calculator shows what your accrued balance is worth in your final paycheck.
Frequently asked questions
- Will I get paid for unused PTO when I leave a job?
- It depends on where you live and your employer's policy. Some jurisdictions treat accrued vacation as earned wages that must be paid out when you leave; others let employers set a use-it-or-lose-it policy. Check your local labor rules and your employee handbook.
- Why value PTO at my hourly rate?
- Because that's what your employer pays you for the day whether you work it or not. A PTO day is a day of salary delivered as time. Skipping it means working a day you were already paid to take off.
- Does more PTO make a lower salary competitive?
- Often, yes. Value the difference in days at each job's daily rate and add it to the salary comparison. Ten extra days at a $300 daily rate is $3,000 of compensation a year — real money that offer letters don't show as a number.
- Is taking PTO really 'free'?
- The pay is already yours either way — that's the point. What varies is the workload cost of stepping away, which is a workplace-culture problem, not a math one. The math says an untaken day is compensation you earned and didn't collect.