It might seem too early to plan your 2024 annual leave. But if you take a closer look at next year’s calendar, you might notice that with some clever planning, you can score over a month’s worth of time off over the year!
Here’s how you can cleverly plan your 2024 PTO to maximise some time off.
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Also see: 6 smart planning tips for your next holiday
2024 public holidays
Our first step is to see when all SA’s public holidays are:
| Public Holiday | Date | Day |
| New Year’s | 1 January | Monday |
| Human Rights Day | 21 March | Thursday |
| Good Friday | 29 March | Friday |
| Family Day | 1 April | Monday |
| Freedom Day | 27 April | Saturday |
| Workers’ Day | 1 May | Wednesday |
| Youth Day | 16 June | Sunday (observed on Monday) |
| Women’s Day | 9 August | Friday |
| Heritage Day | 24 September | Tuesday |
| Day of Reconciliation | 16 December | Monday |
| Christmas Day | 25 December | Wednesday |
| Day of Goodwill | 26 December | Thursday |
You’re probably thinking that next year doesn’t feature nearly enough Friday and Monday public holidays for lekker long weekends. But that’s where clever planning comes in.
As you know, you get 1.25 days of leave every month, barring sick leave. From a base of 0, that means you get about 15 days of paid time off every year. Typically, you can carry a few days over each year, depending on your company structure.
If you have a few days spare to make up a total of 17 days of leave by the end of 2024, you can plan your time off according to the public holidays and get 44 days off.
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Planning your leave
Chances are, you’ve already got New Year’s Day off, so we’re going to start planning for Human Rights Day on 21 March.
If you take 5 working days off from 22 March to 28 March, you get 12 days’ worth of holiday, thanks to Good Friday falling on 29 March.
You can also make up for that missed Freedom Day public holiday this year. Take off 4 days during the week of Worker’s Day, which falls on a Wednesday this year to get a full 9 days off.
The long weekends over Youth Day (16 June) and Women’s Day (9 August) will tide us over until September. You can take off Monday, 23 September to score a 4-day weekend ending on Heritage Day.
We might not have any holidays until 16 December, which gives us another long weekend, but if you’ve got about 7 more leave days left, you can get a 19-day Christmas break.
So, plan your 2024 annual leave cleverly, and you might just have a year filled with holidays and relaxation.
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